JKw 


EDUCATION  DEFT 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTOEY 


THE  OUTLINE  OF 
HISTORY 

Being  a  Plain  History  of  Life  and  Mankind 


BY 
H.   G.   WELLS/0' 


WRITTEN    ORIGINALLY   WITH    THE    ADVICE   AND    EDITORIAL    HELP   OF 

MR.  ERNEST  BARKER, 

SIR  H.  H.  JOHNSTON,  SIR  E.  RAY  LANKESTER, 
AND  PROFESSOR  GILBERT  MURRAY 


AND  ILLUSTRATED  BY 

J.  F.  HORRABIN 


TTIE  ENTIRE  WORK,  REVISED  AND 
REARRANGED    BY    THE    AUTHOR 


PUBLISHED   BY 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

FOR   THE 

REVIEW    OF   REVIEWS    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 

1921 

All  Rights  Reserved 


FEINTED   IN    THE    UNITED   STATES   OF   AMERICA 


CoPYniGHT,    1920    AND    1921, 

BY  THE   MA^MILLAN  COMPANY. 


COPYRIGHT,  1920  AND  1921, 
RY  II.  G.  WELLS. 


Set  up   and   clcctrotyped.      Published   November,    1920. 
Third   Edition  revised  and  rearranged  September,  1921. 


INTRODUCTION 

"A  philosophy  of  the  history  of  the  human  race,  worthy 
of  its  name,  must  ~begin  with  the  heavens  and  descend  to 
the  earth,  must  be  charged  with  the  conviction  that  all 
existence  is  one — a  single  conception  sustained  from  be- 
ginning to  end  upon  one  identical  law" 

— FRIEDRICH  RATZEL. 

THIS  Outline  of  History,  of  which  this  is  a  third  edition, 
freshly  revised  and  rearranged,  is  an  attempt  to  tell, 
truly  and  clearly,  in  one  continuous  narrative,  the  whole 
story  of  life  and  mankind  so  far  as  it  is  known  to-day.  It  is 
written  plainly  for  the  general  reader,  but  its  aim  goes  beyond 
its  use  as  merely  interesting  reading  matter.  There  is  a  feeling 
abroad  that  the  teaching  of  history  considered  as  a  part  of  gen- 
eral education  is  in  an  unsatisfactory  condition,  and  particu- 
larly that  the  ordinary  treatment  of  this  "subject"  by  the  class 
and  teacher  and  examiner  is  too  partial  and  narrow.  But  the 
desire  to  extend  the  general  range  of  historical  ideas  is  con- 
fronted by  the  argument  that  the  available  time  for  instruction 
is  already  consumed  by  that  partial  and  narrow  treatment,  and 
that  therefore,  however  desirable  this  extension  of  range  may 
be,  it  is  in  practice  impossible.  If  an  Englishman,  for  example, 
has  found  the  history  of  England  quite  enough  for  his  powers 
of  assimilation,  then  it  seems  hopeless  to  expect  his  sons  and 
daughters  to  master  universal  history,  if  that  is  to  consist  of 
the  history  of  England,  plus  the  history  of  France,  plus  the 
history  of  Germany,  plus  the  history  of  Russia,  and  so  on.  To 
which  the  only  possible  answer  is  that  universal  history  is  at 
once  something  more  and  something  less  than  the  aggregate 
of  the  national  histories  to  which  we  are  accustomed,  that  it 
must  be  approached  in  a  different  spirit  and  dealt  with  in  a 
different  manner.  This  book  seeks  to  justify  that  answer.  It 
has  been  written  primarily  to  show  that  history  as  one  whole 
is  amenable  to  a  more  broad  and  comprehensive  handling  than 
is  the  history  of  special  nations  and  periods,  a  broader  handling 

'      961.669 


vi  INTRODUCTION 

that  will  bring  it  within  the  normal  limitations  of  time  and 
energy  set  to  the  reading  and  education  of  an  ordinary  citizen. 
This  outline  deals  with  ages  and  races  and  nations,  where  the 
ordinary  history  deals  with  reigns  and  pedigrees  and  campaigns ; 
but  it  will  not  be  found  to  be  more  crowded  with  names  and 
dates,  nor  more  difficult  to  follow  and  understand.  History  is 
no  exception  amongst  the  sciences ;  as  the  gaps  fill  in,  the  out- 
line simplifies ;  as  the  outlook  broadens,  the  clustering  multitude 
of  details  dissolves  into  general  laws.  And  many  topics  of  quite 
primary  interest  to  mankind,  the  first  appearance  and  the  growth 
of  scientific  knowledge  for  example,  and  its  effects  upon  human 
life,  the  elaboration  of  the  ideas  of  money  and  credit,  or  the 
story  of  the  origins  and  spread  and  influence  of  Christianity, 
which  must  be  treated  fragmentarily  or  by  elaborate  digressions 
in  any  partial  history,  arise  and  flow  completely  and  naturally 
in  one  general  record  of  the  world  in  which  we  live. 

The  need  for  a  common  knowledge  of  the  general  facts  of 
human  history  throughout  the  world  has  become  very  evident 
during  the  tragic  happenings  of  the  last  few  years.  Swifter 
means  of  communication  have  brought  all  men  closer  to  one 
another  for  good  or  for  evil.  War  becomes  a  universal  disaster, 
blind  and  monstrously  destructive;  it  bombs  the  baby  in  its 
cradle  and  sinks  the  food-ships  that  cater  for  the  non-combatant 
and  the  neutral.  There  can  be  no  peace  now,  we  realize,  but  a 
common  peace  in  all  the  world;  no  prosperity  but  a  general 
prosperity.  But  there  can  "be  no  common  peace  and  prosperity 
without  common  historical  ideas.  Without  such  ideas  to  hold 
them  together  in  harmonious  co-operation,  with  nothing  but  nar- 
row, selfish,  and  conflicting  nationalist  traditions,  races  and 
peoples  are  bound  to  drift  towards  conflict  and  destruction.  This 
truth,  which  was  apparent  to  that  great  philosopher  Kant  a 
century  or  more  ago — it  is  the  gist  of  his  tract  upon  universal 
peace — is  now  plain  to  the  man  in  the  street.  Our  internal 
policies  and  our  economic  and  social  ideas  are  profoundly 
vitiated  at  present  by  wrong  and  fantastic  ideas  of  the  origin 
and  historical  relationship  of  social  classes.  A  sense  of  history 
as  the  common  adventure  of  all  mankind  is  as  necessary  for 
peace  within  as  it  is  for  peace  between  the  nations. 

The  writer  will  offer  no  apology  for  making  this  experiment. 
His  disqualifications  are  manifest.  But  such  work  needs  to  be 
don&  by  as  many  people  as  possible,  he  was  free  to  make  his 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

contribution,  and  he  was  greatly  attracted  by  the  task.  He 
has  read  sedulously  and  made  the  utmost  use  of  all  the  help 
he  could  obtain.  There  is  not  a  chapter  that  has  not  been 
examined  by  some  more  competent  person  than  himself  and 
very  carefully  revised.  He  has  particularly  to  thank  his  friends 
Sir  E.  Eay  Lankester,  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  Professor  .Gilbert 
Murray,  and  Mr.  Ernest  Barker  for  much  counsel  and  direc- 
tion and  editorial  help.  Mr.  Philip  Guedalla  has  toiled  most 
efficiently  and  kindly  through  all  the  proofs.  Mr.  A.  Allison, 
Professor  T.  W.  Arnold,  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett,  the  Eev.  A.  H. 
Trevor  Benson,  Mr.  Aodh  de  Blacam,  Mr.  Laurence  Binyon, 
the  Eev.  G.  W.  Broomfield,  Sir  William  Bull,  Mr.  L.  Cranmer 
Byng,  Mr.  A.  J.  D.  Campbell,  Mr.  A.  Y.  Campbell,  Mr.  L.  Y. 
Chen,  Mr.  A.  E.  Cowan,  Mr.  O.  G.  S.  Crawford,  Dr.  W.  S. 
Culbertson,  Mr.  E.  Langton  Cole,  Mr.  B.  G.  Collins,  Mr. 
J.  J.  L.  Duyvendak,  Mr.  O.  W.  Ellis,  Mr.  G.  S.  Eerrier,  Mr. 
David  Ereeman,  Mr.  S.  !N".  Eu,  Mr.  G.  B.  Gloyne,  Sir  Eichard 
Gregory,  Mr.  E.  H.  Hayward,  Mr.  Sydney  Herbert,  Dr.  Er. 
Krupicka,  Mr.  H.  Lang  Jones,  Mr.  C.  H.  B.  Laughton,  Mr. 
B.  I.  Macalpin,  Mr.  G.  H.  Mair,  Mr.  E.  S.  Marvin,  Mr.  J.  S. 
Mayhew,  Mr.  B.  Stafford  Morse,  Professor  J.  L.  Myres,  the 
Hon.  W.  Ormsby-Gore,  Sir  Sydney  Olivier,  Mr.  E.  I.  Pocock, 
Mr.  J.  Pr ingle,  Mr.  W.  H.  E.  Eivers,  Sir  Denison  Eoss,  Dr. 
E.  J.  Eussell,  Dr.  Charles  Singer,  Mr.  A.  St.  George  Sanford, 
Dr.  C.  O.  Stallybrass,  Mr.  G.  H.  Walsh,  Mr.  G.  P.  Wells,  Miss 
Eebecca  West,  and  Mr.  George  Whale  have  all  to  be  thanked  for 
help,  either  by  reading  parts  of  the  MS.  or  by  pointing  out 
errors  in  the  published  parts,  making  suggestions,  answering 
questions  or  giving  advice.  Numerous  other  helpful  corre- 
spondents have  pointed  out  printer's  errors  and  minor  slips  in 
the  serial  publication  which  preceded  the  book  edition,  and 
they  have  added  many  useful  items  of  information,  and  to  those 
writers  also  the  warmest  thanks  are  due.  Mr.  C.  M.  Anton 
Belaiew,  Mr.  Henry  Coates,  Mr.  J.  A.  Corry,  Mr.  Archibald 
Craig,  Mr.  W.  V.  Cruden,  Mr.  A.  H.  Dodd,  Mr.  T.  B.  Gold- 
smith, Mr.  E.  E.  Green,  Mr.  E.  S.  Hare,  Mr.  Homer  B.  Hul- 
bert,  Mr.  Walter  Ingleby,  Mr.  J.  H.  Leviton,  Mr.  H.  Comyn 
Maitland,  Mr.  Karsten"  Meyer,  Mr.  William  Platt,  Mr.  E. 
Gordon  Eoe,  Mr.  Alden  Sampson,  Mr.  Neville  H.  Smith,  Mr. 
M.  Timur,  Mr.  W.  H.  Thompson,  Mr.  A.  J.  Vogan,  Mr.  W.  A. 
Voss,  Mr.  G.  E.  Wates,  and  one  or  two  correspondents  with 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

illegible  signatures,  have  made  valuable  suggestions  since  the 
publication  of  the  second  edition.  Pamphlets  against,  the  Out- 
line by  Mr.  Gomme  and  Dr.  Downey  have  also  been  useful  in 
this  later  revision.  But  of  course  none  of  these  helpers  are  to 
be  held  responsible  for  the  judgments,  tone,  arrangement  or 
writing  of  this  Outline.  In  the  relative  importance  of  the 
parts,  in  the  moral  and  political  implications  of  the  story,  the 
final  decision  has  necessarily  fallen  to  the  writer.  The  problem 
of  illustrations  was  a  very  difficult  one  for  him,  for  he  had 
had  no  previous  experience  in  the  production  of  an  illustrated 
book.  In  Mr.  J.  F.  Horrabin  he  has  had  the  good  fortune  to 
find  not  only  an  illustrator  but  a  collaborator.  Mr.  Horrabin 
has  spared  no  pains  to  make  this  work  informative  and  exact. 
His  maps  and  drawings  are  a  part  of  the  text,  the  most  vital 
and  decorative  part.  Some  of  them  represent  the  reading  and 
inquiry  of  many  laborious  days. 

The  index  to  this  edition  is  the  work  of  Mr.  Strickland  Gib- 
son of  Oxford.  Several  correspondents  have  asked  for  a  pro- 
nouncing index  and  accordingly  this  has  been  provided. 

The  writer  owes  a  word  of  thanks  to  that  living  index  of 
printed  books,  Mr.  J.  F.  Cox  of  the  London  Library.  He 
would  also  like  to  acknowledge  here  the  help  he  has  received 
from  Mrs.  Wells.  Without  her  labour  in  typing  and  re-typing 
the  drafts  of  the  various  chapters  as  they  have  been  revised  and 
amended,  in  checking  references,  finding  suitable  quotations, 
hunting  up  illustrations,  and  keeping  in  order  the  whole  mass 
of  material  for  this  history,  and  without  her  constant  help  and 
watchful  criticism,  its  completion  would  have  been  impossible. 

H.  G.  WELLS. 


SCHEME  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTEB  I.     TEE  EARTH  IN  SPACE  AND  TIME 1 

CHAPTER  II.     THE  RECORD  OF  THE  ROCKS 

§  1.     The  first  living  things .5 

§2.     How  old  is  the  world? 10 

CHAPTER  III.     NATURAL  SELECTION  AND  THE  CHANGES  OF  SPECIES     .       13 

CHAPTER  IV.     THE  INVASION  OF  THE  DRY  LAND  BY  LIFE 

§  1.     Life   and    water 19 

§2.     The  earliest  animals 21 

CHAPTER  V.     THE  AGE  OF  REPTILES 

§  1.     The  age  of  lowland  life 25 

§2.     Flying    dragons 29 

§  3.     The  first  birds 30 

§  4.     An  age  of  hardship  and  death      .....          .32 

§  5.     The  first  appearance  of  fur  and  feathers     .  .          .34 

CHAPTER  VI.    THE  AGE  OF  MAMMALS 

§  1.     A  new  age  of  life    .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .37 

§2.     Tradition  comes  into  the  world .38 

§  3.     An  age  of  brain  growth         ......         .42 

§4.     The  world  grows  hard  again 44 

CHAPTER  VII.    THE  ANCESTRY  OF  MAN 

§  1.     Man  descended  from  a  walking  ape      ....         .40 
§2.     First  traces   of   man-like   creatures        .         .         .  51 

§3.     The  Heidelberg  sub-man 52 

§  4.     The  Piltdown  sub-man 53 

CHAPTER  VIII.    THE  NEANDERTHAL  MEN,  AN  KXTINCT  RACE.     (THE 
EARLY  PALAEOLITHIC  AGE) 

§  1.     The  world  50,000  years  ago 55 

§2.     The  daily  life  of  the  first  men .59 

CHAPTER  IX.     THE  LATER  POSTGLACIAL  PALEOLITHIC  MEN,  THE  FIRST 

TRUE  MEN.     (LATER  PALEOLITHIC  AGE) 
§  1.     The  coming  of  men  like  ourselves    ......       65 

§2.     Hunters  give  place  to  herdsmen     .....          .74 

§3.     No  sub-men   in  America 75 

ix 


x  SCHEME  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER  X.     NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

§  1.     The  age  of  cultivation  begins 77 

§2.     Where  did  the  Neolithic  culture  arise?         ....  81 

§3.     Everyday  Neolithic   life 81 

§4.     Primitive    trade 37 

§  5.     The  flooding  of  the  Mediterranean  valley     ....  88 

CHAPTER  XI.     EARLY  THOUGHT 

§  1.     Primitive    philosophy      .......  92 

§2.     The  Old  Man   in  religion 94 

§  3.     Fear  and  hope  in  religion     .  .        .         .         .         .96 

§  4.     Stars  and  seasons 97 

§  5.     Story-telling  and  myth-making 99 

§  6.     Complex  origins  of  religion 100 

CHAPTER  XII.    THE  RACES  OF  MANKIND 

§  1.     Is  mankind  still  differentiating  ? 106 

§2.     The  main   races   of  mankind 110 

§3.     The  Heliolithic  culture  of  the  Brunct  peoples     .         .         .111 

CHAPTER  XIII.     THE  LANGUAGES  OF  MANKIND 

§  1.     No  one  primitive  language 117 

§2.     The  Aryan  languages 118 

§  3.     The    Semitic    languages 120 

§  4.     The   Hamitic   languages 121 

§5.    The  Ural-Altaic  languages 123 

§6.     The    Chinese    languages 123 

§  7.     Other    language   groups          .......  124 

§  8.     A   possible   primitive    language   group          ....  127 

§  9.     Some    isolated    languages 129 

CHAPTER  XIV.    THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS 

§  1.     Early  cities  and  early  nomads 131 

§2A.  The  Sumerians 135 

§  2e.  The  empire  of  Sargon  the  First 137 

§  2c.  The  empire  of  Hammurabi 137 

§2o.  The  Assyrians  and  their  empire ,138 

§  2E.  The  Chaldean  empire .140 

§  3.     The  early  history  of  Egypt 141 

§  4.     The  early  civilization  of  India 147 

§  5.     The  early  history  of  China .147 

§  6.     While  the  civilizations  were  growing    .         .         .         .         .  152 

CHAPTER  XV.     SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TRADING  PEOPLES 

§  1.     The  earliest  ships   and   sailors      .         .         .         .         .         .  155 

§  2.     The  ^Egean  cities  before  history 158 


SCHEME  OF  CONTENTS  xi 

PAGE 

§  3.     The  first  voyages  of  exploration     ......  162 

§4.     Early   traders 164 

§5.     Early  travellers 166 

CHAPTER  XVI.    WRITING 

§1.     Picture   writing 168 

§2.     Syllable  writing 171 

§  3.    Alphabet  writing 172 

§  4.     The  place  of  writing  in  human  life 173 

CHAPTER  XVII.    GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS 

§  1.     The  priest  conies  into  history      ......  177 

§2.     Priests  and  the  stars 181 

§  3.     Priests  and  the  dawn  of  learning 184 

§  4.     King   against  priests      .......         •  185 

§5.     How  Bel-Marduk  struggled  against  the  kings     .         .         .  188 

§  6.     The    god-kings    of    Egypt 191 

§7.     Shi  Hwang-ti   destroys  the  books 195 

CHAPTER  XVIII.     SERFS,   SLAVES,   SOCIAL  CLASSES,   AND   FREE   IN- 
DIVIDUALS 

§  1.     The  common  man  in  ancient  times 196 

§2.     The    earliest    slaves 198 

§3.     The  first  "independent"  persons 201 

§  4.     Social  classes  three  thousand  years  ago       ....  204 

§5.     Classes  hardening  into  castes        .         .         .         .         .         .  207 

§6.     Caste   in    India       .........  210 

§7.     The  system  of  the  Mandarins        .         .         .         .         .         .212 

§  8.     A  summary  of  five  thousand  years      .....  214 

CHAPTER  XIX.     THE  HEBREW  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS 

§  1.     The  place  of  the  Israelites  in  history    .....  217 

§2.     Saul,  David,  and  Solomon 225 

§  3.     The  Jews  a  people  of  mixed  origin 230 

§  4.     The  importance  of  the  Hebrew  prophets      ....  232 

CHAPTER  XX.     THE  ARYAN- SPEAKING  PEOPLES  IN  PREHISTORIC  TIMES 

§  1.     The  spreading  of  the  Aryan-speakers     .....  236 

§2.     Primitive  Aryan  life 240 

§  3.     Early  Aryan  daily  life 245 

CHAPTER  XXI.    THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS 

§  1.     The  Hellenic   peoples .         .252 

§  2.     Distinctive  features  of  the  Hellenic  civilization    .         .         .  255 

§  3.     Monarchy,    aristocracy,    and    democracy   in    Greece      .         .  258 

§  4.     The  kingdom  of  Lydia 265 

§5.     The  rise  of  the  Persians  in  the  East     .         .         .         .         .266 

§6.     The  story  of  Croesus ,        ,         .  270 


xii  SCHEME  OF  CONTENTS 


§  7.  Darius    invades    Russia 274 

§8.  The  battle  of  Marathon 280 

§  9.  Thermopylae    and    Sal  amis       .......  282 

§  10.  Platsea    and    Mycale                .                 288 

CHAPTER  XXII.     GREEK  THOUGHT  IN  RELATION  TO  HUMAN  SOCIETY 

§  1.  The  Athens  of  Pericles 291 

§2.  Socrates .298 

P3.  Plato  and  the  Academy 299 

§  4.  Aristotle  and  the  Lyceum      .         .         .         .  .         .301 

§  5.  Philosophy   becomes   unworldly       ......  303 

§6.  The  quality  and  limitations  of  Greek  thought     .         .       .  304 

CHAPTER  XXIII.    THE  CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT 

§  1.  Philip  of  Macedonia 310 

§  2.  The  murder  of  King  Philip 315 

§  3.  Alexander's  first  conquests 319 

§  4.  The   wanderings    of   Alexander 327 

§5.  Was   Alexander    indeed   gr^at? 331 

§6.  The  successors  of  Alexander 337 

§  7.  Pergamum  a  refuge  of  culture 338 

§  8.  Alexander  as  a  portent  of  wrorld  unity    .....  340 

CHAPTER  XXIV.     SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA 

§  1.  The  science  of  Alexandria 342 

§2.  Philosophy  of  Alexandria 349 

§  3.  Alexandria  as  a  factory  of  religions 349 

CHAPTER  XXV.    THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM 

§  1.  The  story  of  Gautama 354 

§2.  Teaching  and  legend  in  criiflrt 3S9 

§  3.  The  gospel  of  Gautama  Buddha 361 

§4.  Buddhism  and  Asoka 365 

§5.  Two  great  Chinese  teachers    .         .         .         .         .         .         .371 

§  6.  The   corruptions   of    Buddhism 376 

§7.  The  present  range  of  Buddhism 378 

CHAPTER  XXVI.    THE  Two  WESTEBX  REPUBLICS 

§  1.  The   beginnings   of   the  Latins 380 

§2.  A  new   sort  of   state 388 

§  3.  The  Carthaginian   republic  of  rich   men      ....  399 

§4.  The  First  Punic  War 400 

§  5.  Cato  the  Elder  and  the  spirit  of  Cato 404 

§6.  The  Second  Punic  War 407 

§  7.  The  Third  Punic  War 412 

§8.  How  the  Punic  War  undermined  Roman  liberty    .         .         .  417 

§  9.  Comparison  of  the  Roman  republic  with  a  modern  state     .  418 


SCHEME  OE  CONTENTS  xiii 

PACK 

CHAPTER  XXVII.     FROM  TIBERIUS  GRACCHUS  TO  THE  GOD-EMPEROB 

IN  ROME 

§  1.     The  science  of  thwarting  the  common  man    ....  424 

§  2.     Finance  in  the  Roman  state 427 

§  3.     The  last  years  of  republican  politics     .....  429 

§  4.     The  era  of  the  adventurer  generals 435 

§  5.     The  end  of  the  republic 439 

§  6.     The  coming  of  the  Princeps 443 

§  7.    Why  the  Roman  republic  failed 446 

CHAPTER  XXVIII.     THE  C^SARS  BETWEEN  THE  SEA  AND  THE  GREAT 
PLAINS  OF  THE  OLD  WORLD 

§  1.     A  short  catalogue  of  emperors 451 

§  2.     Roman  civilization  at  its  zenith     ......  458 

§  3.     Limitations  of  the  Roman  mind 467 

§  4.     The  stir  of  the  great  plains 469 

§5.     The  Western    (true  Roman)    Empire  crumples   up      .         .  480 

§6.     The   Eastern    (revived  Hellenic)    Empire      ....  487 

CHAPTER  XXIX.     THE  BEGINNINGS,  THE  RISE,  AND  THE  DIVISIONS 

OF  CHRISTIANITY 

§  1.     Judea  at  the  Christian  era    .......  493 

§2.    The  teachings  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 496 

§  3.     The  universal   religions          .......  505 

§  4.     The  crucifixion  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 507 

§  5.     Doctrines  added  to  the  teachings  of  Jesus     ....  509 

§6.     The  struggles  and  persecutions  of  Christianity     .         .         .  516 

§  7.     Constantine  the  Great    ........  520 

§8.     The  establishment  of  official  Christianity     .         .         .         .522 

§9.     The  map  of  Europe,  A.D.  500 526 

§  10.     The  salvation  of  learning  by  Christianity     ....  530 

CHAPTER    XXX.     SEVEN    CENTURIES    IN    ASIA     (CIRCA    50    B.C.    TO 
A.D.   650) 

§  1.     Justinian  the  Great 535 

§  2.     The  Sassanid  empire  in  Persia     .         .         .         .         .         .  537 

§  3.     The  decay  of  Syria  under  the  Sassanids     ....  540 

§  4.     The  first  message  from  Islam 544 

§5.     Zoroaster    and   Mani 545 

§  6.     Hunnish  peoples  in  central  Asia  and  India         .        .         .  547 

§  7.     The  great  age  of  China 550 

§8.     Intellectual  fetters  of  China 555 

§9.    The  travels  of  Yuan  Chwang         .        .        .        .        .        .561 

CHAPTER  XXXI.    MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM 

§  1.     Arabia  before  Muhammad 567 

§  2.     Life  of  Muhammad  to  the  Hegira  ......  570 

§3.    Muhammad  becomes  a  fighting  prophet      .        .        .        .  574 


xiv  SCHEME  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

§  4.  The  teachings  of  Islam 579 

§5.  The  caliphs  Abu  Bekr  and  Omar         .         .         .         .         .582 

§  6.  The  great  days  of  the  Omayyads 588 

§  7.  The  decay  of  Islam  under  the  Abbasids      ....     596 

§  8.  The  intellectual  life  of  Arab  Islam 599 

CHAPTER  XXXII.     CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 

§  1.     The  Western  world  at  its  lowest  ebb 605 

§2.     The   feudal   system 607 

§  3.  The  Frankish  kingdom  of  the  Merovingians         .         .         .610 

§4.  The  Christianization  of  the  western  barbarians    .         .         .  613 

§  5.  Charlemagne  becomes  emperor  of  the  West    ....  619 

§  6.     The  personality  of  Charlemagne 623 

§  7.  The  French  and  the  Germans  become  distinct     .         .         .  626 

§  8.  The  Normans,  the  Saracens,  the  Hungarians,  and  the  Seljuk 

Turks 628 

§  9.  How  Constantinople  appealed  to  Rome         ....  637 

§  10.     The    Crusades 640 

§  11.     The  Crusades  a  test  of  Christianity 648 

§  12.     The  Emperor  Frederick  II 650 

§  13.  Defects  and  limitations  of  the  papacy         ....  654 

§  14.     A  list  of  leading  popes 660 

CHAPTER  XXXIII.    THE  GREAT  EMPIRE  OF  JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS 

SUCCESSORS     (The  Age  of  the  Land  Ways) 
§  1.     Asia  at  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century        .         .         .         .666 

§  2.     The  rise  and  victories  of  the  Mongols 669 

§  3.     The  travels  of  Marco  Polo 675 

§4.     The  Ottoman  Turks  and  Constantinople      .         .         .         .681 

§  5.     Why  the  Mongols  were  not  Christianized     ....  687 

§  5A.  Kublai  Khan  founds  the  Yuan  dynasty        ....  688 

§  SB.  The  Mongols  revert  to  tribalism 688 

§  5c.  The  Kipchak  empire  and  the  Tsar  of  Muscovy     .         .         .  688 

§5o.  Timurlajie       .         . 690 

§  OE.  The  Mongol  empire  of  India 693 

§  SF.  The  Mongols  and  the  Gipsies 697 

CHAPTER  XXXIV.     THE  RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION 
(Land  Ways  Give  Place  to  Sea  Ways) 

§  1.     Christianity  and   popular   education 699 

§  2.     Europe  begins  to  think  for  itself 707 

§  3.  The  Great  Plague  and  the  dawn  of  communism  .  .  .712 
§  4.  How  paper  liberated  the  human  mind  .  .  .  .  .717 
§  5.  Protestantism  of  the  princes  and  Protestantism  of  the 

peoples 719 

§  6.     The  reawakening  of  science    .......    725 


SCHEME  OF  CONTENTS  xv 

PAGE 

§  7.     The  new  growth  of  European  towns 734 

§  8.     America  comes  into  history    .         .         .         .         .         .         .     740 

§  9.     What  Machiavelli  thought  of  the  world      .         .         .         .749 

§  10.     The  republic  of   Switzerland          .         .         .         .         .         .753 

§  HA.  The  life  of  the  Emperor  Charles  V     .         .        .      .  .         .754 

§  1  IB.  Protestants  if  the  prince  wills  it 765 

§llc.  The  intellectual  under-tow .765 

CHAPTER  XXXV.     PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWER? 

§  1.  Princes  and  foreign  policy 767 

§2.  The  Dutch  republic 769 

§  3.  The  English  republic      .         .         .         .         .         .         .         .773 

§  4.  The  break-up  and  disorder  of  Germany         .         .         .         .  783 

§5.  The  splendours  of  Grand  Monarchy  in  Europe     .         .         .  786 

§  6.  The  growth  of  the  idea  of  Great  Powers     ....  793 

§  7.  The  crowned*  republic  of  Poland  and  its  fate     .         .         .  798 

§  8.  The  first  scramble  for  empire  overseas 801 

§  9.  Britain  dominates  India 805 

§  10.  Russia's  ride  to  the  Pacific 809 

§11.  What  Gibbon  thought  of  the  world  in  1780    .         .         .         .  811 

§  12.  The  social  truce  draws  to  an  end         .....  818 

CHAPTER  XXXVI.     THE  NEW  DEMOCRATIC   REPUBLICS   OF  AMERICA 

AND  FRANCE 

§  1.  Inconveniences  of  the  Great  Power  system    ....  826 

§2.  The  thirteen  colonies  before  their  revolt      .         .         .         .828 

§  3.  Civil  war  is  forced  upon  the  colonies     .         .         .         .         .  833 

§4.  The  War  of  Independence 838 

§  5.  The  constitution  of  the  United  States 840 

§  6.  Primitive  features  of  the  United  States  constitution    .         .  847 

§  7.  Revolutionary   ideas  in   France      ......  853 

§  8.  The  Revolution  of  the  year  1789 856 

§9.  The  French  "crowned  republic"  of  '89-'91     ....  859 

§  10.  The  Revolution  of  the  Jacobins 866 

§  11.  The  Jacobin  republic,  1792-94 876 

'§12.  The    Directory 881 

§  13.  The    pause    in    reconstruction    and    the    dawn    of    modern 

Socialism 883 

CHAPTER  XXXVII.     THE  CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE 

§  1.  The  Bonaparte  family  in  Corsica    ......  892 

§  2.  Bonaparte  as   a   republican  general      .....  893 

§3.  Napoleon  First  Consul,   1799-1804 898 

§4.  Napoleon  I  Emperor,  1804-14 903 

§5.  The    Hundred    Days 911 

§  6.  The  map  of  Europe  in  1815 916 


xvi  SCHEME  OF  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTEB  XXXVIII.    THE    REALITIES    AND    IMAGINATIONS    OF    THE 
NINETEENTH     CENTURY 

§  1.     The  mechanical  revolution 922 

§  2.  Relation  of  the  mechanical  to  the  industrial  revolution     .  931 

§  3.     The  fermentation  of  ideas,  1848 936 

§  4.  The  development  of  the  idea  of  Socialism     .         .         .        .938 

§  5.  Shortcomings  of  Socialism  as  a  scheme  of  human  society    .  946 

§  6.  How   Darwinism   affected   religious   and  political   ideas      .  951 

§  7.     The  idea  of  Nationalism 959 

§8.     Europe  between   1848  and  1878 963 

§9.  The   (second)   scramble  for  overseas  empires         .         .         .  977 

§  10.     The  Indian  precedent  in  Asia 987 

§11.     The  history  of  Japan 991 

§  12.  Close  of  the  period  of  overseas  expansion     .         .         .  '       .  996 

§  13.     The  British  Empire  in   1914 997 

« 

CHAPTER  XXXIX.     THE  INTERNATIONAL  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914 

§  1.  The  armed  peace  before  the  Great  War        ....  1000 

§2.  Imperial   Germany 1002 

§3.  The  spirit  of  Imperialism  in  Britain  and   Ireland     .         .  1011 

§  4.  Imperialism  in  France,  Italy,  and  the  Balkan*     .         .         .  1023 

§5.  Russia  still   a   Grand  Monarchy  in   1914      ....  1025 

§6.  The  United  States  and  the  Imperial  idea     ....  1027 

§  7.  The  immediate  causes  of  the  Great  War     ....  1031 

§  8.  A  summary  of  the  Great  War  up  to  1917     ....  1036 

§  9.  The  Great  War  from  the  Russian  collapse  to  the  armistice  1046 

§  10.  The  political,  economic,  and  social  disorganization   caused 

by   the   Great   War 1053 

§11.  President  Wilson  and  the  problems  of  Versailles    .         .         .  1061 

§  12.  Summary  of  the  first  Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations  1072 

§  13.  A  general  outline  of  the  treaties  of  1919  and  1920     .         .  1076 

§  14.  A  forecast  of  the  next  war 1081 

CHAPTER  XL.    THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY 

§  1.     The  possible  unification  of  men's  wills  in  political  matters  1086 

§  2.     How  a  Federal  World  Government  may  come  about    .         .  1090 

§  3.     Some  fundamental  characteristics  of  a  modern  world  state  1092 

§  4.     What  this  world  might  be  were  it  under  one  law  and  justice  1094 

A  CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  FROM  800  B.C.  TO  1920    .....  1102 

FIVE   TIME   CHARTS   OF   THE   WORLD'S   AFFAIRS   FROM    1000   B.C.   TO 

A.D.    1920 1122 

INDEX  .  1127 


LIST  OF  MAPS  AND  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGB 

Life  in  the  Early  Palaeozoic 9 

Time  Chart  from  earliest  life  to  present  age 11 

Life  in  the  Later  Palaeozoic  Age    .......         .16 

Australian  Lung  Fish 22 

Some  Reptiles  of  the  Later  Palaeozoic  Age .23 

Some  Mesozoic  Reptiles 27 

Later  Mesozoic  Reptiles         .........  30 

Pterodactyls  and  Archaeopteryx 31 

Hesperornis      ...........         .35 

Some  Oligocene  Mammals      .........  39 

Miocene   Mammals           ..........  41 

Time  Diagram  of  the  Glacial  Ages        .......  47 

Early  Pleistocene  Animals,  contemporary  with  Earliest  Man     .         .  48 

The   Sub-Man    Pithecanthropus      .         . 49 

Map  of  Europe  and  Western  Asia  50,000  Years  Ago    ....  56 

Neanderthal  Man    ...........  58 

Early  Stone  Implements         .........  60 

Australia  and  the  Western  Pacific  in  the  Glacial  Age        .        .        .  62 

Cro-magnon  Man 66 

Europe  and  Western  Asia  in  the  Later  Palaeolithic  Age     ...  68 

Reindeer  Age  Articles .         .69 

A  Reindeer  Age  Masterpiece         ........  72 

Reindeer  Age  Engravings  and  Carvings 73 

Neolithic  Implements 79 

Pottery  from  Lake  Dwellings .82 

Hut    Urns 86 

A  Menhir  of  the  Neolithic  Period  . 98 

Bronze  Age  Implements          .........  101 

Diagram  showing  the  Duration  of  the  Neolithic  Period     .         .         .  103 

Heads  of  Australoid  Types 109 

Bushwoman Ill 

Negro  Types 112 

Mongolian  Types 113 

Caucasian  Types 113 

Map  of  Europe,  Asia,  Africa  15:000  Years  Ago 114 

The   Swastika 115 

Relationship  of  Human  Races  (Diagrammatic  Summary)     .         .         .  116 

xvii 


xviii  LIST  OF  MAPS  AND   ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Possible  Relationship  of  Languages       .......  122 

Racial  Types  (after  Champollion ) 128 

The  Cradle  of  Western  Civilization 133 

Sumerian  Warriors  in  Phalanx 136 

Assyrian  Warrior  (temp.  Sargon  II) 139 

Time  Chart  6000  B.C.  to  A.D .        .        . .       .  142 

Egyptian   Hippopotamus   Goddess 143 

The  Cradle  of  Chinese  Civilization   (Map)     .         .         .         .*  .149 

Boats  on  Nile,  2500  B.C 157 

Egyptian  Ship  on  Red  Sea,  1250  B.C .158 

JSgean  Civilization   (Map)     .         .         . 160 

A  Votary  of  the  Snake  Goddess 161 

American  Indian  Picture-Writing          .         .         .         .         .         .         .171 

Egyptian  Gods — Set,  Anubis,  Typlion,  Bes    ......  179 

Egyptian  Gels — Thoth-lunus,  Hathor,  Chnemu 182 

An  Assyrian  King  and  his  Chief   Minister          .....  186 

Pharaoh  Chephren 190 

Pharaoh  Rameses  III  as  Osiris    (Sarcophagus  relief)          .         .         .  192 

Pharaoh  Akhnaton 194 

Egyptian  Peasants   (Pyramid  Age)        .......  199 

Brawl  among   Egyptian  Boatmen    (Pyramid  Age)       ....  201 

Egyptian  Social  Types    (from  Tombs) 203 

The  Land  of  the  Hebrews 219 

Aryan-speaking  Peoples   1000-500  B.C.    (Map) 237 

Combat  between  Menelaus  and  Hector 246 

Archaic  Horses  and  Chariots         ........  247 

Hellenic  Races  1000-800  B.C.    (Map) 253 

Greek  Sea  Fight,  550  B.C.                254 

Athenian   Warship,   400   B.C 257 

Scythian    Types 269 

Median  and  Second  Babylonian  Empires  (in  Nebuchadnezzar's  Reign)  270 

The  Empire  of  Darius             276 

Wars  of  the  Greeks  and  Persians   (Map) 280 

Athenian  Foot-soldier 282 

Persian  Body-guard    (from  Frieze  at  Susa) 286 

The  World  according  to  Herodotus 287 

Athene   of   the   Parthenon 296 

Philip   of   Macedon          .         .        .         .         .         .         .        •         .         .311 

Growth  of  Macedonia  under  Philip 313 

Macedonian  Warrior    (Bas-relief  from  Pella)      .....  316 

Campaigns  of  Alexander  the  Great 323 

Alexander  the  Great      ..........  333 

Break-up  of  Alexander's  Empire 335 

Seleucus  I                         336 


LIST  OF  MAPS  AND   ILLUSTRATIONS  xix 

PAGE 

Later  State  of  Alexander's  Empire         .......     339 

The  World  according  to  Eratosthenes,  200  B.C 344 

The  Known  World,  250  B.C ,346 

Isis   and  Horus .  .351 

Serapis .     352 

The  Rise  of  Buddhism .        .        .         .358 

Hariti .         .    360 

Chinese  Image  of  Kuan-yin    .        .        .        .        .        .        .        .         .     369 

The  Spread  of  Buddhism 370 

Indian  Gods — Vishnu,  Brahma,  Siva     .......     374 

Indian  Gods — Krishna,  Kali,  Ganesa 377 

The  Western  Mediterranean,  800-600  B.C 381 

Early  Latium 382 

Burning  the  Dead:     Etruscan  Ceremony 384 

Statuette  of  a  Gaul 385 

Roman   Power   after  the   Samnite   Wars 386 

Italy  after  275   B.C .        .  .387 

Roman  Coin  Celebrating  the  Victory  over  Pyrrhus     ....     389 

Mercury .        .     391 

Carthaginian  Coins         ..........     400 

Roman  As 404 

Rome  and  its  Alliances,  150  B.C.     ........     414 

Gladiators 421 

Roman  Power,  50  B.C 438 

Julius  Caesar    ...  ........     442 

Roman  Empire  at  Death  of  Augustus         ......     448 

Roman  Empire  in  Time  of  Trajan 153 

Asia  and  Europe:    Life  of  the  Period   (Map)      .        .        .        .         .471 

Central  Asia,  200-100  B.C .         .477 

Tracks  of  Migrating  and  Raiding  Peoples,  A.D.  1-700    .         .         .         .     483 

Eastern  Roman  Empire 488 

Constantinople  (Map  to  show  value  of  its  position)     ....     490 

Galilee 495 

Map  of  Europe,  A.D.  500         . 529 

The  Eastern  Empire  and  the  Sassanids        .         .         .         .         .         .541 

Asia  Minor,  Syria  and  Mesopotamia 543 

Ephthalite   Coin 549 

Chinese  Empire,  Tang  Dynasty .552 

Yuan  Chwang's  Route  from  China  to  India         .         .        .         .         .     582 

Arabia  and  Adjacent  Countries 569 

The  Beginnings  of  Moslem  Power         .  583 

The  Growth  of  Moslem  Power  in  25  Years 587 

The  Moslem  Empire,  A.D.  750 590 

Europe,  A.D,  500 609 


xx  LIST  OF  MAPS  AND   ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Frankisii  Dominions  in  the  Time  of  Charles  Martel     .         .         .         .611 

England,    A.D.    640 615 

England,  A.D.  878 617 

Europe  at  the  Death  of  Charlemagne 620 

France  at  the  Close  of  10th  Century    .                  629 

Empire  of  Otto  the  Great 633 

The  Coming  of  the  Seljuka    (Map)               634 

The  First  Crusade   (Map) 641 

Europe  and  Asia,  1200 G68 

Empire  of  Jengis   Khan,    1227 671 

Travels  of  Marco  Polo    .         .         . 676 

Ottoman  Empire,  1453 684 

Ottoman  Empire,  1566 686 

Empire  of  Timurlane 692 

Europe  at  the  Fall  of  Constantinople 701 

"We  have  the  payne  .  .  ."  John  Ball's  Speech 714 

Ignatius  of  Loyola 722 

European  Trade  Routes  in  the  14th  Century 738 

The  Chief  Voyages  of  Exploration  up  to  1522 745 

Mexico  and  Peru     ...........  748 

Switzerland 753 

Europe  in  the  Time  of  Charles  V 756 

Martin    Luther 757 

Francis  I 759 

Henry  VIII 760 

Charles  V .761 

Central  Europe,  1648 784 

Louis  XIV 787 

Europe   in    1714 790 

The  Partitions  of  Poland 800 

Britain,  France  and  Spain  in  America,  1750 804 

Chief  Foreign  Settlements  in  India,   17th   Century     ....  807 

India  in   1750 810 

American  Colonies,  1760 .        .         .830 

Boston  in    1775 837 

U.S.A.   in   1790 841 

The  U.S.A.,  showing  Dates  of  the  Chief  Territorial  Extensions    .         .  845 

Benjamin   Franklin         ......*...         .  849 

George    Washington 850 

The  Flight  to  Varennes  (Map) 867 

North  Eastern  Frontier  of  France,  1792      .         .        .         .   '     .         .  874 

Napoleon's  Egyptian  Campaign 897 

Napoleon  as  Emperor 904 

Tsar  Alexander  I     ...  906 


LIST  OF   MAPS  AND   ILLUSTRATIONS  xxi 

PAGE 

Napoleon's  Empire,    1810 908 

Trail    of   Napoleon 912 

Europe  after  the  Congress  of  Vienna 918 

The  Natural  Political  Map  of  Europe 921 

Tribal  gods  of  the  19th  Century 961 

Map  of  Europe,  1848-1871 966 

Italy,    1861 967 

Bismarck 970 

The  Balkans,   1878 974 

Comparative  Maps  of  Asia  under   different  projections      .         .         .  976 

The  British  Empire  in  1815 978 

Africa  in  the  Middle  of  19th  Century 985 

Africa,  1914 ' 986 

Japan  and  the  East  Coast  of  Asia        .......  995 

Overseas  Empires   of  European   Powers,    1914      .....  999 

Emperor   William   II 1006 

Ireland 1016 

The  Balkan  States,  1913 1024 

The  Original  German  Plan,  1914 1035 

The  Western  Front,    1915-18 1039 

Time  Chart  of  the  Great  War,  1914-18 1052-53 

President  Wilson 1066 

M.   Clemenceau 1067 

Mr.  Lloyd  George 1068 

Germany  after  the  Peace  Treaty,   1919 1075 

The  Turkish  Treaty,    1920 •.  1077 

The  Break-up  of  Austria-Hungary 1079 

Time  Chart  1000  B.C.-300  B.C 1122 

400  B.C.-A.D.  300 1123 

A.D.  200-A.D.  900 1124 

A.D.  800-A.D.  1500 1125 

"         "         A.D.  1220-A.».  1920                                                                     .  1126 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  EARTH  IN  SPACE  AND  TIME 

THE  earth  on  which  we  live  is  a  spinning  globe.  Vast 
though  it  seems  to  us,  it  is  a  mere  speck  of  matter  in 
the  greater  vastness  of  space. 

Space  is,  for  the  most  part,  emptiness.  At  great  intervals 
there  are  in  this  emptiness  flaring  centres  of  heat  and  light, 
the  "fixed  stars."  They  are  all  moving  about  in  space,  not- 
withstanding that  they  are  called  fixed  stars,  but  for  a  long 
time  men  did  not  realize  their  motion.  They  are  so  vast  and 
at  such  tremendous  distances  that  their  motion  is  not  per- 
ceived. Only  in  the  course  of  many  thousands  of  years  is  it 
appreciable.  These  fixed  stars  are  so  far  off  that,  for  all  their 
immensity,  they  seem  to  be,  even  when  we  look  at  them  through 
the  most  powerful  telescopes,  mere  points  of  light,  brighter 
or  less  bright.  A  few,  however,  when  we  turn  a  telescope  upon 
them,  are  seen  to  be  whirls  and  clouds  of  shining  vapour 
which  we  call  nebula.  They  are  so  far  off  that  a  movement  of 
millions  of  miles  would  be  imperceptible. 

One  star,  however,  is  so  near  to  us  that  it  is  like  a  great  ball 
of  flame.  This  one  is  the  sun.  The  sun  is  itself  in  its  nature 
like  a  fixed  star,  but  it  differs  from  the  other  fixed  stars  in 
appearance  because  it  is  beyond  comparison  nearer  than  they 
are ;  and  because  it  is  nearer  men  have  been  able  to  learn  some- 
thing of  its  nature.  Its  mean  distance  from  the  earth  is 
ninety-three  million  miles.  It  is  a  mass  of  flaming  matter,  hav- 
ing a  diameter  of  866,000  miles.  Its  bulk  is  a  million  and 
a  quarter  times  the  bulk  of  our  earth. 

These  are  difficult  figures  for  the  imagination.  If  a  bullet 
fired  -from  a  Maxim  gun  at  the  sun  kept  its  muzzle  velocity 
unimpaired,  it  would  take  seven  years  to  reach  the  sun.  And 

1 


,V  :  £&£:OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


lje  ssitt-Ss  near,  measured  by  the  scale  of  the  stars. 
If  the  earth  were  a  small  ball,  one  inch  in  diameter,  the  sun 
would  be  a  globe  of  nine  feet  diameter;  it  would  fill  a  small 
bedroom.  It  is  spinning  round  on  its  axis,  but  since  it  is  an  in- 
candescent fluid,  its  polar  regions  do  not  travel  with  the  same 
velocity  as  its  equator,  the  surface  of  which  rotates  in  about 
twenty-five  days.  The  surface  visible  to  us  consists  of  clouds 
of  incandescent  metallic  vapour.  At  what  lies  below  we  can 
only  guess.  So  hot  is  the  sun's  atmosphere  that  iron,  nickel, 
copper,  and  tin  are  present  in  it  in  a  gaseous  state.  About 
it  at  great  distances  circle  not  only  our  earth,  but  certain 
kindred  bodies  called  the  planets.  These  shine  in  the  sky 
because  they  reflect  the  light  of  the  sun;  they  are  near  enough 
for  us  to  note  their  movements  quite  easily.  Night  by  night 
their  positions  change  with  regard  to  the  fixed  stars. 

It  is  well  to  understand  how  empty  is  space.  If,  as  we  have 
said,  the  sun  were  a  ball  nine  feet  across,  our  earth  would,  in 
proportion,  be  the  size  of  a  one-inch  ball,  and  at  a  distance 
of  323  yards  from  the  sun.  The  moon  would  be  a  speck  the 
size  of  a  small  pea,  thirty  inches  from  the  earth.  Nearer 
to  the  sun  than  the  earth  would  be  two  other  very  similar  specks, 
the  planets  Mercury  and  Venus,  at  a  distance  of  125  and  250 
yards  respectively.  Beyond  the  earth  would  come  the  planets 
Mars,  Jupiter,  Saturn,  Uranus,  and  Neptune,  at  distances  of 
500,  1,680,  3,000,  6,000,  and  9,500  yards  respectively.  There 
would  also  be  a  certain  number  of  very  much  smaller  specks, 
flying  about  amongst  these  planets,  more  particularly  a  num- 
ber called  the  asteroids  circling  between  Mars  and  Jupiter, 
and  occasionally  a  little  puff  of  more  or  less  luminous  vapour 
and  dust  would  drift  into  the  system  from  the  almost  limit- 
less emptiness  beyond.  Such  a  puff  is  what  we  call  a  comet. 
All  the  rest  of  the  space  about  us  and  around  us  and  for  un- 
fathomable distances  beyond  is  cold,  lifeless,  and  void.  The 
nearest  fixed  star  to  us,  on  this  minute  scale,  be  it  remem- 
bered —  the  earth  as  a  one-inch  ball,  and  the  moon  a  little  pea  — 
would  be  over  40,000  miles  away.  Most  of  the  fixed  stars  we 
see  would  still  be  scores  and  hundreds  of  millions  of  miles  away. 
The  science  that  tells  of  these  things  and  how  men  have 
come  to  know  about  them  is  Astronomy,  and  to  books  of 
astronomy  the  reader  must  go  to  learn  more  about  the  sun  and 


THE  EARTH  IN  SPACE  AND  TIME  3 

stars.     The  science  and  description  of  the  world  on  which  we 
live  are  called  respectively  Geology  and  Geography. 

The  diameter  of  our  world  is  a  little  under  8,000  miles.  Its 
surface  is  rough,  the  more  projecting  parts  of  the  roughness 
are  mountains,  and  in  the  hollows  of  its  surface  there  is  a 
film  of  water,  the  oceans  and  seas.  This  film  of  water  is  about 
five  miles  thick  at  its  deepest  part — that  is  to  say,  the  deepest 
oceans  have  a  depth  of  five  miles.  This  is  very  little  in  com- 
parison with  the  bulk  of  the  world. 

About  this  sphere  is  a  thin  covering  of  air,  the  atmosphere. 
As  we  ascend  in  a  balloon  or  go  up  a  mountain  from  the  level 
of  the  sea-shore  the  air  is  continually  less  dense,  until  at  last  it 
becomes  so  thin  that  it  cannot  support  life.  At  a  height  of 
twenty  miles  there  is  scarcely  any  air  at  all — not  one  hun- 
dredth part  of  the  density  of  air  at  the  surface  of  the  sea.  The 
highest  point  to  which  a  bird  can  fly  is  about  four  miles  up — • 
the  condor,  it  is  said,  can  struggle  up  to  that;  but  most  small 
birds  and  insects  which  are  carried  up  by  aeroplanes  or  bal- 
loons drop  off  insensible  at  a  much  lower  level,  and  the  greatest 
height  to  which  any  mountaineer  has  ever  climbed  is  under 
five  miles.  Men  have  flown  in  aeroplanes  to  a  height  of  over 
four  miles,  and  balloons  with  men  in  them  have  reached  very 
nearly  seven  miles,  but  at  the  cost  of  considerable  physical 
suffering.  Small  experimental  balloons,  containing  not  men, 
but  recording  instruments,  have  gone  as  high  as  twenty-two 
miles. 

It  is  in  the  uppter  few  hundred  feet  of  the  crust  of  the  earth, 
in  the  sea,  and  in  the  lower  levels  of  the  air  below  four  miles 
that  life  is  found.  We  do  not  know  of  any  life  at  all  except  in 
these  films  of  air  and  water  upon  our  planet.  So  far  as  we 
know,  all  the  rest  of  space  is  as  yet  without  life.  Scientific 
men  have  discussed  the  possibility  of  life,  or  of  some  process 
of  a  similar  kind,  occurring  upon  such  kindred  bodies  as  the 
planets  Venus  and  Mars.  But  they  point  merely  to  question- 
able possibilities. 

Astronomers  and  geologists  and  those  who  study  physics 
have  been  able  to  tell  us  something'  of  the  origin  and  history 
of  the  earth.  They  consider  that,  vast  ages  ago,  the  sun  was  a 
spinning,  flaring  mass  of  matter,  not  yet  concentrated  into  a 
compast  centre  of  heat  and  light,  considerably  larger  than  it  is 
now,  and  spinning  very  much  faster,  and  that  as  it  whirled, 


4  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

a  series  of  fragments  detached  themselves  from  it,  which  be- 
came the  planets.  Our  earth  is  one  of  these  planets.  The 
flaring  mass  that  was  the  material  of  the  earth  broke  into  two 
masses  as  it  spun;  a  larger,  the  earth  itself,  and  a  smaller, 
which  is  now  the  dead,  still  moon.  Astronomers  give  us  con- 
vincing reasons  for  supposing  that  sun  and  earth  and  moon 
and  all  that  system  were  then  whirling  about  at  a  speed  much 
greater  than  the  speed  at  which  they  are  moving  to-day,  and 
that  at  first  our  earth  was  a  flaming  thing  upon  which  no 
life  could  live.  The  way  in  which  they  have  reached  these 
conclusions  is  by  a  very  beautiful  and  interesting  series  of 
observations  and  reasoning,  too  long  and  elaborate  for  us  to 
deal  with  here.  But  they  oblige  us  to  believe  that  the  sun, 
incandescent  though  it  is,  is  now  much  cooler  than  it  was, 
and  that  it  .spins  more  slowly  now  than  it  did,  and  that  it 
continues  to  cool  and  slow  down.  Arid  they  also  show  that 
the  rate  at  which  the  earth  spins  is  diminishing  and  con- 
tinues to  diminish — that  is  to  say,  that  our  day  is  growing 
longer  and  longer,  and  that  the  heat  at  the  centre  of  the  earth 
wastes  slowly.  There  was  a  time  when  the  day  was  not  a  half 
and  not  a  third  of  what  it  is  to-day;  when  a  blazing  hot  sun, 
much  greater  than  it  is  now,  must  have  moved  visibly — had 
there  been  an  eye  to  mark  it — from  its  rise  to  its  setting 
across  the  skies.  There  will  be  a  time  when  the  day  will  be 
as  long  as  a  year  is  now,  and  the  cooling  sun,  shorn  of  its  beams, 
will  hang  motionless  in  the  heavens. 

It  must  have  been  in  days  of  a  much  hotter  sun,  a  far 
swifter  day  and  night,  high  tides,  great  heat,  tremendous 
storms  and  earthquakes,  that  life,  of  which  we  are  a  part,  began 
upon  the  world.  The  moon  also  was  nearer  and  brighter  in 
those  days  and  had  a  changing  face. 


THE  KECOKD  OF  THE  ROCKS 
g  1.  The  First  Living  Things.     §  2.  How  Old  Is  the  World? 


WE  do  not  know  how  life  began  upon  the  earth.1 
Biologists,   that  is  to   say,   students  of  life,   have 
made  guesses   about  these   beginnings,   but   we  will 
not  discuss  them  here.     Let  us  only  note  that  they  all  agree 
that  life  began  where  the  tides  of  those  swift  days  spread  and 
receded  over  the  steaming  beaches  of  mud  and  sand. 

The  atmosphere  was  much  denser  then,  usually  great  cloud 
masses  obscured  the  sun,  frequent  storms  darkened  the  heavens. 
The  land  of  those  days,  upheaved  by  violent  volcanic  forces, 
was  a  barren  land,  without  vegetation,  without  soil.  The 
almost  incessant  rain-storms  swept  down  upon  it,  and  rivers 
and  torrents  carried  great  loads  of  sediment  out  to  sea,  to 
become  muds  that  hardened  later  into  slates  and  shales,  and 
sands  that  became  sandstones.  The  geologists  have  studied 
the  whole  accumulation  of  these  sediments  as  it  remains  to- 
day, from  those  of  the  earliest  ages  to  the  most  recent.  Of 
course  the  oldest  deposits  are  the  most  distorted  and  changed 
and  worn,  and  in  them  there  is  now  no  certain  trace  to  be 
found  of  life  at  all.  Probably  the  earliest  forms  of  life  were 
small  and  soft,  leaving  no  evidence  of  their  existence  behind 

1  Here  in  thJs  history  of  life  we  are  doing  our  best  to  give  only  known 
and  established  facts  in  the  broadest  way,  and  to  reduce  to  a  minimum 
the  speculative  element  that  must  necessarily  enter  into  our  account.  The 
reader  who  is  curious  upon  this  question  of  life's  beginning  will  find  a  very 
good  summary  of  current  suggestions  done  by  Professor  L.  L.  Woodruff 
in  President  Lull's  excellent  compilation  The  Evolution  of  the  Earth  (Yale 
University  "Press).  Professor  H.  F.  Osborn's  Origin  and  Evolution  of  Life 
is  also  a  very  vigorous  and  suggestive  book  upon  this  subject,  but  it  de- 
mands a  fair  knowledge  of  physics  and  chemistry.  Two  very  stimulating 
essays  for  the  student  are  A.  H.  Church's  Botanical  Memoirs.  No.  183, 
Ox.  Univ.  Press. 


6  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

them.  It  was  only  when  some  of  these  living  things  developed 
skeletons  and  shells  of  lime  and  such-like  hard  material  that 
they  left  fossil  vestiges  after  they  died,  and  so  put  themselves 
on  record  for  examination. 

The  literature  of  geology  is  very  largely  an  account  of  the 
fossils  that  are  found  in  the  rocks,  and  of  the  order  in  which 
layers  after  layers  of  rocks  lie  one  on  another.  The  very 
oldest  rocks  must  have  been  formed  before  there  was  any  sea 
at  all,  when  the  earth  was  too  hot  for  a  sea,  to  exist,  and  when 
the  water  that  is  now  sea  was  an  atmosphere  of  steam  mixed  with 
the  air.  Its  higher  levels  were  dense  with  clouds,  from  which 
a  hot  rain  fell  towards  the  rocks  below,  to  be  converted  again 
into  steam  long  before  it  reached  their  incandescence.  Be- 
low this  steam  atmosphere  the  molten  world-stuff  solidified  as 
the  first  rocks.  These  first  rocks  must  have  solidified  as  a 
cake  over  glowing  liquid  material  beneath,  much  as  cooling 
lava  does.  They  must  have  appeared  first  aa  crusts  and 
clinkers.  They  must  have  been  constantly  remelted  and  re- 
crystallized  before  any  thickness  of  them  became  permanently 
solid.  The  name  of  Fundamental  Gneiss  is  given  to  a  great 
underlying  system  of  crystalline  rocks  which  probably  formed 
age  by  age  as  this  hot  youth  of  the  world  drew  to  its  close. 
The  scenery  of  the  world  in  the  days  when  the  Fundamental 
Gneiss  was  formed  must  have  been  more  like  the  interior  of  a 
furnace  than  anything  else  to  be  found  upon  earth  at  the  pres- 
ent time. 

After  long  ages  the  steam  in  the  atmosphere  began  also  to 
condense  and  fall  right  down  to  earth,  pouring  at  last  over 
these  warm  primordial  rocks  in  rivulets  of  hot  water  and 
gathering  in  depressions  as  pools  and  lakes  and  the  first  seas. 
Into  those  seas  the  streams  that  poured  over  the  rocks  brought 
with  them  dust  and  particles  to  form  a  sediment,  and  this  sedi- 
ment accumulated  in  layers,  or  as  geologists  call  them,  strata, 
and  formed  the  first  Sedimentary  Rocks.  Those  earliest  sedi- 
mentary rocks  sank  into  depressions  and  were  covered  by 
others;  they  were  bent,  tilted  up,  and  torn  by  great  volcanic 
disturbances  and  by  tidal  strains  that  swept  through  the  rocky 
crust  of  the  earth.  We  find  these  first  sedimentary  rocks  still 
coming  to  the  surface  of  the  land  here  and  there,  either  not 
covered  by  later  strata  or  exposed  after  vast  ages  of  conceal- 
ment by  the  wearing  off  of  the  rock  that  covered  them  later— 


THE  RECORD  OF  THE  ROCKS  7 

there  are  great  surfaces  of  them  in  Canada  especially;  they 
are  cleft  and  bent,  partially  remelted,  recrystallized,  hardened 
and  compressed,  but  recognizable  for  what  they  are.  And 
they  contain  no  single  certain  trace  of  life  at  all.  They  are 
frequently  called  Azoic  (lifeless)  Rocks.  But  since  in  some 
of  these  earliest  sedimentary  rocks  a  substance  called  graphite 
(black  lead)  occurs,  and  also  red  and  black  oxide  of  iron,  and 
since  it  is  asserted  that  these  substances  need  the  activity  of 
living  things  for  their  production,  which  may  or  may  not  be 
the  case,  some  geologists  prefer  to  call  these  earliest  sedi- 
mentary rocks  Archceozoic  (primordial  life).  They  suppose 
that  the  first  life  was  soft  living  matter  that  had  no  shells  or 
skeletons  or  any  such  structure  that  could  remain  as  a  recog- 
nizable fossil  after  its  death,  and  that  its  chemical  influence 
caused  the  deposition  of  graphite  and  iron  oxide.  This  is  pure 
guessing,  of  course,  and  there  is  at  least  an  equal  probability 
that  in  the  time  of  formation  of  the  Azoic  Rocks,  life  had 
not  yet  begun. 

Overlying  or  overlapping  these  Azoic  or  Archseozoic  rocks 
come  others,  manifestly  also  very  ancient  and  worn,  which  do 
contain  traces  of  life.  These  first  remains  are  of  the  simplest 
description ;  they  are  the  vestiges  of  simple  plants  called  algse, 
or  marks  like  the  tracks  made  by  worms  in  the  sea  mud.  There 
are  also  the  skeletons  of  the  microscopic  creatures  called  Radio- 
laria.  This  second  series  of  rocks  is  called  the  Proterozoic  (be- 
ginning of  life)  series,  and  marks  a  long  age  in  the  world's 
history.  Lying  over  and  above  the  Proterozoic  rocks  is  a  third 
series,  which  is  found  to  contain  a  considerable  number  and 
variety  of  traces  of  living  things.  First  comes  the  evidence 
of  a  diversity  of  shellfish,  crabs,  and  such-like  crawling 
things,  worms,  seaweeds,  and  the  like ;  then  of  a  multitude  of 
fishes  and  of  the  beginnings  of  land  plants  and  land  creatures. 
These  rocks  are  called  the  Palaeozoic  (ancient  life)  rocks. 
They  mark  a  vast  era,  during  which  life  was  slowly  spreading, 
increasing,  and  developing  in  the  seas  of  our  world.  Through 
long  ages,  through  the  earliest  Palaeozoic  time,  it  was  no  more 
than  a  proliferation  of  such  swimming  and  creeping  things 
in  the  water.  There  were  creatures  called  trilobites ;  they  were 
crawling  things  like  big  sea  woodlice  that  were  probably  re- 
lated to  the  American  king-crab  of  to-day.  There  were  also 
sea  scorpions,  the  prefects  of  that  ear'y  world.  The  individuals 


8  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  .certain  species  of  these  were  nine  feet  long.  These  were 
the  very  highest  sorts  of  life.  There  were  abundant  different 
sorts  of  an  order  of  shellfish  called  brachiopods.  There  were 
plant  animals,  rooted  and  joined  together  like  plants,  and  loose 
weeds  that  waved  in  the  waters. 

It  was  not  a  display  of  life  to  excite  our  imaginations.  There 
was  nothing  that  ran  or  flew  or  even  swam  swiftly  or  skilfully. 
Except  for  the  size  of  some  of  the  creatures,  it  was  not  very 
different  from,  and  rather  less  various  than,  the  kind  of  lifi 
a  student  would  gather  from  any  summer-time  ditch  nowadays 
for  microscopic  examination.  Such  was  the  life  of  the  shallow 
seas  through  a  hundred  million  years  or  more  in  the  early 
Palaeozoic  period.  The  land  during  that  time  was  apparently 
absolutely  barren.  We  find  no  trace  nor  hint  of  land  life. 
Everything  that  lived  in  those  days  lived  under  water  for  most 
or  all  of  its  life. 

Between  the  formation  of  these  Lower  Palaeozoic  rocks  in 
which  the  sea  scorpion  and  trilobite  ruled,  and  our  own  time, 
there  have  intervened  almost  immeasurable  ages,  represented 
by  layers  and  masses  of  sedimentary  rocks.  There  are  first 
the  Upper  Palaeozoic  rocks,  and  above  these  the  geologists  dis- 
tinguish two  great  divisions.  Next  above  the  Palaeozoic  come 
the  Mesozoic  (middle  life)  rocks,  a  second  vast  system  of  fossil- 
bearing  rocks,  representing  perhaps  a  hundred  millions  of 
swift  years,  and  containing  a  \vonderful  array  of  fossil  re- 
mains, bones  of  giant  reptiles  and  the  like,  which  we  will  pres- 
ently describe;  and  above  these  again  are  the  Cainozoic  (recent 
life)  rocks,  a  third  great  volume  in  the  history  of  life,  an  un- 
finished volume  of  which  the  sand  and  mud  that  was  carried 
out  to  sea  yesterday  by  the  rivers  of  the  world,  to  bury  the  bones 
and  scales  and  bodies  and  tracks  that  will  become  at  last  fossils  of 
the  things  of  to-day,  constitute  the  last  written  leaf. 

These  markings  and  fossils  in  the  rocks  and  the  rocks  them- 
selves are  our  first  historical  documents.  The  history  of  life 
that  men  have  puzzled  out  and  are  still  puzzling  out  from  them 
is  called  the  Record  of  the  Rocks.  By  studying  this  record 
men  are  slowly  piecing  together  a  story  of  life's  beginnings, 
and  of  the  beginnings  of  our  kind,  of  which  our  ancestors  a 
century  or  so  ago  had  no  suspicion.  But  when  we  call  these 
rocks  and  the  fossils  a  record  and  a  history,  it  must  not  be 
supiposed  that  there  is  any  sign  of  an  orderly  keeping  of  a 


THE  RECORD  OF  THE  ROCKS 


10  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

record.  It  is  merely  that  whatever  happens  leaves  some  trace, 
if  only  we  are  intelligent  enough  to  detect  the  meaning  of  that 
trace.  Nor  are  the  rocks  of  the  world  in  orderly  layers  one 
above  the  other,  convenient  for  men  to  read.  They  are  not 
like  the  books  and  pages  of  a  library.  They  are  torn,  dis- 
rupted, interrupted,  flung  about,  defaced,  like  a  carelessly  ar- 
ranged office  after  it  has  experienced  in  succession  a  bombard- 
ment, a  hostile  military  occupation,  looting,  an  earthquake, 
riots,  and  a  fire.  And  so  it  is  that  for  countless  generations 
this  Eecord  of  the  Kocks  lay  unsuspected  beneath  the  feet 
of  men.  Fossils  were  known  to  the  Ionian  Greeks  in  the  sixth 
century  B.C.,  they  were  discussed  at  Alexandria  by  Eratos- 
thenes and  others  in  the  third  century  B.C.,  a  discussion  which 
is  summarised  in  Strabo's  Geography  (  ?20-10  B.C.).  They 
were  known  to  the  Latin  poet  Ovid,  but  he  did  not  understand 
their  nature.  He  thought  they  were  the  first  rude  efforts  of 
creative  power.  They  were  noted  by  Arabic  writers  in  the 
tenth  century.  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  who  lived  so  recently  as 
the  opening  of  the  sixteenth  century  (1452-1519),  was  one 
of  the  first  Europeans  to  grasp  the  real  significance  of  fossils, 
and  it  has  been  only  within  the  last  century  and  a  half  that 
man  has  begun  the  serious  and  sustained  deciphering  of  these 
long-neglected  early  pages  of  his  world's  history. 

§  2. 

Speculations  about  geological  time  vary  enormously.  Esti- 
mates of  the  age  of  the  oldest  rocks  by  geologists  and 
astronomers  starting  from  different  standpoints  have  varied 
between  1,600,000,000,  and  25,000,000.  That  the  period  of 
time  has  been  vast,  that  it  is  to  be  counted  by  scores  and  pos- 
sibly by  hundreds  of  millions  of  years,  is  the  utmost  that  can 
be  said"  with  certainty  in  the  matter.  It  is  quite  open  to  the 
reader  to  divide  every  number  in  the  appended  time  diagram 
by  ten  or  multiply  it  by  two;  no  one  can  gainsay  him.  Of 
the  relative  amount  of  time  as  between  one  age  and  another 
we  have,  however,  stronger  evidence;  if  the  reader  cuts  down 
the  800,000,000  we  have  given  here  to  400,000,000,  then  he 
must  reduce  the  40,000,000  of  the  Cainozoic  to  20,000,000. 
And  be  it  noted  that  whatever  the  total  sum  may  be,  most 
geologists  are  in  agreement  that  half  or  more  than  half  of  the 


THE  RECORD  OF  THE  ROCKS 


11 


whole  of  geological  time  had  passed  before  life  had  developed 
to  the  Later  Palaeozoic  level.  The  reader  reading  quickly 
through  these  opening  chapters  may  be  apt  to  think  of  them 


million. 
years  oao 


/I* 


M  — 


>  Azote  or  Arckaeozotc 

Possibly  vntnout  lx&  at  all 


"Proterozoic 

"Without'  visible  •traces  of  Zivrruj 

ur<2.  JICLC-  or  j^niztialcxJU. 
Green  Scutn.  and  tke-  I£2cc 


£a*iy  "Palaeozoic 

"Before,  the  appearance,  o^Tany 
animals  ^flg&  of  Sea  Scorpions  &  Tnlobvbzs. 


\AX&T  Palaeozoic 

of  'Fishes, 


anci  Swaznp 


-,  (jrmss, 


Land 


as  a  mere  swift  prelude  of  preparation  to  the  apparently  much 
longer  history  that  follows,  but  in  reality  that  subsequent  his- 
tory is  longer  only  because  it  is  more  detailed  and  more  in- 
teresting to  us.  It  looms  larger  in  perspective.  For  ages 
that  stagger  the  imagination  this  earth  spun  hot  and  lifeless, 


12  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  again  for  ages  of  equal  vastness  it  held  no  life  above  the 
level  of  the  animalculse  in  a  drop  of  ditch-water. 

Not  only  is  Space  from  the  point  of  view  of  life  and  human- 
ity empty,  but  Time  is  empty  also.  Life  is  like  a  little  glow, 
scarcely  kindled  yet,  in  these  void  immensities. 


m 

NATURAL  SELECTION  AND  THE  CHANGES 
OF  SPECIES 

NOW  here  it  will  be  well  to  put  plainly  certain  general 
facts  about  this  new  thing,  life,  that  was  creeping  in 
the  shallow  waters  and  intertidal  muds  of  the  early 
Palaeozoic  period,  and  which  is  perhaps  confined  to  our  planet 
alone  in  all  the  immensity  of  space. 

Life  differs  from  all  things  whatever  that  are  without  life 
in  certain  general  aspects.  There  are  the  most  wonderful  dif- 
ferences among  living  things  to-day,  but  all  living  things  past 
and  present  agree  in  possessing  a  certain  power  of  growth,  all 
living  things  take  nourishment,  all  living  things  move  about 
as  they  feed  and  grow,  though  the  movement  be  no  more 
than  the  spread  of  roots  through  the  soil,  or  of  branches  in  the 
air.  Moreover,  living  things  reproduce;  they  give  rise  to 
other  living  things,  either  by  growing  and  then  dividing  or 
by  means  of  seeds  or  spores  or  eggs  or  other  ways  of  producing 
young.  Reproduction  is  a  characteristic  of  life. 

No  living  thing  goes  on  living  for  ever.  There  seems  to 
be  a-  limit  of  growth  for  every  kind  of  living  thing.  Among 
very  small  and  simple  living  things,  such  as  that  microscopic 
blob  of  living  matter  the  Amoeba,  an  individual  may  grow  and 
then  divide  completely  into  two  new  individuals,  which  again 
may  divide  in  their  turn.  Many  other  microscopic  creatures 
live  actively  for  a  time,  grow,  and  then  become  quiet  and 
inactive,  enclose  themselves  in  an  outer  covering  and  break 
up  wholly  into  a  number  of  still  smaller  things,  spores,  which 
are  released  and  scattered  and  again  grow  into  the  likeness 
of  their  parent.  Among  more  complex  creatures  the  reproduc- 
tion is  not  usually  such  simple  division,  though  division  does 
occur  even  in  the  case  of  many  creatures  big  enough  to  be 
visible  to  the  unassisted  eye.  But  the  rule  with  almost  all 

13 


14  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

larger  beings  is  that  the  individual  grows  up  to  a  certain  limit 
of  size.  Then,  before  it  becomes  unwieldy,  its  growth  declines 
and  stops.  As  it  reaches  its  full  size  it  matures,  it  begins  to 
produce  young,  which  are  either  born  alive  or  hatched  from 
eggs.  But  all  of  its  body  does  not  produce  young.  Only  a 
special  part  does  that.  After  the  individual  has  lived  and 
produced  offspring  for  some  time,  it  ages  and  dies.  It  does 
so  by  a  sort  of  necessity.  There  is  a  practical  limit  to  its 
life  as  well  as  to  its  growth.  These  things  are  as  true  of  plants 
as  they  are  of  animals.  And  they  are  not  true  of  things  that 
do  not  live.  Non-living  things,  such  as  crystals,  grow,  but 
they  have  no  set  limits  of  growth  or  size,  they  do  not  move  of 
their  own  accord  and  there  is  no  stir  within  them.  Crystals 
once  formed  may  last  unchanged  for  millions  of  years.  There 
is  no  reproduction  for  any  non-living  thing. 

This  growth  and  dying  and  reproduction  of  living  things 
leads  to  some  very  wonderful  consequences.  The  young  which 
a  living  thing  produces  are  either  directly,  or  after  some  inter- 
mediate stages  and  changes  (such  as  the  changes  of  a  cater- 
pillar and  butterfly),  like  the  parent  living  thing.  But  they 
are  never  exactly  like  it  or  like  each  other.  There  is  always 
a  slight  difference,  which  we  speak  of  as  individuality.  A 
thousand  butterflies  this  year  may  produce  two  or  three  thou- 
sand next  year;  these  latter  will  look  to  us  almost  exactly 
like  their  predecessors,  but  each  one  will  have  just  that  slight 
difference.  It  is  hard  for  us  to  see  individuality  in  butter- 
flies because  we  do  not  observe  them  very  closely,  but  it  is  easy 
for  us  to  see  it  in  men.  All  the  men  and  women  in  the  world 
now  are  descended  from  the  men  and  women  of  A.D.  1800,  but 
not  one  of  us  now  is  exactly  the  same  as  one  of  that  vanished 
generation.  And  what  is  true  of  men  and  butterflies  is  true 
of  every  sort  of  living  thing,  of  plants  as  of  animals.  Every 
species  changes  all  its  individualities  in  each  generation.  That 
is  true  of  all  the  minute  creatures  that  swarmed  and  repro- 
duced and  died  in  the  Archseozoic  and  Proterozoic  seas,  as  it  is 
of  men  to-day. 

Every  species  of  living  things  is  continually  dying  and 
being  born  again,  as  a  multitude  of  fresh  individuals. 

Consider,  then,  what  must  happen  to  a  new-born  generation 
of  living  things  of  any  species.  Some  of  the  individuals  will 
be  stronger  or  sturdier  or  better  suited  to  succeed  in  life  in 


NATURAL  SELECTION  15 

some  way  than  the  rest,  many  individuals  will  be  weaker  or 
less  suited.  In  particular  single  cases  any  sort  of  luck  or 
accident  may  occur,  but  on  the  whole  the  better  equipped  in- 
dividuals will  live  and  grow  up  and  reproduce  themselves  and 
the  weaker  will  as  a  rule  go  under.  The  latter  will  be  less  able 
to  get  food,  to  fight  their  enemies  and  pull  through.  So  that 
in  each  generation  there  is  as  it  were  a  picking  over  of  a 
species,  a  picking  out  of  most  of  the  weak  or  unsuitable  and 
a  preference  for  the  strong  and  suitable.  This  process  is  called 
Natural  Selection  or  the  Survival  of  the  Fittest.1 

It  follows,  therefore,  from  the  fact  that  living  things  grow 
and  breed  and  die,  that  every  species,  so  long  as  the  conditions 
under  which  it  lives  remain  the  same,  becomes  more  and  more 
perfectly  fitted  to  those  conditions  in  every  generation. 

But  now  suppose  those  conditions  change,  then  the  sort  of 
individual  that  used  to  succeed  may  now  fail  to  succeed  and  a 
sort  of  individual  that  could  not  get  on  at  all  under  the  old 
conditions  may  now  find  its  opportunity.  These  species  will 
change,  therefore,  generation  by  generation;  the  old  sort  of 
individual  that  used  to  prosper  and  dominate  will  fail  and  die 
out  and  the  new  sort  of  individual  will  become  the  rule, — 
until  the  general  character  of  the  species  changes. 

Suppose,  for  example,  there  is  some  little  furry  whitey- 
brown  animal  living  in  a  bitterly  cold  land  which  is  usually 
under  snow.  Such  individuals  as  have  the  thickest,  whitest 
fur  will  be  least  hurt  by  the  cold,  less  seen  by  their  enemies, 
and  less  conspicuous  as  they  seek  their  prey.  The  fur  of  this 
species  will  thicken  and  its  whiteness  increase  with  every  gen- 
eration, until  there  is  no  advantage  in  carrying  any  more  fur. 

Imagine  now  a  change  of  climate  that  brings  warmth  into 
the  land,  sweeps  away  the  snows,  makes  white  creatures  glar- 
ingly visible  during  the  greater  part  of  the  year  and  thick 
fur  an  encumbrance.  Then  every  individual  with  a  touch  of 
brown  in  its  colouring  and  a  thinner  fur  will  find  itself  at 
an  advantage,  and  very  white  and  heavy  fur  will  be  a  handi- 
cap. There  will  be  a  weeding  out  of  the  white  in  favour  of 
the  brown  in  each  generation.  If  this  change  of  climate 
come  about  too  quickly,  it  may  of  course  exterminate  the 
species  altogether ;  but  if  it  come  about  .gradually,  the  species, 
although  it  may  have  a  hard  time,  may  yet  be  able  to  change 

1  It  might  be  called  with  more  exactness  the  Survival  of  the  Fitter, 


16 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


NATURAL  SELECTION  t1 

itself  and  adapt  itself  generation  by  generation.     This  change 
and  adaptation  is  called  the  Modification  of  Species. 

Perhaps  this  change  of  climate  does  not  occur  all  over  the 
lands  inhabited  by  the  species ;  maybe  it  occurs  only  on  one  side 
of  some  great  arm  of  the  sea  or  some  great  mountain  range 
or  such-like  divide,  and  not  on  the  other.  A  warm  ocean  cur- 
rent like  the  Gulf  Stream  may  be  deflected,  and  flow  so  as 
to  warm  one  side  of  the  barrier,  leaving  the  other  still  cold. 
Then  on  the  cold  side  this  species  will  still  be  going  on  to  its 
utmost  possible  furriness  and  whiteness  and  on  the  other  side 
it  will  be  modifying  towards  brownness  and  a  thinner  coat. 
At  the  same  time  there  will  probably  be  other  changes  going 
on;  a  difference  in  the  paws  perhaps,  because  one  half 
of  the  species  will  be  frequently  scratching  through  snow  for 
its  food,  while  the  other  will  be  scampering  over  brown  earth. 
Probably  also  the  difference  of  climate  will  mean  differences  in 
the  sort  of  food  available,  and  that  may  produce  differences 
in  the  teeth  and  the  digestive  organs.  And  there  may  be 
changes  in  the  sweat  and  oil  glands  of  the  skin  due  to  the 
changes  in  the  fur,  and  these  will  affect  the  excretory  organs 
and  all  the  internal  chemistry  of  the  body.  And  so  through 
all  the  structure  of  the  creature.  A  time  will  come  when 
the  two  separated  varieties  of  this  formerly  single  species  will 
become  so  unlike  each  other  as  to  be  recognizably  different 
species.  Such  a  splitting  up  of  a  species  in  the  course  of  gen- 
erations into  two  or  more  species  is  called  the  Differentiation 
of  Species. 

And  it  should  be  clear  to  the  reader  that  given  these  ele 
mental  facts  of  life,  given  growth  and  death  and  reproduction 
with  individual  variation  in  a  world  that  changes,  life  must 
change  in  this  way,  modification  and  differentiation  must 
occur,  old  species  must  disappear,  and  new  ones  appear.  We 
have  chosen  for  our  instance  here  a  familiar  sort  of  animal, 
but  what  is  true  of  furry  beasts  in  snow  and  ice  is  true  of 
all  life,  and  equally  true  of  the  soft  jellies  and  simple  be- 
ginnings that  flowed  and  crawled  for  hundreds  of  millions  of 
years  between  the  tidal  levels  and  in  the  shallow,  warm  waters 
of  the  Proterozoic  seas. 

The  early  life  of  the  early  world,  when  the  blazing  sun 
rose  and  set  in  only  a  quarter  of  the  time  it  now  takes,  when 
the  warm  seas  poured  in  great  tides  over  the  sandy  and 


18  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

muddy  shores  of  the  rocky  lands  and  the  air  was  full  of 
clouds  and  steam,  must  have  been  modified  and  varied  and 
species  must  have  developed  at  a  great  pace.  Life  was  prob- 
ably as  swift  and  short  as  the  days  and  years ;  the  generations, 
which  natural  selection  picked  over,  followed  one  another  in 
rapid  succession. 

Natural  selection  is  a  slower  process  with  man  than  with 
any  other  creature.  It  takes  twenty  years  or  more  before  an 
ordinary  human  being  in  western  Europe  grows  up  and  re- 
produces. In  the  case  of  most  animals  the  new  generation 
is  on  trial  in  a  year  or  less.  With  such  simple  and  lowly  be- 
ings, however,  as  first  appeared  in  the  primordial  seas,  growth 
and  reproduction  was  probably  a  matter  of  a  few  brief  hours 
or  even  of  a  few  brief  minutes.  Modification  and  differentia- 
tion of  species  must  accordingly  have  been  extremely  rapid, 
and  life  had  already  developed  a  great  variety  of  widely  con- 
trasted forms  before  it  began  to  leave  traces  in  the  rocks. 
The  Record  of  the  Rocks  does  not  begin,  therefore,  with  any 
group  of  closely  related  forms  from  which  all  subsequent  and 
existing  creatures  are  descended.  It  begins  in  the  midst  of 
the  game,  with  nearly  every  main  division  of  the  animal 
kingdom  already  represented.  Plants  are  already  plants,  and 
animals  animals.  The  curtain  rises  on  a  drama  in  the  sea 
that  has  already  begun,  and  has  been  going  on  for  some  time. 
The  brachiopods  are  discovered  already  in  their  shells,  accept- 
ing and  consuming  much  the  same  sort  of  food  that  oysters 
and  mussels  do  now;  the  great  water  scorpions  crawl  among 
the  seaweeds,  the  trilobites  roll  up  into  balls  and  unroll  and 
scuttle  away.  In  that  ancient  mud  and  among  those  early 
weeds  there  was  probably  as  rich  and  abundant  and  active 
a  life  of  infusoria  and  the  like  as  one  finds  in  a  drop  of  ditch- 
water  to-day.  In  the  ocean  waters,  too,  down  to  the  utmost 
downward  limit  to  which  light  could  filter,  then  as  now,  there 
was  an  abundance  of  minute  and  translucent,  and  in  many 
cases  phosphorescent,  beings. 

But  though  the  ocean  and  intertidal  waters  already  swarmed 
with  life,  the  land  above  the  high-tide  line  was  still,  so  far  as 
we  can  guess,  a  stony  wilderness  without  a  trace  of  life. 


IV 

THE  INVASION  OF  THE  DRY  LAND  BY  LIFE 
§  1.  Life  and  Water.     §  2.  The  Earliest  Animals. 


WHEREVER  the  shore  line  ran  there  was  life,  and 
that  life  went  on  in  and  by  and  with  water  as  its 
home,  its  medium,  and  its  fundamental  necessity. 

The  first  jelly-like  beginnings  of  life  must  have  perished 
whenever  they  got  out  of  the  water,  as  jelly-fish  dry  up  and 
perish  on  our  beaches  to-day.  Drying  up  was  the  fatal  thing 
for  life  in  those  days,  against  which  at  first  it  had  no  protec- 
tion. But  in  a  world  of  rain-pools  and  shallow  seas  and  tides, 
any  variation  that  enabled  a  living  thing  to  hold  out  and  keep 
its  moisture  during  hours  of  low  tide  or  drought  met  with 
every  encouragement  in  the  circumstances  of  the  time.  There 
must  have  been  a  constant  risk  of  stranding.  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  life  had  to  keep  rather  near  the  shore  and  beaches 
in  the  shallows  because  it  had  need  of  air  (dissolved  of  course 
in  the  water)  and  light. 

No  creature  can  breathe,  no  creature  can  digest  its  food, 
without  water.  We  talk  of  breathing  air,  but  what  all  living 
things  really  do  is  to  breathe  oxygen  dissolved  in  water.  The 
air  we  ourselves  breathe  must  first  be  dissolved  in  the  moisture 
in  our  lungs;  and  all  our  food  must  be  liquefied  before  it 
can  be  assimilated.  Water-living  creatures  which  are  always 
under  water,  wave  the  freely  exposed  gills  by  which  they 
breathe  in  that  water,  and  extract  the  air  dissolved  in  it.  But 
a  creature  that  is  to  be  exposed  for  any  time  out  of  the  water 
must  have  its  body  and  its  breathing  apparatus  protected  from 
drying  up.  Before  the  seaweeds  could  creep  up  out  of  the 
Early  Palaeozoic  seas  into  the  intertidal  line  of  the  beach,  they 
had  to  develop  a  tougher  outer  skin  to  hold  their  moisture. 

19 


20  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Before  the  ancestor  of  the  sea  scorpion  could  survive  being 
left  by  the  tide  it  had  to  develop  its  casing  and  armour.  The 
trilobites  probably  developed  their  tough  covering  and  rolled 
up  into  balls,  far  less  as  a  protection  against  each  other  and 
any  other  enemies  they  may  have  possessed,  than  as  a  precau- 
tion against  drying.  And  when  presently,  as  we  ascend  the 
Paleozoic  rocks,  the  fish  appear,  first  of  all  the  back-boned 
or  vertebrated  animals,  it  is  evident  that  a  number  of  them 
are  already  adapted  by  the  protection  of  their  gills  with  gill 
covers  and  by  a  sort  of  primitive  lung  swimming-bladder,  to 
face  the  same  risk  of  temporary  stranding. 

Now  the  weeds  and  plants  that  were  adapting  themselves 
to  intertidal  conditions  were  'also  bringing  themselves  into  a 
region  of  brighter  light,  and  light  is  very  necessary  and 
precious  to  all  plants.  Any  development  of  structure  that 
would  stiffen  them  and  hold  them  up  to  the  light,  so  that  in- 
stead of  crumping  and  flopping  when  the  waters  receded,  they 
would  stand  up  outspread,  was  a  great  advantage.  And  so 
we  find  them  developing  fibre  and  support,  and  the  beginning 
of  woody  fibre  in  them.  The  early  plants  reproduced  by  soft 
spores,  or  half-animal  "gametes,"  that  were  released  in  water, 
were  distributed  by  water  and  could  only  germinate  under 
water.  The  early  plants  were  tied,  and  most  lowly  plants  to- 
day are  tied,  by  the  conditions  of  their  life  cycle,  to  water. 
But  here  again  there  was  a  great  advantage  to  be  got  by  the 
development  of  some  protection  of  the  spores  from  drought 
that  would  enable  reproduction  to  occur  without  submergence. 
So  soon  as  a  species  could  do  that,  it  could  live  and  reproduce 
and  spread  above  the  high-water  mark,  bathed  in  light  and 
out  of  reach  of  the  beating  and  distress  of  the  waves.  The 
main  classificatory  divisions  of  the  larger  plants  mark  stages 
in  the  release  of  plant  life  from  the  necessity  of  submergence 
by  the  development  of  woody  support  and  of  a  method  of 
reproduction  that  is  more  and  more  defiant  of  drying  up.  The 
lower  plants  are  still  the  prisoner  attendants  of  water.  The 
lower  mosses  must  live  in  damp,  and  even  the  development  of 
the  spore  of  the  ferns  demands  at  certain  stages  extreme  wet- 
ness. The  highest  plants  have  carried  freedom  from  water 
so  far  that  they  can  live  and  reproduce  if  only  there  is  some 
moisture  in  the  soil  below  them.  They  have  solved  their 
problem  of  living  out  of  water  altogether. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  DRY  LAND  21 

The  essentials  of  that  problem  were  worked  out  through 
the  vast  aeons  of  the  Proterozoic  Age  and  the  early  Palaeozoic 
Age  by  nature's  method  of  experiment  and  trial.  Then  slowly, 
but  in  great  abundance,  a  variety  of  new  plants  began  to 
swarm  away  from  the  sea  and  over  the  lower  lands,  still  keep- 
ing to  swamp  and  lagoon  and  water-course  as  they  spread. 

§2 

And  after  the  plants  came  the  animal  life. 

There  is  no  sort  of  land  animal  in  the  world,  as  there  is 
no  sort  of  land  plant,  whose  structure  is  not  primarily  that  of 
a  water-inhabiting  being  which  has  been  adapted  through 
the  modification  and  differentiation  of  species  to  life  out  of  the 
water.  This  adaptation  is  attained  in  various  ways.  In  the 
case  of  the  land  scorpion  the  gill-plates  of  the  primitive  sea 
scorpion  are  sunken  into  the  body  so  as  to  make  the  lung- 
books  secure  from  rapid  evaporation.  The  gills  of  crustaceans, 
such  as  the  crabs  which  run  about  in  the  air,  are  protected 
by  the  gill-cover  extensions  of  the  back  shell  or  carapace.  The 
ancestors  of  the  insects  developed  a  system  of  air  pouches 
and  air  tubes,  the  tracheal  tubes,  which  carry  the  air  all  over 
the  body  before  it  is  dissolved.  In  the  case  of  the  vertebrated 
land  animals,  the  gills  of  the  ancestral  fish  were  first  supple- 
mented and  then  replaced  by  a  bag-like  growth  from  the  throat, 
the  primitive  lung  swimming-bladder.  To  this  day  there  sur- 
vive certain  mudfish  which  enable  us  to  understand  very  clearly 
the  method  by  which  the  vertebrated  land  animals  worked 
their  way  out  of  the  water.  These  creatures  (e.g.  the  African 
lung  fish)  are  found  in  tropical  regions  in  which  there  is  a 
rainy  full  season  and  a  dry  season,  during  which  the  rivers 
become  mere  ditches  of  baked  mud.  During  the  rainy  season 
these  fish  swim  about  and  breathe  by  gills  like  any  other,  fish. 
As  the  waters  of  the  river  evaporate,  these  fish  bury  them- 
selves in  the  mud,  their  gills  go  out  of  action,  and  the  creature 
keeps  itself  alive  until  the  waters  return  by  swallowing  air, 
which  passes  into  its  swimming-bladder.  The  Australian  lung 
fish,  when  it  is  caught  by  the  drying  up  of  the  river  in  stagnant 
pools,  and  the  water  has  become  deaerated  and  foul,  rises  to 
the  surface  and  gulps  air.  A  newt  in  a  pond  does  exactly 
the  same  thing.  These  creatures  still  remain  at  the  transition 


22 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


stage,  the  stage  at  which  the  ancestors  of  the  higher  vertebrated 
animals  were  released  from  their  restriction  to  an  under-water 
life. 

The  amphibia  (frogs,  newts,  tritons,  etc.)  still  show  in  their 
life  history  all  the  stages  in  the  process  of  this  liberation. 
They  are  still  dependent  on  water  for  their  reproduction ;  their 
eggs  must  be  laid  in  sunlit  water,  and  there  they  must  develop. 
The  young  tadpole  has  branching  external  gills  that  wave  in 

the  water;  then  a 
gill  cover  grows 
back  over  them  and 
forms  a  gill  cham- 
ber. Then  as  the 
creature's  legs  ap- 
pear and  its  tail  is 
absorbed,  it  begins 
to  use  its  lungs,  and 
its  gills  dwindle 
and  vanish.  The 
adult  frog  can  live  all  the  rest  of  its  days  in  the  air,  but 
it  can  be  drowned  if  it  is  kept  steadfastly  below  water.  When 
we  come  to  the  reptile,  however,  we  find  an  egg  which  is  pro- 
tected from  evaporation  by  a  tough  egg  case,  and  this  egg 
produces  young  which  breathe  by  lungs  from  the  very  moment 
of  hatching.  The  reptile  is  on  all  fours  with  the  seeding  plant 
in  its  freedom  from  the  necessity  to  pass  any  stage  of  its  life 
cycle  in  water. 

The  later  Palaeozoic  Rocks  of  the  northern  hemisphere  give 
us  the  materials  for  a  series  of  pictures  of  this  slow  spreading 
of  life  over  the  land.  Geographically,  all  round  the  northern 
half  of  the  world  it  was  an  age  of  lagoons  and  shallow  seas 
very  favourable  to  this  invasion.  The  new  plants,  now  that 
they  had  acquired  the  power  to  live  this  new  aerial  life,  de- 
veloped with  an  extraordinary  richness  and  variety. 

There  were  as  yet  no  true  flowering  plants,1  no  grasses  nor 
trees  that  shed  their  leaves  in  winter ;  2  the  first  "flora"  con- 
sisted of  great  tree  ferns,  gigantic  equisetums,  cycad  ferns, 
and  kindred  vegetation.  Many  of  these  plants  took  the  form 
of  huge-stemmed  trees,  of  which  great  multitudes  of  trunks 
survive  fossilized  to  this  day.  Some  of  these  trees  were  over 
1  Phanerogams.  a  Deciduous  trees. 


THE  INVASION  OF  THE  DRY  LAND 


23 


a  hundred  feet  high,  of  orders  and  classes  now  vanished  from 
the  world.  They  stood  with  their  stems  in  the  water,  in  which 
no  doubt  there  was  a  thick  tangle  of  soft  mosses  and  green 


slime  and  fungoid  growths  that  left  few  plain  vestiges  behind 
them.  The  abundant  remains  of  these  first  swamp  forests 
constitute  the  main  coal  measures  of  the  world  to-day. 

Amidst  this  luxuriant  primitive  vegetation  crawled  ,and 
glided  and  flew  the  first  insects.  They  were  rigid-winged,  four- 
winged  creatures,  often  very  big,  some  of  them  having  wings 


?4  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

measuring  a  foot  in  length.  There  were  numerous  dragon  flies 
— one  found  in  the  Belgian  coal-measures  had  a  wing  span 
of  twenty-nine  inches!  There  were  also  a  great  variety  of 
flying  cockroaches.  Scorpions  abounded,  and  a  number  of 
early  spiders,  which,  however,  had  no  spinnerets  for  web  mak- 
ing. Land  snails  appeared.  So,  too,  did  the  first-known  step 
of  our  own  ancestry  upon  land,  the  amphibia.  As  we  ascend 
the  higher  levels  of  the  Later  Pabeozoic  record,  we  find  the 
process  of  air  adaptation  has  gone  as  far  as  the  appearance  of 
true  reptiles  amidst  the  abundant  and  various  amphibia. 

The  land  life  of  the  Upper  Palaeozoic  Age  was  the  life  of 
a  green  swamp  forest  without  flowers  or  birds  or  the  noises 
cf  modern  insects.  There  were  no  big  land  beasts  at  all ;  wal- 
lowing amphibia  and  primitive  reptiles  were  the  very  highest 
creatures  that  life  had  so  far  produced.  Whatever  land  lay 
away  from  the  water  or  high  above  the  water  was  still  alto- 
gether barren  and  lifeless.  But  steadfastly,  generation  by 
generation,  life  was  creeping  away  from  the  shallow  sea-water 
of  its  beginning. 


THE  AGE  OF  EEPTILES 

1.  The  Age  of  Lowland  Life.  §  2.  Flying  Dragons. 
§  3.  The  First  Birds.  §  4.  An  age  of  Hardship  and 
Death.  §  5.  The  first  appearance  of  Fur  and  Feathers. 


WE  know  that  for  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  the 
wetness  and  warmth,  the  shallow  lagoon  conditions 
that  made  possible  the  vast  accumulations  of  vegetable 
matter  which,  compressed  and  mummified,1  are  now  coal,  pre- 
vailed over  most  of  the  world.  There  were  some  cold  intervals, 
it  is  true;  but  they  did  not  last  long  enough  to  destroy  the 
growths.  Then  that  long  age  of  luxuriant  low-grade  vegetation 
drew  to  its  end,  and  for  a  time  life  on  the  earth  seems  to  have 
undergone  a  period  of  world-wide  bleakness. 

We  cannot  discuss  fully  here  the  changes  that  have  gone 
on  and  are  going  on  in  the  climate  of  the  earth.  A  great  variety 
of  causes,  astronomical  movements,  changes  in  the  sun  and 
changes  upon  and  within  the  earth,  combine  to  produce  a  cease- 
less fluctuation  of  the1  conditions  under  which  life  exists.  As 
these  conditions  change,  life,  too,  must  change  or  perish. 

When  the  story  resumes  again  after  this  arrest  at  the  end 
of  the  Paleozoic  period  we  find  life  entering  upon  a  fresh 
phase  of  richness  and  expansion.  Vegetation  has  made  great 
advances  in  the  art  of  living  out  of  water.  While  the  Paleozoic 
plants  of  the  coal  measures  probably  grew  with  swamp  water 
flowing  over  their  roots,  the  Mesozoic  flora  from  its  very  out- 
set included  palm-like  cycads  and  low-grown  conifers  that  were 
distinctly  land  plants  growing  on  soil  above  the  water  level. 

1Dr.  Marie  Stopes,  Monograph  on  the  Constitution  of  Coal. 

25 


26  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  lower  levels  of  the  Mesozoic  land  were  no  doubt  covered 
by  great  fern  brakes  and  shrubby  bush  and  a  kind  of  jungle 
growth  of  trees.  But  there  existed  as  yet  no  grass,  no  small 
flowering  plants,  no  turf  nor  greensward.  Probably  the  Mes- 
ozoic was  not  an  age  of  very  brightly  coloured  vegetation.  It 
must  have  had  a  flora  green  in  the  wet  season  and  brown  and 
purple  in  the  dry.  There  were  no  gay  flowers,  no  bright  autumn 
tints  before  the  fall  of  the  leaf,  because  there  was  as  yet  no 
fall  of  the  leaf.  And  beyond  the  lower  levels  the  world  was 
still  barren,  still  unclothed,  still  exposed  without  any  mitigation 
to  the  wear  and  tear  of  the  wind  and  rain. 

When  one  speaks  of  conifers  in  the  Mesozoic  the  reader 
must  not  think  of  the  pines  and  firs  that  clothe  the  high  moun- 
tain slopes  of  our  time.  He  must  think  of  low-growing  ever- 
greens. The  mountains  were  still  as  bare  and  lifeless  as  ever. 
The  only  colour  effects  among  the  mountains  were  the  colour 
effects  of  naked  rock,  such  colours  as  make  the  landscape  of 
Colorado  so  marvellous  to-day. 

Amidst  this  spreading  vegetation  of  the  lower  plains  the 
reptiles  were  increasing  mightily  in  multitude  and  variety. 
They  were  now  in  many  cases  absolutely  land  animals.  There 
are  numerous  anatomical  points  of  distinction  between  a  reptile 
and  an  amphibian;  they  held  good  between  such  reptiles  and 
amphibians  as  prevailed  in  the  carboniferous  time  of  the  Upper 
Paleozoic;  but  the  fundamental  difference  between  reptiles 
and  amphibia  which  matters  in  this  history  is  that  the  am- 
phibian must  go  back  to  the  water  to  lay  its  eggs,  and  that  in 
the  early  stages  of  its  life  it  must  live  in  and  under  water. 
The  reptile,  on  the  other  hand,  has  cut  out  all  the  tadpole  stages 
from  its  life  cycle,  or,  to  be  more  exact,  its  tadpole  stages  are 
got  through  before  the  young  leave  the  egg  case.  The  reptile 
has  come  out  of  the  water  altogether.  Some  had  gone  back  to 
it  again,  just  as  the  hippopotamus  and  the  otter  among  mam- 
mals have  gone  back,  but  that  is  a  further  extension  of  the 
story  to  which  we  cannot  give  much  attention  in  this  Outline. 

In  the  Palaeozoic  period,  as  we  have  said,  life  had  not  spread 
beyond  the  swampy  river  valleys  and  the  borders  of  sea  lagoons 
and  the  like;  but  in  the  Mesozoic,  life  was  growing  ever  more 
accustomed  to  the  thinner  medium  of  the  air,  was  sweeping 
boldly  up  over  the  plains  and  towards  the  hill-sides.  It  is  well 
for  the  student  of  human  history  and  the  human  future  to 


THE  AGE  OF  REPTILES 


28  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

note  that.  If  a  disembodied  intelligence  with  no  knowledge 
of  the  future  had  come  to  earth  and  studied  life  during  the  early 
Paleozoic  age,  he  might  very  reasonably  have  concluded  that 
life  was  absolutely  confined  to  the  water,  and  that  it  could  never 
spread  over  the  land.  It  found  a  way.  In  the  Later  Palae- 
ozoic Period  that  visitant  might  have  been  equally  sure  that 
life  could  not  go  beyond  the  edge  of  a  swamp.  The  Mesozoic 
Period  would  still  have  found  him  setting  bounds  to  life  far 
more  limited  than  the  bounds  that  are  set  to-day.  And  so 
to-day,  though  we  mark  how  life  and  man  are  still  limited  to 
five  miles  of  air  and  a  depth  of  perhaps  a  mile  or  so  of  sea, 
we  must  not  conclude  from  that  present  limitation  that  life, 
through  man,  may  not  presently  spread  out  and  up  and  down 
to  a  range  of  living  as  yet  inconceivable. 

The  earliest  known  reptiles  were  beasts  with  great  bellies 
and  not  very  powerful  legs,  very  like  their  kindred  amphibia, 
wallowing  as  the  crocodile  wallows  to  this  day;  but  in  the 
Mesozoic  they  soon  began  to  stand  up  and  go  stoutly  on  all 
fours,  and  several  great  sections  of  them  began  to  balance  them- 
selves on  tail  and  hind-legs,  rather  as  the  kangaroos  do  now, 
in  order  to  release  the  fore  limbs  for  grasping  food.  The  bones 
of  one  notable  division  of  reptiles  which  retained  a  quadrupedal 
habit,  a  division  of  which  many  remains  have  been  found  in 
South  African  and  Russian  Early  Mesozoic  deposits,  display 
a  number  of  characters  which  approach  those  of  the  mammalian 
skeleton,  and  because  of  this  resemblance  to  the  mammals 
(beasts)  this  division  is  called  the  Theriomorpha  (beastlike). 
Another  division  was  the  crocodile  branch,  and  another  devel- 
oped towards  the  tortoises  and  turtles.  The  Plesiosaurs  and 
Ichthyosaurs  were  two  groups  which  have  left  no  living  repre- 
sentatives; they  were  huge  reptiles  returning  to  a  whale-like 
life  in  the  sea.  Pliosaurus,  one  of  the  largest  plesiosaurs, 
measured  thirty  feet  from  snout  to  tail  tip — of  which  half  was 
neck.  The  Mosasaurs  were  a  third  group  of  great  porpoise-like 
marine  lizards.  But  the  largest  and  most  diversified  group  of 
these  Mesozoic  reptiles  was  the  group  we  have  spoken  of  as 
kangaroo-like,  the  Dinosaurs,  many  of  which  attained  enor- 
mous proportions.  In  bigness  these  greater  Dinosaurs  have 
never  been  exceeded,  although  the  sea  can  still  show  in  the 
whales  creatures  as  great.  Some  of  these,  and  the  largest 
among  them,  were  herbivorous  animals;  they  browsed  on  the 


THE  AGE  OF  REPTILES  29 

rushy  vegetation  and  among  the  ferns  and  bushes,  or  they  stood 
up  and  grasped  trees  with  their  fore-legs  while  they  devoured 
the  foliage.  Among  the  browsers,  for  example,  were  the 
Diplodocus  camegii,  which  measured  eighty-four  feet  in  length, 
and  the  Atlantosaurus.  The  Giganiosawrus,  disinterred  by  a 
German  expedition  in  1912  from  rocks  in  East  Africa,  was 
still  more  colossal.  It  measured  well  over  a  hundred  feet! 
These  greater  monsters  had  legs,  and  they  are  usually  figured 
as  standing  up  on  them ;  but  it  is  very  doubtful  if  they  could 
have  supported  their  weight  in  this  way,  out  of  water.  Buoyed 
up  by  water  or  mud,  they  may  have  got  along.  Another  note- 
worthy type  we  have  figured  is  the  Triceratops.  There  were 
also  a  number  of  great  flesh-eaters  who  preyed  upon  these 
herbivores.  Of  these,  Tyrannosaurus  seems  almost  the  last 
word  in  "frightfulness"  among  living  things.  Some  species  of 
this  genus  measured  forty  feet  from  snout  to  tail.  Appar- 
ently it  carried  this  vast  body  kangaroo  fashion  on  its  tail  and 
hindlegs.  Probably  it  reared  itself  up.  Some  authorities 
even  suppose  that  it  leapt  through  the  air.  If  so,  it  pos- 
sessed muscles  of  a  quite  miraculous  quality.  A  leaping 
elephant  would  be  a  far  less  astounding  idea.  Much  more 
probably  it  waded  half  submerged  in  pursuit  of  the  herbivorous 
river  saurians. 

§  2 

One  special  development  of  the  dinosaurian  type  of  repitile 
was  a  light,  hopping,  climbing  group  of  creatures  which  de- 
veloped a  bat-like  web  between  the  fifth  finger  and  the  side 
of  the  body,  which  was  used  in  gliding  from  tree  to  tree  after 
the  fashion  of  the  flying  squirrels.  These  bat-lizards  were  the 
Pterodactyls.  They  are  often  described  as  flying  reptiles,  and 
pictures  are  drawn  of  Mesozoic  scenery  in  which  they  are 
seen  soaring  and  swooping  about.  But  their  breastbone  has 
no  keel  such  as  the  breastbone  of  a  bird  has  for  the  attachment 
of  muscles  strong  enough  for  long  sustained  flying.  They 
must  have  flitted  about  like  bats.  They  must  have  had  a 
grotesque  resemblance  to  heraldic  dragons,  and  they  played  the 
part  of  bat-like  birds  in  the  Mesozoic  jungles.  But  bird-like 
though  they  were,  they  were  not  birds  nor  the  ancestors  of 
birds.  The  structure  of  their  wings  was  altogether  different 
from  that  of  birds.  The  structure  of  their  wings  was  that  of 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


a  hand  with  one  long  finger  and  a  web;  the  wing  of  a  bird 
is  like  an  arm  with  feathers  projecting  from  its  hind  edge. 
And  these  Pterodactyls  had  no  feathers. 


. 

Six -foot?  man. 


§  3 

Far  less  prevalent  at  this  time  were  certain  other  truly  bird- 
like  creatures,    of   which   the   earlier  sorts   also   hopped    and 


THE  AGE  OF  REPTILES 


SI 


clambered  and  the  later  sorts  skimmed  and  flew.  These  were 
at  first — by  all  the  standards  of  classification — Reptiles.  They 
developed  into  true  birds  as  they  developed  wings  and  as  their 


Wing  of  Pterodactyl 
tihowizur  elongated  fifth,  -finger 


reptilian  scales  became  long  and  complicated,  fronds  rather 
than  scales,  and  so  at  last,  by  much  spreading  and  splitting, 
feathers.  Feathers  are  the  distinctive  covering  of  birds,  and 
they  give  a  power  of  resisting  heat  and  cold  far  greater  than 


32  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

that  of  any  other  integumentary  covering  except  perhaps  the 
thickest  fur.  At  a  very  early  stage  this  novel  covering  of 
feathers,  this  new  heat-proof  contrivance  that  life  had  chanced 
upon,  enabled  many  species  of  birds  to  invade  a  province  for 
which  the  pterodactyl  was  ill  equipped.  They  took  to  sea  fish- 
ing— if  indeed  they  did  not  begin  with  it — and  spread  to  the 
north  and  south  polewards  beyond  the  temperature  limits  set 
to  the  true  reptiles.  The  earliest  birds  seem  to  have  been  car- 
nivorous divers  and  water  birds.  To  this  day  some  of  the 
most  primitive  bird  forms  are  found  among  the  sea  birds  of 
the  Arctic  and  Antarctic  seas,  and  it  is  among  these  sea  biids 
that  zoologists  still  find  lingering  traces  of  teeth?  which  have 
otherwise  vanished  completely  from  the  beak  of  the  bird. 

The  earliest  known  bird  (the  Archoeopteryx)  had  no  beak; 
it  had  a  row  of  teeth  in  a  jaw  like  a  reptile's.  It  had  three 
claws  at  the  forward  corner  of  its  wing.  Its  tail,  too,  was  pe- 
culiar. All  modern  birds  liavt  their  tail  feathers  set  in  a 
short  compact  bony  rump;  the  Arcliceopieryx  had  a  long  bony 
tail  with  a  row  of  feathers  along  each  side. 

§4 

This  great  period  of  Mesozoic  life,  this  second  volume  of 
the  book  of  life,  is  indeed  an  amazing  story  of  reptilian  life 
proliferating  and  developing.  But  the  most  striking  thing  of 
all  the  story  remains  to  be  told.  Right  up  to  the  latest  Meso- 
zoic Rocks  we  find  all  these  reptilian  orders  we  have  enumerated 
still  flourishing  unchallenged.  There  is  no  hint  of  an  enemy 
or  competitor  to  them  in  the  relics  we  find  of  their  world. 
Then  the  record  is  broken.  We  do  not  know  how  long  a  time 
the  break  represents;  many  pages  may  be  missing  here,  pages 
that  may  represent  some  great  cataclysmal  climatic  change. 
When  next  we  find  abundant  traces  of  the  land  plants  and  the 
land  animals  of  the  earth,  this  great  multitude  of  reptile  species 
had  gone.  For  the  most  part  they  have  left  no  descendants. 
They  have  been  "wiped  out."  The  pterodactyls  have  gone  ab- 
solutely, of  the  plesiosaurs  and  ichthyosaurs  none  is  alive;  the 
mosasaurs  have  gone;  of  the  lizards  a  few  remain,  the  moni- 
tors of  the  Dutch  East  Indies  are  the  largest ;  all  the  multitude 
and  diversity  of  the  dinosaurs  have  vanished.  Only  the  croco- 
diles and  the  turtles  and  tortoises  carry  on  in  any  quantity  into 


THE  AGE  OF  REPTILES  S3 

Cainozoic  times.  The  place  of  all  these  types  in  the  picture  that 
the  Cainozoic  fossils  presently  unfold  to  us  is  taken  by  other 
animals  not  closely  related  to  the  Mesozoic  reptiles  and  cer- 
tainly not  descended  from  any  of  their  ruling  types.  A  new 
kind  of  life  is  in  possession  of  the  world. 

This  apparently  abrupt  ending  up  of  the  reptiles  is,  beyond 
all  question,  the  most  striking  revolution  in  the  whole  history 
of  the  earth  before  the  coming  of  mankind.  It  is  probably 
connected  with  the  close  of  a  vast  period  of  equable  warm 
conditions  and  the  onset  of  a  new  austerer  age,  in  which  the 
winters  were  bitterer  and  the  summers  brief  but  hot.  The 
Mesozoic  life,  animal  and  vegetable  alike,  was  adapted  to  warm 
conditions  and  capable  of  little  resistance  to  cold.  The  new 
life,  on  the  other  hand,  was  before  all  things  capable 'of  re- 
sisting great  changes  of  temperature. 

Whatever  it  was  that  led  to  the  extinction  of  the  Mesozoic 
reptiles,  it  was  probably  some  very  far-reaching  change  indeed, 
for  the  life  of  the  seas  did  at  the  same  time  undergo  a  similar 
catastrophic  alteration.  The  crescendo  and  ending  of  the 
Reptiles  on  land  was  paralleled  by  the  crescendo  and  ending 
of  the  Ammonites,  a  division  of  creatures  like  squids  with  coiled 
shells  which  swarmed  in  those  ancient  seas.  All  though  the 
rocky  record  of  this  Mesozoic  period  there  is  a  vast  multitude 
and  variety  of  these  coiled  shells ;  there  are  hundreds  of  species, 
and  towards  the  end  of  the  Mesozoic  period  they  increased  in 
diversity  and  produced  exaggerated  types.  When  the  record 
resumes  these,  too,  have  gone.  So  far  as  the  reptiles  are  con- 
cerned, people  may  perhaps  be  inclined  to  argue  that  they  were 
exterminated  because  the  Mammals  that  replaced  them,  com- 
peted with  them,  and  were  more  fitted  to  survive;  but  nothing 
of  the  sort  can  be  true  of  the  Ammonites,  because  to  this  day 
their  place  has  not  been  taken.  Simply  they  are  gone.  Un- 
known conditions  made  it  possible  for  them  to  live  in  the 
Mesozoic  seas,  and  then  some  unknown  change  made  life  im- 
possible for  them.  !No  genus  of  Ammonite  survives  to-day 
of  all  that  vast  variety,  but  there  still  exists  one  isolated  genus 
very  closely  related  to  the  Ammonites,  the  Pearly  Nautilus.  It 
is  found,  it  is  to  be  noted,  in  the  warm  waters  of  the  Indian 
and  Pacific  oceans. 

And  as  for  the  Mammals  competing  with  and  ousting  the 
less  fit  reptiles,  a  struggle  of  which  people  talk  at  times,  there 


34,  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

is  not  a  scrap  of  evidence  of  any  such  direct  competition.  To 
judge  by  the  Record  of  the  Rocks  as  we  know  it  to-day,  there 
is  much  more  reason  for  believing  that  first  the  reptiles  in 
some  inexplicable  way  perished,  and  then  that  later  on,  after  a 
very  hard  time  for  all  life  upon  the  earth,  the  mammals,  as 
conditions  became  more  genial  again,  developed  and  spread 
tc  fill  the  vacant  world. 

§  5 

Were  there  mammals  in  the  Mesozoic  period? 

This  is  a  question  not  yet  to  be  answered  precisely.  Pa- 
tiently and  steadily  the  geologists  gather  fresh  evidence  and 
reason  out  completer  conclusions.  At  any  time  some  new 
deposit  may  reveal  fossils  that  will  illuminate  this  question. 
Certainly  either  mammals,  or  the  ancestors  of  the  mammals, 
must  have  lived  throughout  the  Mesozoic  period.  In  the  very 
opening  chapter  of  the  Mesozoic  volume  of  the  Record  there 
were  those  Theriomorphous  Reptiles  to  which  we  have  already 
alluded,  and  in  the  later  Mesozoic  a  number  of  small  jaw- 
bones are  found,  entirely  mammalian  in  character.  But  there 
is  not  a  scrap,  not  a  bone,  to  suggest  that  there  lived  any 
Mesozoic  Mammal  which  could  look  a  dinosaur  in  the  face. 
The  Mesozoic  mammals  or  mammal-like  reptiles — for  we  do  not 
know  clearly  which  they  were — seem  to  have  been  all  obscure 
little  beasts  of  the  size  of  mice  and  rats,  more  like  a  down- 
trodden order  of  reptiles  than  a  distinct  class;  probably  they 
still  laid  eggs  and  were  developing  only  slowly  their  distinctive 
covering  of  hair.  They  lived  away  from  big  waters,  and  per- 
haps in  the  desolate  uplands,  as  marmots  do  now ;  probably  they 
lived  there  beyond  the  pursuit  of  the  carnivorous  dinosaurs. 
Some  perhaps  went  on  all  fours,  some  chiefly  went  on  their 
hind-legs  and  clambered  with  their  fore  limbs.  They  became 
fossils  only  so  occasionally  that  chance  has  not  yet  revealed 
a  single  complete  skeleton  in  the  whole  vast  record  of  the 
Mesozoic  rocks  by  which  to  check  these  guesses. 

These  little  Theriomorphs,  these  ancestral  mammals,  de- 
veloped hair.  Hairs,  like  feathers,  are  long  and  elaborately 
specialized  scales.  Hair  is  perhaps  the  clue  to  the  salvation 
of  the  early  mammals.  Leading  lives  upon  the  margin  of  ex- 
isterice,  away  from  the  marshes  and  the  warmth,  they  developed 


THE  AGE  OF  REPTILES 


35 


an  outer  covering  only  second  in  its  warmth-holding  (or  heat- 
resisting)  powers  to  the  down  and  feathers  of  the  Arctic  sea- 
birds.  And  so  they  held  out  through  the  age  of  hardship  be- 


tween  the  Mesozoic  and  Cainozoic  ages,  to  which  most  of  the 
true  reptiles  succumbed. 

All  the  main  characteristics  of  this  flora  and  sea  and  land 
fauna  that  came  to  an  end  with  the  end  of  the  Mesozoic  age 
were  such  as  were  adapted  to  an  equable  climate  and  to  shallow 


86  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  swampy  regions.  But  in  the  case  of  their  Cainozoic  suc- 
cessors, both  hair  and  feathers  gave  a  power  of  resistance  to 
variable  temperatures  such  as  no  reptile  possessed,  and  with  it 
they  gave  a  range  far  greater  than  any  animal  had  hitherto 
attained. 

The  range  of  life  of  the  Lower  Palaeozoic  Period  was  con- 
fined to  warm  water. 

The  range  of  life  of  the  Upper  Paleozoic  Period  was  con- 
fined to  warm  water  or  to  warm  swamps  and  wet  ground. 

The  range  of  life  of  the  Mesozoic  Period  as  we  know  it 
was  confined  to  water  and  fairly  low-lying  valley  regions  under 
equable  conditions. 

Meanwhile  in  each  of  these  periods  there  were  types  in- 
voluntarily extending  the  range  of  life  beyond  the  limits  pre- 
vailing in  that  period;  and  when  ages  of  extreme  conditions 
prevailed,  it  was  these  marginal  types  which  survived  to  in- 
herit the  depopulated  world. 

That  perhaps  is  the  most  general  statement  we  can  make 
about  the  story  of  the  geological  record ;  it  is  a  story  of  widen- 
ing range.  Classes,  genera,  and  species  of  animals  appear  and 
disappear,  but  the  range  widens.  It  widens  always.  Life 
has  never  had  so  great  a  range  as  it  has  to-day.  Life  to-day, 
in  the  form  of  man,  goes  higher  in  the  air  than  it  has  ever 
done  before;  man's  geographical  range  is  from  pole  to  pole, 
he  goes  under  the  water  in  submarines,  he  sounds  the  cold, 
lifeless  darkness  of  the  deepest  seas,  he  burrows  into  virgin 
levels  of  the  rocks,  and  in  thought  and  knowledge  he  pierces 
to  the  centre  of  the  earth  and  reaches  out  to  the  uttermost  star. 
Yet  in  all  the  relics  of  the  Mesozoic  time  we  find  no  certain 
memorials  of  his  ancestry.  His  ancestors,  like  the  ancestors 
of  all  the  kindred  mammals,  must  have  been  creatures  so  rare, 
so  obscure,  and  so  remote  that  they  have  left  scarcely  a  trace 
amidst  the  abundant  vestiges  of  the  monsters  that  wallowed 
rejoicing  in  the  steamy  air  and  lush  vegetation  of  the  Meso- 
zoic lagoons,  or  crawled  or  hopped  or  fluttered  over  the  great 
river  plains  of  that  time. 


VI 

THE  AGE  OF  MAMMALS 

§  1.  A  New  Age  of  Life.  §  2.  Tradition  Comes  into  the 
World.  §  3.  An  Age  of  Brain  Growth.  §  4.  The  World 
Grows  Hard  Again. 


THE  third  great  division  of  the  geological  record,  the 
Cainozoic,  opens  with  a  world  already  physically  very 
like  the  world  we  live  in  to-day.  Probably  the  day 
was  at  first  still  perceptibly  shorter,  but  the  scenery  had  be- 
come very  modern  in  its  character.  Climate  was,  of  course, 
undergoing,  age  by  age,  its  incessant  and  irregular  variations ; 
lands  that  are  temperate  to-day  have  passed,  since  the  Cainozoic 
age  began,  through  phases  of  great  warmth,  intense  cold,  and 
extreme  dryness;  but  the  landscape,  if  it  altered,  altered  to 
nothing  that  cannot  still  be  paralleled  to-day  in  some  part  of 
the  world  or  other.  In  the  place  of  the  cycads,  sequoias,  and 
strange  conifers  of  the  Mesozoic,  the  plant  names  that  now 
appear  in  the  lists  of  fossils  include  birch,  beech,  holly,  tulip 
trees,  ivy,  sweet  gum,  bread-fruit  trees.  Flowers  had  developed 
concurrently  with  bees  and  butterflies.  Palms  were  now  very 
important.  Such  plants  had  already  been  in  evidence  in  the 
later  levels  of  the  (American  Cretaceous)  Mesozoic,  but  now 
they  dominated  the  scene  altogether.  Grass  was  becoming  a 
great  fact  in  the  world.  Certain  grasses,  too,  had  appeared  in 
the  later  Mesozoic,  but  only  with  the  Cainozoic  period  came 
grass  plains  and  turf  spreading  wide  over  a  world  that  was 
once  barren  stone. 

The  period  opened  with  a  long  phase  of  considerable  warmth ; 
then  the  world  cooled.  And  in  the  opening  of  this  third  part 
of  the  record,  this  Cainozoic  period,  a  gigantic  crumpling  of 

37 


$8  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  earth's  crust  and  an  upheaval  of  mountain  ranges  was  in 
progress.  The  Alps,  the  Andes,  the  Himalayas,  are  all  Cain- 
ozoic  mountain  ranges;  the  background  of  an  early  Cainozoic 
scene  to  be  typical  should  display  an  active  volcano  or  so.  It 
must  have  been  an  age  of  great  earthquakes. 

Geologists  make  certain  main  divisions  of  the  Cainozoic 
period,  and  it  will  be  convenient  to  name  them  here  and  to 
indicate  their  climate.  First  comes  the  Eocene  (dawn  of  re- 
cent life),  an  age  of  exceptional  warmth  in  the  world's  his- 
tory, subdivided  into  an  older  and  newer  Eocene;  then  the 
Oligocene  (but  little  of  recent  life),  in  which  the  climate  was 
still  equable.  The  Miocene  (with  living  species  still  in  a 
minority)  was  the  great  age  of  mountain  building,  and  the 
general  temperature  was  falling.  In  the  Pliocene  (more  living 
than  extinct  species),  climate  was  very  much  as  its  present 
phase;  but  with  the  Pleistocene  (a  great  majority  of  living 
species)  there  set  in  a  long  period  of  extreme  conditions — it 
was  the  Great  Ice  Age.  Glaciers  spread  from  the  poles  towards 
the  equator,  until  England  to  the  Thames  was  covered  in  ice. 
Thereafter  to  our  own  time  came  a  period  of  partial  recovery. 
We  may  be  moving  now  towards  a  warmer  phase.  Half  a  mil- 
lion years  hence  this  may  be  a  much  sunnier  and  pleasanter 
world  to  live  in  than  it  is  to-day. 

§2 

In  the  forests  and  following  the  grass  over  the  Eocene  plains 
there  appeared  for  the  first  time  a  variety  and  abundance  of 
mammals.  Before  we  proceed  to  any  description  of  these  mam- 
mals, it  may  be  well  to  note  in  general  terms  what  a  mammal  is. 

From  the  appearance  of  the  vertebrated  animals  in  the  Lower 
Palaeozoic  Age,  when  the  fish  first  swarmed  out  into  the  sea, 
there  has  been  a  steady  progressive  development  of  vertebrated 
creatures.  A  fish  is  a  vertebrated  animal  that  breathes  by 
gills  and  can  live  only  in  water.  An  amphibian  may  be  de- 
scribed as  a  fish  that  has  added  to  its  gill-breathing  the  power 
of  breathing  air  with  its  swimming-bladder  in  adult  life,  and 
that  has  also  developed  limbs  with  five  toes  to  them  in  place 
of  the  fins  of  a  fish.  A  tadpole  is  for  a  time  a  fish,  it  becomes 
a  land  creature  as  it  develops.  A  reptile  is  a  further  stage  in 
this  detachment  from  water;  it  is  an  amphibian  that  is  no 


THE  AGE  OF  MAMMALS  39 

longer  amphibious;  it  passes  through  its  tadpole  stage — its  fish 
stage  that  is — in  an  egg.  From  the  beginning  it  must  breathe 
in  air;  it  can  never  breathe  under  water  as  a  tadpole  can  do. 


Stoc-joot  mazi 

drawn  to 
S3axi&  scale 


Now  a  modern  mammal  is  really  a  sort  of  reptile  that  has  de- 
veloped a  peculiarly  effective  protective  covering,  hair;  and 
that  also  retains  its  eggs  in  the  body  until  they  hatch  so  that 


40  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

it  brings  forth  living  young  (viviparous),  and  even  after 
birth  it  cares  for  them  and  feeds  them  by  its  mammae  for  a 
longer  or  shorter  period.  Some  reptiles,  some  vipers  for  ex- 
ample, are  viviparous,  but  none  stand  by  their  young  as  the  real 
mammals  do.  Both  the  birds  and  the  mammals,  which  escaped 
whatever  destructive  forces  made  an  end  to  the  Mesozoic  rep- 
tiles, and  which  survived  to  dominate  the  Cainozoic  world, 
have  these  two  things  in  common ;  first,  a  far  more  effective 
protection  against  changes  of  temperature  than  any  other 
variation  of  the  reptile  type  ever  produced,  and,  secondly,  a 
peculiar  care  for  their  eggs,  the  bird  by  incubation  and  the 
mammal  by  retention,  and  a  disposition  to  look  after  the  young 
for  a  certain  period  after  hatching  or  birth.  There  is  by  com- 
parison the  greatest  carelessness  about  offspring  in  the  reptile. 

Hair  was  evidently  the  earliest  distinction  of  the  mammals 
from  the  rest  of  the  reptiles.  It  is  doubtful  if  the  particular 
Theriodont  reptiles  who  were  developing  hair  in  the  early 
Mesozoic  were  viviparous.  Two  mammals  survive  to  this  day 
which  not  only  do  not  suckle  their  young,1  but  which  lay  eggs, 
the  OrnitJiorhynchus  and  the  Echidna,  and  in  the  Eocene  there 
were  a  number  of  allied  forms.  They  are  the  survivors  of 
what  was  probably  a  much  larger  number  and  variety  of  small 
egg-laying  hairy  creatures,  hairy  reptiles,  hoppers,  climbers, 
and  runners,  which  included  the  Mesozoic  ancestors  of  all  ex- 
isting mammals  up  to  and  including  man. 

Now  we  may  put  the  essential  facts  about  mammalian  re- 
production in  another  way.  The  mammal  is  a  family  animal. 
And  the  family  habit  involved  the  possibility  of  a  new  sort  of 
continuity  of  experience  in  the  world.  Compare  the  com- 
pletely closed-in  life  of  an  individual  lizard  with  the  life  of 
even  a  quite  lowly  mammal  of  almost  any  kind.  The  former 
has  no  mental  continuity  with  anything  beyond  itself;  it  is  a 
little  self-contained  globe  of  experience  that  serves  its  purpose 
and  ends;  but  the  latter  "picks  up"  from  its  mother,  and 
"hands  on"  to  its  offspring.  All  the  mammals,  except  for  the 
two  genera  we  have  named,  had  already  before  the  lower  Eocene 
age  arrived  at  this  stage  of  pre-adult  dependence  and  imitation. 

irrhey  secrete  a  nutritive  fluid  on  which  the  young  feeds  from  glands 
scattered  over  the  skin.  But  the  glands  are  not  gathered  together  into 
mammae  with  nipples  for  suckling.  The  stuff  oozes  out,  the  mother  lies 
on  her  back,  and  the  young  browse  upon  her  moist  skin. 


THE  AGE  OF  MAMMALS 


41 


They  were  all  more  or  less  imitative  in  youth  and  capable  of  a 
certain  modicum  of  education;  they  all,  as  a  part  of  their  de- 


Six- foot*  man 

"bo 
same  scale, 


(lotxa- j 


velopment,  received  a  certain  amount  of  care  and  example  and 
even  direction  from  their  mother.  This  is  as  true  of  the  hyaena 
and  rhinoceros  as  it  is  of  the  dog  or  man;  the  difference  of 


42  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

educability  is  enormous,  but  the  fact  of  protection  and  educa- 
bility in  the  young  stage  is  undeniable.  So  far  as  the  verte- 
brated  animals  go,  these  new  mammals,  with  their  viviparous, 
young-protecting  disposition,  and  these  new  birds,  with  their 
incubating,  young-protecting  disposition,  introduce  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  Cainozoic  period  a  fresh  thing  into  the  expanding 
story  of  life,  namely,  social  association,  the  addition  to  hard 
and  inflexible  instinct  of  tradition,  and  the  nervous  organisa- 
tion necessary  to  receive  tradition. 

All  the  innovations  that  come  into  the  history  of  life  begin 
very  humbly.  The  supply  of  blood-vessels  in  the  swimming- 
bladder  of  the  mudfish  in  the  lower  Palaeozoic  torrent-river, 
that  enabled  it  to  pull  through  a  season  of  drought,  would 
have  seemed  at  that  time  to  that  bodiless  visitant  to  our  planet 
we  have  already  imagined,  a  very  unimportant  side  fact  in 
that  ancient  world  of  great  sharks  and  plated  fishes,  sea 
scorpions,  and  coral  reefs  and  seaweed;  but  it  opened  the  nar- 
row way  by  which  the  land  vertebrates  arose  to  predominance. 
The  mudfish  would  have  seemed  then  a  poor  refugee  from  the 
too  crowded  and  aggressive  life  of  the  sea.  But  once  lungs 
were  launched  into  the  world,  every  line  of  descent  that  had 
lungs  went  on  improving  them.  So,  too,  in  the  upper  Palaeozoic, 
the  fact  that  some  of  the  Amphibia  were  losing  their  "amphibi- 
ousness"  by  a  retardation  of  hatching  of  their  eggs,  would  have 
appeared  a  mere  response  to  the  distressful  dangers  that  threat- 
ened the  young  tadpole.  Yet  that  prepared  the  conquest  of 
the  dry  land  for  the  triumphant  multitude  of  the  Mesozoic 
reptiles.  It  opened  a  new  direction  towards  a  free  and  vigor- 
ous land-life  along  which  all  the  reptilian  animals  moved.  And 
this  viviparous,  young-tending  training  that  the  ancestral  mam- 
malia underwent  during  that  age  of  inferiority  and  hardship 
for  them,  set  going  in  the  world  a  new  continuity  of  percep- 
tion, of  which  even  man  to-day  only  begins  to  appreciate  the 
significance. 

§  3 

A  number  of  types  of  mammal  already  appear  in  the  Eocene. 
Some  are  differentiating  in  one  direction,  and  some  in  another, 
some  are  perfecting  themselves  as  herbivorous  quadrupeds, 
some  leap  and  climb  among  the  trees,  some  turn  back  to  the 
water  to  swim,  but  all  types  are  unconsciously  exploiting  and 


THE  AGE  OF  MAMMALS  43 

developing  the  brain  which  is  the  instrument  of  this  new  power 
of  acquisition  and  educability.  In  the  Eocene  rocks  are  found 
small  early  predecessors  of  the  horse  (Eohippus),  tiny  camels, 
pigs,  early  tapirs,  early  hedgehogs,  monkeys  and  lemurs, 
opossums  and  carnivores.  Now,  all  these  were  more  or  less 
ancestral  to  living  forms,  and  all  have  brains  relatively  much 
smaller  than  their  living  representatives.  There  is,  for  in- 
stance, an  early  rhinoceros-like  beast,  Titanotherium,  with  a 
brain  not  one  tenth  the  size  of  that  of  the  existing  rhinoceros. 
The  latter  is  by  no  means  a  perfect  type  of  the  attentive  and 
submissive  student,  but  even  so  it  is  ten  times  more  observant 
and  teachable  than  its  predecessor.  This  sort  of  thing  is  true 
of  all  the  orders  and  families  that  survive  until  to-day.  All 
the  Cainozoic  mammals  were  doing  this  one  thing  in  common 
under  the  urgency  of  a  common  necessity;  they  were  all  grow- 
ing brain.  It  was  a  parallel  advance.  In  the  same  order  or 
family  to-day,  the  brain  is  usually  from  six  to  ten  times  what 
it  was  in  the  Eocene  ancestor. 

The  Eocene  period  displayed  a  series  of  herbivorous  brutes 
of  which  no  representative  survives  to-day.  Such  were  the 
Uintatheres  and  the  Titanotheres.  They  were  ousted  by  more 
specialized  graminivorous  forms  as  grass  spread  over  the  world. 
In  pursuit  of  such  beasts  came  great  swarms  of  primitive  dogs 
some  as  big  as  bears,  and  the  first  cats,  one  in  particular  (Smi~ 
lodon),  a  small  fierce-looking  creature  with  big  knife-like 
canines,  the  first  sabre-toothed  tiger,  which  was  to  develop  into 
greater  things.  American  deposits  in  the  Miocene  display  a 
great  variety  of  camels,  giraffe  camels  with  long  necks,  gazelle 
camels,  llamas,  and  true  camels.  North  America,  throughout 
most  of  the  Cainozoic  period,  appears  to  have  been  in  open  and 
easy  continuation  with  Asia,  and  when  at  last  the  glaciers  of 
the  Great  Ice  Age,  and  then  the  Bering  Strait,  came  to  separate 
the  two  great  continental  regions,  the  last  camels  were  left  in  the 
old  world  and  the  llamas  in  the  new. 

In  the  Eocene  the  first  ancestors  of  the  elephants  appear  in 
northern  Africa  as  snouted  creatures ;  the  elephant's  trunk 
dawned  on  the  world  in  the  Miocene. 

One  group  of  creatures  is  of  peculiar  interest  in  a  history  that 
is  mainly  to  be  the  story  of  mankind.  We  find  fossils  in  the 
Eocene  of  monkeys  and  lemurs,  but  of  one  particular  creature 
we  have  as  yet  not  a  single  bone.  It  must  have  been  a  creature 


44  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

half  ape,  half  monkey;  it  clamhered  about  the  trees  and  ran, 
and  probably  ran  well,  on  its  hind-legs  upon  the  ground.  It 
was  small-brained  by  our  present  standards,  but  it  had  clever 
hands  with  which  it  handled  fruits  and  beat  nuts  upon  the 
rocks  and  caught  up  sticks  and  stones  to  smite  its  fellows. 
Spite  of  the  lack  of  material  evidence,  tho  facts  of  biological 
science  almost  compel  us  to  believe  that  such  a  creature  existed, 
the  common  ancestor  of  the  anthropoid  apes  and  the  two  species 
of  men  we  will  describe  in  the  next  chapter. 

§  4 

Through  millions  of  simian  generations  the  spinning  world 
circled  about  the  sun;  slowly  its  orbit,  which  may  have  been 
nearly  circular  during  the  equable  days  of  the  early  Eocene, 
was  drawn  by  the  attraction  of  the  circling  outer  planets  into 
a  more  elliptical  form.  Its  axis  of  rotation,  which  had  always 
heeled  over  to  the  plane  of  its  orbit,  as  the  mast  of  a  yacht  under 
sail  heels  over  to  the  level  of  the  water,  heeled  over  by  imper- 
ceptible degrees  a  little  more  and  a  little  more.  And  each  year 
its  summer  point  shifted  a  little  further  from  perihelion  round 
its  path.  These  were  small  changes  to  happen  to  a  one-inch  ball, 
circling  at  a  distance  of  330  yards  from  a  flaming  sun  nine  feet 
across,  in  the  course  of  a  few  million  years.  They  were  changes 
an  immortal  astronomer  in  Neptune,  watching  the  earth  from 
age  to  age,  would  have  found  almost  imperceptible.  But  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  surviving  mammalian  life  of  the 
Miocene,  they  mattered  profoundly.  Age  by  age  the  winters 
grew  on  the  whole  colder  and  harder  and  a  few  hours  longer 
relatively  to  the  summers  in  a  thousand  years;  age  by  age 
the  summers  grew  briefer.  On  an  average  the  winter  snow 
lay  a  little  later  in  the  spring  in  each  century,  and  the  glaciers 
in  the  northern  mountains  gained  an  inch  this  year,  receded 
half  an  inch  next,  came  on  again  a  few  inches.  .  .  . 

The  Record  of  the  Rocks  tells  of  the  increasing  chill.  The 
Pliocene  was  a  temperate  time,  and  many  of  the  warmth-loving 
plants  and  animals  had  gone.  Then,  rather  less  deliberately, 
some  feet  or  some  inches  every  year,  the  ice  came  on. 

An  arctic  fauna,  musk  ox,  woolly  mammoth,  woolly  rhino- 
ceros, lemming,  ushers  in  the  Pleistocene.  Over  North  Amer- 
ica, and  Europe  and  Asia  alike,  the  ice  advanced.  For  thou- 


THE  AGE  OF  MAMMALS  45 

sands  of  years  it  advanced,  and  then  for  thousands  of  years  it 
receded,  to  advance  again.  Europe  down  to  the  Baltic  shores, 
Britain  down  to  the  Thames,  North  America  down  to  New 
England,  and  more  centrally  as  far  south  as  Ohio,  lay  for  ages 
under  the  glaciers.  Enormous  volumes  of  water  were  with- 
drawn from  the  ocean  and  locked  up  in  those  stupendous  ice 
caps  so  as  to  cause  a  world-wide  change  in  the  relative  levels 
of  land  and  sea.  Vast  areas  were  exposed  that  are  now  again 
sea  bottom. 

The  world  to-day  is  still  coming  slowly  out  of  the  last  of  four 
great  waves  of  cold.  It  is  not  growing  warmer  steadily.  There 
have  been  fluctuations.  Remains  of  bog  oaks,  for  example, 
which  grew  two  or  three  thousand  years  ago,  are  found  in  Scot- 
land at  latitudes  in  which  not  even  a  stunted  oak  will  grow  at 
the  present  time.  And  it  is  amidst  this  crescendo  and  diminu- 
endo of  frost  and  snow  that  we  first  recognize  forms  that  are 
like  the  forms  of  men.  The  Age  of  Mammals  culminated  in  ice 
and  hardship  and  man. 


VII 

THE  ANCESTRY  OF  MAN 

1.  Man  Descended  from  a  Walking  Ape.  §  2.  First  Traces 
of  Manlike  Creatures.  §  3.  The  Heidelberg  Sub-Man.  §  4. 
The  Piltdown  Sub-Man.  §  5.  The  Riddle  of  the  Piltdown 
Remains. 


THE  origin  of  man  is  still  very  obscure.  It  is  commonly 
asserted  that  he  is  "descended"  from  some  man-like  ape 
such  as  the  chimpanzee,  the  orang-utang,  or  the  gorilla, 
but  that  of  course  is  as  reasonable  as  saying  that  I  am  "de- 
scended" from  some  Hottentot  or  Esquimau  as  young  or 
younger  than  myself.  Others,  alive  to  this  objection,  say  that 
man  is  descended  from  the  common  ancestor  of  the  chimpanzee, 
the  orang-utang,  and  the  gorilla.  Some  "anthropologists"  have 
even  indulged  in  a  speculation  whether  mankind  may  not  have 
a  double  or  treble  origin ;  the  negro  being  descended  from  a 
gorilla-like  ancestor,  the  Chinese  from  a  chimpanzee-like  an- 
cestor, and  so  on.  These  are  very  fanciful  ideas,  to  be  men- 
tioned only  to  be  dismissed.  It  was  formerly  assumed  that  the 
human  ancestor  was  "probably  arboreal,"  but  the  current  idea 
among  those  who  are  qualified  to  form  an  opinion  seems  to  be 
that  he  was  a  "ground  ape,"  and  that  the  existing  apes  have 
developed  in  the  arboreal  direction. 

Of  course  if  one  puts  the  skeleton  of  a  man  and  the  skeleton 
of  a  gorilla  side  by  side,  their  general  resemblance  is  so  great 
that  it  is  easy  to  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  the  former  is 
derived  from  such  a  type  as  the  latter  by  a  process  of  brain 
growth  and  general  refinement.  But  if  one  examines  closely 
into  one  or  two  differences,  the  gap  widens.  Particular  stress 
has  recently  been  laid  upon  the  tread  of  the  foot.  Man  walks 

46 


THE  ANCESTRY  OF  MAN 


I 


I 


.SHs 


Mil 


n 


d 


« 


I 


Bs?e 
fiJI* 

w  -T"    .  =: 

EH  S  -5 

^    ^^  g^ 

®   S'3    0 
g    ID  ^   3 

<     cs   OQ  >i 

I  B-S^ 

Q    rt  u  2 

g   &o  2 
I^il 

~      CO    CO     Si 


o—o 


4-8 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


on  his  toe  and  his  heel ;  his  great  toe  is  his  chief  lever  in  walk- 
ing, as  the  reader  may  see  for  himself  if  he  examines  his  own 
footprints  on  the  bathroom  floor  and  notes  where  the  pressure 


•with  e&rUcst: 
[W&rc 


Mtx^kOy 


Sakr<r- tooth. 

Ttyr 


falls  as  the  footprints  become  fainter.     His  great  toe  is  the 
king  of  his  toes. 

Among  all  the  apes  and  monkeys,  the  only  group  that  have 


THE  ANCESTRY  OF  MAN 


49 


their  great  toes  developed  on  anything  like  the  same  fashion 
as  man  are  some  of  the  lemurs.  The  baboon  walks  on  a  flat  foot 
and  all  his  toes,  using  his  middle  toe  as  his  chief  throw-off, 
much  as  the  bear  does.  And  the  three  great  apes  all  walk  on 
the  outer  side  of  the  foot  in  a  very  different  manner  from  the 
walking  of  man. 

The  great  apes  are  forest  dwellers;  their  walking  even  now 
is  incidental ;  they 
are  at  their  happiest 
among  trees.  They 
have  very  distinctive 
methods  of  climb- 
ing; they  swing  by 
the  arms  much  more 
than  the  monkeys  do, 
and  do  not,  like  the 
latter,  take  off  with 
a  spring  from  the 
feet.  They  have  a 
specially  developed 
climbing  style  of 
their  own.  But  man 
walks  so  well  and 
runs  so  swiftly  as  to 
suggest  a  very  long 
ancestry  upon  the 


POSSIBLE 


APPEARANCE  OF   THE  SUB-MAW 
PITHECANTHROPUS. 

The  face,  jaws,  and  teeth  are  mere  guess-work 

(see  text).     The  creature  may  have  been  much 

less  human-looking  than  this. 


ground.  Also,  he 
does  not  climb  well 
now;  he  climbs  with 
caution  and  hesita- 
tion. His  ancestors  may  have  been  running  creatures  for 
4ong  ages.  Moreover,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  he  does  riot 
swim  naturally;  he  has  to  learn  to  swim,  and  that  seems  to 
point  to  a  long-standing  separation  from  rivers  and  lakes  and 
the  sea.  Almost  certainly  that  ancestor  was  a  smaller  and 
slighter  creature  than  its  human  descendants.  Conceivably  the 
human  ancestor  at  the  opening  of  the  Cainozoic  period  was  a 
running  ape  living  chiefly  on  the  ground,  hiding  among  rocks 
rather  than  .trees.  It  could  still  climb  trees  well  and  hold  things 
between  its  great  toe  and  its  second  toe  (as  the  Japanese  can 
to  this  day),  but  it  was  already  coming  down  to  the  ground 


50  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

again  from  a  still  remoter,  a  Mesozoic  arboreal  ancestry.  It  is 
quite  understandable  that  such  a  creature  would  very  rarely  die 
in  water  in  such  circumstances  as  to  leave  bones  to  become 
fossilized. 

It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that  among  its  many  other 
imperfections  the  Geological  Record  necessarily  contains  abun- 
dant traces  only  of  water  or  marsh  creatures  or  of  creatures 
easily  and  frequently  drowned.  The  same  reasons  that  make 
any  traces  of  the  ancestors  of  the  mammals  rare  and  relatively 
unprocurable  in  the  Mesozoic  rocks,  probably  make  the  traces 
of  possible  human  ancestors  rare  and  relatively  unprocurable 
in  the  Cainozoic  rocks.  Such  knowledge  as  we  have  of  the 
earliest  men,  for  example,  is  almost  entirely  got  from  a  few 
caves,  into  which  they  went  and  in  which  they  left  their  traces. 
Until  the  hard  Pleistocene  times  they  lived  and  died  in  the 
open,  and  their  bodies  were  consumed  or  decayed  altogether. 

But  it  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  also  that  the  record  of  the  rocks 
has  still  to  be  thoroughly  examined.  It  has  been  studied  only 
for  a  few  generations,  and  by  only  a  few  men  in  each  genera- 
tion. Most  men  have  been  too  busy  making  war,  making  profits 
out  of  their  neighbours,  toiling  at  work  that  machinery  could 
do  for  them  in  a  tenth  of  the  time,  or  simply  playing  about, 
to  give  any  attention  to  these  more  interesting  things.  There 
may  be,  there  probably  are,  thousands  of  deposits  still  untouched 
containing  countless  fragments  and  vestiges  of  man  and  his 
progenitors.  In  Asia  particularly,  in  India  or  the  East  Indies, 
there  may  be  hidden  the  most  illuminating  clues.  What  we 
know  to-day  of  early  men  is  the  merest  scrap  of  what  will 
presently  be  known. 

The  apes  and  monkeys  already  appear  to  have  been  differen- 
tiated at  the  beginning  of  the  Cainozoic  Age,  and  there  are  a 
number  of  Oligocene  and  Miocene  apes  whose  relations  to  one 
another  and  to  the  human  line  have  still  to  be  made  out.  Among 
these  we  may  mention  Dryopithecus  of  the  Miocene  Age,  with 
a  very  human-looking  jaw.  In  the  Siwalik  Hills  of  northern 
India  remains  of  some  very  interesting  apes  have  been  found, 
of  which  Sivapithecus  and  Palceopithecus  were  possibly  related 
closely  to  the  human  ancestor.  Possibly  these  animals  already 
used  implements.  Charles  Darwin  represents  baboons  as  open- 
ing nuts  by  breaking  them  with  stones,  using  stakes  to  prise 
up  rocks  in  the  hunt  for  insects,  and  striking  blows  with  sticks 


THE  ANCESTRY  OF  MAN  51 

and  stones.  The  chimpanzee  makes  itself  a  sort  of  tree  hut 
by  intertwining  branches.  Stones  apparently  chipped  for  use 
have  been  found  in  strata  of  Oligocene  Age  at  Boncelles  in 
Belgium.  Possibly  the  implement-using  disposition  was  al- 
ready present  in  the  Mesozoic  ancestry  from  which  we  are 
descended. 

§2 

Among  the  earliest  evidences  of  some  creature,  either  human 
or  at  least  more  manlike  than  any  living  ape  upon  earth,  are  a 
number  of  flints  and  stones  very  roughly  chipped  and  shaped 
so  as  to  be  held  in  the  hand.  These  were  probably  used  as  hand- 
axes.  These  early  implements  ("Eoliths")  are  often  so  crude 
and  simple  that  there  was  for  a  long  time  a  controversy  whether 
they  were  to  be  regarded  as  natural  or  artificial  productions. 
The  date  of  the  earliest  of  them  is  put  by  geologists  as 
Pliocene — that  is  to  say,  before  the  First  Glacial  Age.  They 
occur  also  throughout  the  First  Interglacial  period.  We  know 
of  no  bones  or  other  remains  in  Europe  or  America  of  the  quasi- 
human  beings  of  half  a  million  years  ago,  who  made  and  used 
these  implements.  They  used  them  to  hammer  with,  perhaps 
they  used  them  to  fight  with,  and  perhaps  they  used  bits  of 
wood  for  similar  purposes.1 

But  at  Trinil,  in  Java,  in  strata  which  are  said  to  correspond 
either  to  the  later  Pliocene  or  to  the  American  and  European 
First  Ice  Age,  there  have  been  found  some  scattered  bones  of 
a  creature,  such  as  the  makers  of  these  early  implements  may 
have  been.  The  top  of  a  skull,  some  teeth,  and  a  thigh-bone 
have  been  found.  The  skull  shows  a  brain-case  about  half-way 
in  size  between  that  of  the  chimpanzee  and  man,  but  the  thigh- 
bone is  that  of  a  creature  as  well  adapted  to  standing  and  run- 
ning as  a  man,  and  as  free,  therefore,  to  use  its  hands.  The 
creature  was  not  a  man,  nor  was  it  an  arboreal  ape  like  the 
chimpanzee.  It  was  a  walking  ape.  It  has  been  named  by 
naturalists  Pithecanthropus  erecius  (the  walking  ape-man). 
We  cannot  say  that  it  is  a  direct  human  ancestor,  but  we  may 
guess  that  the  creatures  who  scattered  these  first  stone  tools 

1  Some  writers  suppose  that  a  Wood  and  Shell  Age  preceded  the  earliest 
Stone  Age.  South  Sea  Islanders,  Negroes,  and  Bushmen  still  make  use 
of  wood  and  the  sharp-edged  shells  of  land  and  water  molluscs  as  im- 
plements. 


52  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

over  the  world  must  have  been  closely  similar  and  kindred,  and 
that  our  ancestor  was  a  heast  of  like  kind.  This  little  trayful 
of  bony  fragments  from  Trinil  is,  at  present,  apart  from  stone 
implements,  the  oldest  relic  of  early  humanity,  or  of  the  close 
blood  relations  cf  early  humanity,  that  is  known. 

While  these  early  men  or  "sub-men"  were  running  about 
Europe  four  or  five  hundred  thousand  years  ago,  there  were 
mammoths,  rhinoceroses,  a  huge  hippopotamus,  a  giant  beaver, 
and  a  bison  and  wild  cattle  in  their  world.  There  were  also 
wild  horses,  and  the  sabre-toothed  tiger  still  abounded.  There 
are  no  traces  of  lions  or  true  tigers  at  that  time  in  Europe,  but 
there  were  bears,  otters,  wolves,  and  a  wild  boar.  It  may  be 
that  the  early  sub-man  sometimes  played  jackal  to  the  sabre- 
toothed  tiger,  and  finished  up  the  bodies  on  which  the  latter 
had  gorged  itself. 

§  3 

After  this  first  glimpse  of  something  at  least  sub-human  in  the 
record  of  geology,  there  is  not  another  fragment  of  human  or 
man-like  bone  yet  known  from  that  record  for  an  interval  of 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  years.  It  is  not  until  we  reach  de- 
posits which  are  stated  to  be  of  the  Second  Interglacial  period, 
200,000  years  later,  200,000  or  250,000  years  ago,  that  another 
little  scrap  of  bone  comes  to  hand.  Then  we  find  a  jaw-bone. 

This  jaw-bone  was  found  in  a  sand-pit  near  Heidelberg,  at  a 
depth  of  eighty  feet  from  the  surface,  and  it  is  not  the  jaw- 
bone of  a  man  as  we  understand  man,  but  it  is  man-like  in 
every  respect,  except  that  it  has  absolutely  no  trace  of  a  chin ; 
it  is  more  massive  than  a  man's,  and  its  narrowness  behind 
could  not,  it  is  thought,  have  given  the  tongue  sufficient  play 
for  articulate  speech.  It  is  not  an  ape's  jaw-bone;  the  teeth 
are  human.  The  owner  of  this  jaw-bone  has  been  variously 
named  Homo  Heidelbcrgensis  and  P alee oantlir opus  Ileidelber- 
gensis,  according  to  the  estimate  formed  of  his  humanity  or 
sub-humanity  by  various  authorities.  He  lived  in  a  world  not 
remotely  unlike  the  world  of  the  still  earlier  sub-man  of  the 
first  implements;  the  deposits  in  which  it  is  found  show  that 
there  were  elephants,  horses,  rhinoceroses,  bison,  a  moose,  and 
so  forth  with  it  in  the  world,  but  the  sabre-toothed  tiger  was 
declining  and  the  lion  was  spreading  over  Europe.  The  imple- 
ments of  this  period  (known  as  the  Chellean  period)  are  a  very 


THE  ANCESTRY  OF  MAN  53 

considerable  advance  upon  those  of  the  Pliocene  Age.  They 
are  well  made  but  very  much  bigger  than  any  truly  human 
implements.  The  Heidelberg  man  may  have  had  a  very  big 
body  and  large  fore  limbs.  He  may  have  been  a  woolly,  strange- 
looking  creature. 

N  4 

We  must  turn  over  the  Record  for,  it  may  be,  another  100,000 
years  for  the  next  remains  of  anything  human  or  sub-human. 
Then  in  a  deposit  ascribed  to  the  Third  Interglacial  period, 
which  may  have  begun  100,000  years  ago  and  lasted  50,000 
years,  the  smashed  pieces  of  a  whole  skull  turn  up.  The  de- 
posit is  a  gravel  which  may  have  been  derived  from  the  washing 
out  of  still  earlier  gravel  strata,  and  this  skull  fragment  may 
be  in  reality  as  old  as  the  First  Glacial  Period.  The  bony  re- 
mains discovered  at  Piltdown  in  Sussex  display  a  creature  still 
ascending  only  very  gradually  from  the  sub-human. 

The  first  scraps  of  this  skull  were  found  in  an  excavation 
for  road  gravel  in  Sussex.  Bit  by  bit  other  fragments  of  this 
skull  were  hunted  out  from  the  quarry  heaps  until  most  of  it 
could  be  pieced  together.  It  is  a  thick  skull,  thicker  than  that 
of  any  living  race  of  men,  and  it  has  a  brain  capacity  inter- 
mediate between  that  of  Pithecanthropus  and  man.  This  crea- 
ture has  been  named  Eoanihropus,  the  dawn  man.  In  the 
same  gravel-pits  were  found  teeth  of  rhinoceros,  hippopotamus, 
and  the  leg-bone  of  a  deer  with  marks  upon  it  that  may  be  cuts. 
A  curious  bat-shaped  instrument  of  elephant  bone  has  also  been 
found. 

There  was  moreover  a  jaw-bone  among  these  scattered  re- 
mains, which  was  at  first  assumed  naturally  enough  to  belong  to 
EoanthropuSj,  but  which  it  was  afterwards  suggested  was  prob- 
ably that  of  a  chimpanzee.  It  is  extraordinarily  like  that  of  a 
chimpanzee,  but  Dr.  Keith,  one  of  the  greatest  authorities  in 
these  questions,  assigns  it,  after  an  exhaustive  analysis  in  his 
Antiquity  of  Man  (1915),  to  the  skull  with  which  it  is  found. 
It  is,  as  a  jaw-bone,  far  less  human  in  character  than  the  jaw 
of  the  much  more  ancient  Homo  Heidelbergensis,  but  the  teeth 
are  in  some  respects  more  like  those  of  living  men. 

Dr.  Keith,  swayed  by  the  jaw-bone,  does  not  think  that 
Eoantliropus,  in  spite  of  its  name,  is  a  creature  in  the  direct 
ancestry  of  man.  Much  less  is  it  an  intermediate  form  between 


54,  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  Heidelberg  man  and  the  Neanderthal  man  we  shall  pres- 
ently describe.  It  was  only  related  to  the  true  ancestor  of  man 
as  the  orang  is  related  to  the  chimpanzee.  It  was  one  of  a 
number  of  sub-human  running  apes  of  more  than  ape-like  in- 
telligence, and  if  it  was  not  on  the  line  royal,  it  was  at  any 
rate  a  very  close  collateral. 

After  this  glimpse  of  a  skull,  the  Record  for  very  many 
centuries  gives  nothing  but  flint  implements,  which  improve 
steadily  in  quality.  A  very  characteristic  form  is  shaped  like  a 
sole,  with  one  flat  side  stricken  off  at  one  blow  and  the  other 
side  worked.  The  archa3ologists,  as  the  Record  continues,  are 
presently  able  to  distinguish  scrapers,  borers,  knives,  darts, 
throwing  stones,  and  the  like.  Progress  is  now  more  rapid; 
in  a  few  centuries  the  shape  of  the  hand-axe  shows  distinct 
and  recognizable  improvements.  And  then  comes  quite  a  num- 
ber of  remains.  The  Fourth  Glacial  Age  is  rising  towards  its 
maximum.  Man  is  taking  to  caves  and  leaving  vestiges  there; 
at  Krapina  in  Croatia,  at  Neanderthal  near  Diisseldorf,  at 
Spy,  human  remains  have  been  found,  skulls  and  bones,  of  a 
creature  that  is  certainly  a  man.  Somewhen  about  50,000 
years  ago,  if  not  earlier,  appeared  Homo  Neanderthalensis 
(also  called  Homo  antiquus  and  Homo  primigenius),  a  quite 
passable  human  being.  His  thumb  was  not  quite  equal  in  flexi- 
bility and  usefulness  to  a  human  thumb,  he  stooped  forward 
and  could  not  hold  his  head  erect,  as  all  living  men  do,  he  was 
chinless  and  perhaps  incapable  of  speech,  there  were  curious 
differences  about  the  enamel  and  the  roots  of  his  teeth  from 
those  of  all  living  men,  he  was  very  thick-set,  he  was,  indeed, 
not  quite  of  the  human  species;  but  there  is  no  dispute  about 
his  attribution  to  the  genus  Homo.  He  was  certainly  not  de- 
scended from  Eoanthropus,  but  his  jaw-bone  is  so  like  the 
Heidelberg  jaw-bone,  as  to  make  it  possible  that  the  clumsier 
and  heavier  Homo  Heidelbergensis,  a  thousand  centuries  before 
him,  was  of  his  blood  and  race. 


VIII 

THE  NEANDERTHAL  MEN,  AN  EXTINCT  RACE 
(The  Early  Paleolithic  Age  l) 

§  1.  The  World  50}000  Years  Ago.  §  2.  The  Daily  Life  of 
the  First  Men.  §  3.  The  Last  Palwolithic  Men. 


IN  the  time  of  the  Third  Interglacial  period  the  outline  of 
Europe  and  Western  Asia  was  very  different  from  what  it 
is  to-day.  Vast  areas  to  the  west  and  north-west  which 
are  now  under  the  Atlantic  waters  were  then  dry  land;  the 
Irish  Sea  and  the  North  Sea  were  river  valleys.  Over  these 
northern  areas  there  spread  and  receded  and  spread  again  a 
great  ice  cap  such  as  covers  central  Greenland  to-day  (see  Map 
on  p.  56).  This  vast  ice  cap,  which  covered  both  polar  regions 
of  the  earth,  withdrew  huge  masses  of  water  from  the  ocean, 
and  the  sea-level  consequently  fell,  exposing  great  areas  of  land 
that  are  now  submerged  again.  The  Mediterranean  area  was 
probably  a  great  valley  below  the  general  sea-level,  containing 
two  inland  seas  cut  off  from  the  general  ocean.  The  climate 
of  this  Mediterranean  basin  was  perhaps  cold  temperate,  and 
the  region  of  the  Sahara,  to  the  south  was  not  then  a  desert  of 
baked  rock  and  blown  sand,  but  a  well-watered  and  fertile  coun- 
try. Between  the  ice  sheets  to  the  north  and  the  Alps  and 
Mediterranean  valley  to  the  south  stretched  a  bleak  wilderness 

1  Three  phases  of  human  history  before  the  knowledge  and  use  of  metals 
are  often  distinguished.  First  there  is  the  so-called  Eolithic  Age  (dawn 
of  stone  implements),  then  the  Palaeolithic  Age  (old  stone  implements), 
and  finally  an  age  in  which  the  implements  are  skilfully  made  and  fre- 
quently well  finished  and  polished  (Neolithic  Age).  The  Palaeolithic 
Period  is  further  divided  into  an  earlier  (sub-human)  and  a  later  (fully 
hunian)  period.  We  shall  comment  on  these  divisions  later, 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


w  S 


THE  NEANDERTHAL  MEN  57 

whose  climate  changed  from  harshness  to  a  mild  kindliness 
and  then  hardened  again  for  the  Fourth  Glacial  Age. 

Across  this  wilderness,  which  is  now  the  great  plain  of 
Europe,  wandered  a  various  fauna.  At  first  there  were  hippo- 
potami, rhinoceroses,  mammoths,  and  elephants.  The  sabre- 
toothed  tiger  was  diminishing  towards  extinction.  Then,  as 
the  air  chilled,  the  hippopotamus,  and  then  other  warmth-loving 
creatures,  ceased  to  come  so  far  north,  and  the  sabre-toothed 
tiger  disappeared  altogether.  The  woolly  mammoth,  the  woolly 
rhinoceros,  the  musk  ox,  the  bison,  the  aurochs,  and  the  reindeer 
became  prevalent,  and  the  temperate  vegetation  gave  place  to 
plants  of  a  more  arctic  type.  The  glaciers  spread  southward  to 
the  maximum  of  the  Fourth  Glacial  Age  (about  50,000  years 
ago),  and  then  receded  again.  In  the  earlier  phase,  the  Third 
Interglacial  period,  a  certain  number  of  small  family  groups 
of  men  (Homo  Neanderthalensis)  and  probably  of  sub-men 
(Eoantliropus)  wandered  over  the  land,  leaving  nothing  but 
their  flint  implements  to  witness  to  their  presence.  They  prob- 
ably used  a  multitude  and  variety  of  wooden  implements  also; 
they  had  probably  learnt  much  about  the  shapes  of  objects  and 
the  use  of  different  shapes  from  wood,  knowledge  which  they 
afterwards  applied  to  stone;  but  none  of  this  wooden  material 
has  survived;  we  can  only  speculate  about  its  forms  and  uses. 
As  the  weather  hardened  to  its  maximum  of  severity,  the 
Neanderthal  men,  already  it  would  seem  acquainted  with  the 
use  of  fire,  began  to  seek  shelter  under  rock  ledges  and  in  caves 
— and  so  leave  remains  behind  them.  Hitherto  they  had  been 
accustomed  to  squat  in  the  open  about  the  fire,  and  near  their 
water  supply.  But  they  were  sufficiently  intelligent  to  adapt 
themselves  to  the  new  and  harder  conditions.  (As  for  the  sub- 
men,  they  seem  to  have  succumbed  to  the  stresses  of  this  Fourth 
Glacial  Age  altogether.  At  any  rate,  the  rudest  type  of  Paleo- 
lithic implements  presently  disappears.) 

Not  merely  man  was  taking  to  the  caves.  This  period  also 
had  a  cave  lion,  a  cave  bear,  and  a  cave  hyaena.  These  creatures 
had  to  be  driven  out  of  the  caves  and  kept  out  of  the  caves  in 
which  these  early  men  wanted  to  squat  and  hide ;  and  ro  doubt 
fire  was  an  effective  method  of  eviction  and  protection.  Prob- 
ably early  men  did  not  go  deeply  into  the  caves,  because  they 
had  no  means  of  lighting  their  recesses.  They  got  in  far 
enough  to  be  out  of  the  weather,  and  stored  wood  and  food  in  odd 


58 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


corners.  Perhaps  they  barricaded  the  cave  mouths.  Their 
only  available  light  for  going  deeply  into  the  caverns  would  be 
torches. 

What  did  these  Neanderthal  men  hunt  ?  Their  only  possible 
weapons  for  killing  such  giant  creatures  as  the  mammoth  or 
the  cave  bear,  or  even  the  reindeer,  were  spears  of  wood,  wooden 
clubs,  and  those  big  pieces  of  flint  they  left  behind  them,  the 
"Chellean"  and  "Mousterian"  implements ;  l  and  probably  their 
usual  quarry  was  smaller  game.  But  they  did  certainly  eat 
the  flesh  of  the  big  beasts  when  they  had  a  chance,  and  perhaps 

they  followed  them 
when  sick  or  when, 
wounded  by  combats, 
or  took  advantage  of 
them  when  they  were 
bogged  or  in  trouble 
with  ice  or  water. 
(The  Labrador  Indi- 
ans still  kill  the  cari- 
bou with  spears  at 
awkward  river  cross- 
ings.) At  Dewlish, 
in  Dorset,  an  artifi- 
cial trench  has  been 
found  which  is  sup- 
posed to  have  been  a 
Palaeolithic  trap  for 


elephants.2  We  know 
that  the  !N"eanderthalers  partly  ate  their  kill  where  it  fell ;  but 
they  brought  back  the  big  narrow  bones  to  the  cave  to  crack  and 
eat  at  leisure,  because  few  ribs  and  vertebrae  are  found  in  the 
caves,  but  great  quantities  of  cracked  and  split  long  bones. 
They  used  skins  to  wrap  about  them,  and  the  women  probably 
dressed  the  skins. 

We  know  also  that  they  were  right-handed  like  modern  men, 
because  the  left  side  of  the  brain  (which  serves  the  right  side 
of  the  body)  is  bigger  than  the  right.  But  while  the  back  parts 
of  the  brain  which  deal  with  sight  and  touch  and  the  energy 
of  the  body  are  well  developed,  the  front  parts,  whic1-  are  con- 

JFrom  Chelles  and  Le  Moustier  in  France. 

8  Osmond   Fisher,  quoted  jn  Wright's  Quaternary  Ice 


THE  NEANDERTHAL  MEN  59 

nected  with  thought  and  speech,  are  comparatively  small.  It 
was  as  big  a  brain  as  ours,  but  different.  This  species  of  Homo 
had  certainly  a  very  different  mentality  from  ours;  its  indi- 
viduals were  not  merely  simpler  and  lower  than  we  are,  they 
were  on  another  line.  It  may  be  they  did  not  speak  at  all, 
or  very  sparingly.  They  had  nothing  that  we  should  call  a 
language. 


In  Worthington  Smith's  Man  the  Primeval  Savage  there  is 
a  very  vividly  written  description  of  early  Palaeolithic  life, 
from  which  much  of  the  following  account  is  borrowed.  In 
the  original,  Mr.  Worthington  Smith  assumes  a  more  extensive 
social  life,  a  larger  community,  and  a  more  definite  division  of 
labour  among  its  members  than  is  altogether  justifiable  in  the 
face  of  such  subsequent  writings  as  J.  J.  Atkinson's  memorable 
essay  on  Primal  Law.1  For  the  little  tribe  Mr.  Worthington 
Smith  described,  there  has  been  substituted,  therefore,  a  family 
group  under  the  leadership  of  one  Old  Man,  and  the  suggestions 
of  Mr.  Atkinson  as  to  the  behaviour  of  the  Old  Man  have  been 
worked  into  the  sketch. 

Mr.  Worthington  Smith  describes  a  squatting-place  near  a 
stream,  because  primitive  man,  having  no  pots  or  other  vessels, 
must  needs  have  kept  close  to  a  water  supply,  and  with  some 
chalk  cliffs  adjacent  from  which  flints  could  be  got  to  work. 
The  air  was  bleak,  and  the  fire  was  of  great  importance,  be- 
cause fires  once  out  were  not  easily  relit  in  those  days.  When 
not  required  to  blaze  it  was  probably  banked  down  with  ashes. 
The  most  probable  way  in  which  fires  were  started  was  by 
hacking  a  bit  of  iron  pyrites  with  a  flint  amidst  dry  dead  leaves  ; 
concretions  of  iron  pyrites  and  flints  are  found  together  in 
England  where  the  gault  and  chalk  approach  each  other.2  The 
little  group  of  people  would  be  squatting  about  amidst  a  litter 
of  fern,  moss,  and  such-like  dry  material.  Some  of  the  women 
and  children  would  need  to  be  continually  gathering  fuel  to 
keep  up  the  fires.  It  would  be  a  tradition  that  had  grown  up. 

1  Social  Origins,  by  Andrew  Lang,  and  Primal  Law,  by  J.  J.  Atkinson. 
(Longmans,  1903.) 

2  This  first  origin  of  fire  was  suggested  by  Sir  John  Lubbock  (Prehistoric 
Times),  and  Ludwig  Hopf,  in  The  Human  Species,  says  that  "Flints  and 
pieces  of  pyrites  are  found  in  close  proximity  in  palaeolithic  settlements 
near  the  remains  of  mammoths." 


60 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


tliic  Stone  Implement; 


Call  roughly  to 
seal*  of  hand 
shown) 


Three  views  <£ a.  TOStro- 

cartnate  (earliest  period) 

implement 


[N.B.Thi*  us 

a  modem.  —  not  a.  Neander- 
thal-Hand.] 


Piercer 


<J.  F!  H 


EARLY  STONE  IMPLEMENTS. 

The  Mousterian  Age  implements,  and  all  above  it,  are  those  of 
Neanderthal  men  or,  possibly  in  the  case  of  the  rostro-carinates,  of 
sub-men.  The  lower  row  (Reindeer  Age)  are  the  work  of  true  men. 
The  student  should  compare  this  diagram  with  the  time  diagram 
attached  to  Chapter  VII,  §  1,  and  he  should  note  the  relatively  large 
size  of  the  pre-human  implements. 


THE  NEANDERTHAL  MEN  61 

The  young  would  imitate  their  elders  in  this  task.  Perhaps 
there  would  be  rude  wind  shelters  of  boughs  on  one  side  of 
the  encampment. 

The  Old  Man,  the  father  and  master  of  the  group,  would 
perhaps  be  engaged  in  hammering  flints  beside  the  fire.  The 
children  would  imitate  him  and  learn  to  use  the  sharpened 
fragments.  Probably  some  of  the  women  would  hunt  good 
flints;  they  would  fish  them  out  of  the  chalk  with  sticks  and 
bring  them  to  the  squatting-place. 

There  would  be  skins  about.  It  seems  probable  that  at  a 
very  early  time  primitive  men  took  to  using  skins.  Probably 
they  were  wrapped  about  the  children,  and  used  to  lie  upon 
when  the  ground  was  damp  and  cold.  A  woman  would  perhaps 
be  preparing  a  skin.  The  inside  of  the  skin  would  be  well 
scraped  free  of  superfluous  flesh  with  trimmed  flints,  and  then 
strained  and  pulled  and  pegged  out  flat  on  the  grass,  and  dried 
in  the  rays  of  the  sun. 

Away  from  the  fire  other  members  of  the  family  group  prowl 
in  search  of  food,  but  at  night  they  all  gather  closely  round 
the  fire  and  build  it  up,  for  it  is  their  protection  against  the 
wandering  bear  and  such-like  beasts  of  prey.  The  Old  Man 
is  the  only  fully  adult  male  in  the  little  group.  There  are 
women,  boys  and  girls,  but  so  soon  as  the  boys  are  big  enough 
to  rouse  the  Old  Man's  jealousy,  he  will  fall  foul  of  them  and 
either  drive  them  off  or  kill  them.  Some  girls  may  perhaps  go 
off  with  these  exiles,  or  two  or  three  of  these  youths  may  keep 
together  for  a  time,  wandering  until  they  come  upon  some  other 
group,  from  which  they  may  try  to  steal  a  mate.  Then  they 
would  probably  fall  out  among  themselves.  Some  day,  when 
he  is  forty  years  old  perhaps  or  even  older,  and  his  teeth  are 
worn  down  and  his  energy  abating,  some  younger  male  will 
stand  up  to  the  Old  Man  and  kill  him  and  reign  in  his  stead. 
There  is  probably  short  shrift  for  the  old  at  the  squatting- 
place.  So  soon  as  they  grow  weak  and  bad-tempered,  trouble 
and  death  come  upon  them. 

What  did  they  eat  at  the  squatting-place  ? 

"Primeval  man  is  commonly  described  as  a  hunter  of  the 
great  hairy  mammoth,  of  the  bear,  and  the  lion,  but  it  is  in  the 
highest  degree  improbable  that  the  human  savage  ever  hunted 
animals  much  larger  than  the  hare,  the  rabbit,  and  the  rat. 
Man  was  probably  the  hunted  rather  than  the  hunter. 


62 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


AUSTRALIA 


"Western 
Pacific 

trttfc* 
Glacial  Acre 


"The  primeval  savage  was  both  herbivorous  and  carnivorous. 
He  had  for  food  hazel-nuts,  beech-nuts,  sweet  chestnuts,  earth- 
nuts,  and  acorns.  He  had  crab-apples,  wild  pears,  wild  cherries, 
wild  gooseberries,  bullaces,  sorbs,  sloes,  blackberries,  yewberries, 
hips  and  haws,  watercress,  fungi,  the  larger  and  softer  leaf- 
buds,  Nostoc  (the  vegetable  substance  called  'fallen  stars'  by 
countryfolk),  the  fleshy,  juicy,  asparagus-like  rhizomes  or  sub- 
terranean stems  of  the  Labiatce  and  like  plants,  as  well  as  other 
delicacies  of  the  vegetable  kingdom.  He  had  birds'  eggs,  young 

birds,  and  the  honey 
and  honeycomb  of 
wild  bees.  He  had 
newts,  snails,  and 
frogs — the  two  latter 
delicacies  are  still 
highly  esteemed  in 
Normandy  and  Brit- 
tany. He  had  fish, 
dead  and  alive,  and 
fresh-water  mussels; 
he  could  easily  catch 
fish  with  his  hands 
and  paddle  and  dive 
for  and  trap  them. 
By  the  seaside  he 
would  have  fish,  mol- 
lusca,  and  seaweed. 
He  would  have  many 
of  the  larger  birds 
and  smaller  mam- 
mals, which  he  could  easily  secure  by  throwing  stones  and  sticks, 
or  by  setting  simple  snares.  He  would  have  the  snake,  the 
slow  worm,  and  the  crayfish.  He  would  have  various  grubs 
and  insects,  the  large  Iarva3  of  beetles  and  Various  cater- 
pillars. The  taste  for  caterpillars  still  survives  in  China,  where 
they  are  sold  in  dried  bundles  in  the  markets.  A  chief  and 
highly  nourishing  object  of  food  would  doubtlessly  be  bones 
smashed  up  into  a  stiff  and  gritty  paste. 

"A  fact  of  great  importance  is  this — primeval  man  would 
not  be  particular  about  having  his  flesh  food  over-fresh.  He 
would  constantly  find  it  in  a  dead  state,  and,  if  semi-putrid,  he 


THE  NEANDERTHAL  MEN  63 

would  relish  it  none  the  less — the  taste  for  high  or  half-putrid 
game  still  survives.  If  driven  by  hunger  and  hard  pressed,  he 
would  perhaps  sometimes  eat  his  weaker  companions  or  un- 
heahhy  children  who  happened  to  be  feeble  or  unsightly  or 
burthensome.  The  larger  animals  in  a  weak  and  dying  state 
would  no  doubt  be  much  sought  for ;  when  these  were  not  forth- 
coming, dead  and  half -rotten  examples  would  be  made  to  suffice. 
An  unpleasant  odour  would  not  be  objected  to;  it  is  not  ob- 
jected to  now  in  many  continental  hotels. 

"The  savages  sat  huddled  close  together  round  their  fire, 
with  fruits,  bones,  and  half-putrid  flesh.  We  can  imagine 
the  old  man  and  his  women  twitching  the  skin  of  their  shoul- 
ders, brows,  and  muzzles  as  they  were  annoyed  or  bitten  by 
flies  or  other  insects.  We  can  imagine  the  large  human  nostrils, 
indicative  of  keen  scent,  giving  rapidly  repeated  sniffs  at  the 
foul  meat  before  it  was  consumed ;  the  bad  odour  of  the  meat, 
and  the  various  other  disgusting  odours  belonging  to  a  haunt 
of  savages,  being  not  in  the  least  disapproved. 

"Man  at  that  time  was  not  a  degraded  animal,  for  he  had 
never  been  higher;  he  was  therefore  an  exalted  animal,  and, 
low  as  we  esteem  him  now,  he  yet  represented  the  highest 
stage  of  development  of  the  animal  kingdom  of  his  time." 

That  is  at  least  an  acceptable  sketch  of  a  Neanderthal  squat- 
ting-place.  But  before  extinction  overtook  them,  even  the  Nean- 
derthalers  learnt  much  and  went  far. 

Whatever  the  older  Palaeolithic  men  did  with  their  dead,  there 
is  reason  to  suppose  that  the  later  Homo  N  eanderthalensis 
buried  some  individuals  at  least  with  respect  and  ceremony. 
One  of  the  best-known  Neanderthal  skeletons  is  that  of  a  youth 
who  apparently  had  been  deliberately  interred.  He  had  been 
placed  in  a  sleeping  posture,  head  on  the  right  fore-arm.  The 
head  lay  on  a  number  of  flint  fragments  carefully  piled  to- 
gether "pillow  fashion."  A  big  hand-axe  lay  near  his  head, 
and  around  him  were  numerous  charred  and  split  ox  bones, 
as  though  there  had  been  a  feast  or  an  offering. 

To  this  appearance  of  burial  during  the  later  Neanderthal 
age  we  shall  return  when  we  are  considering  the  ideas  that  were 
inside  the  heads  of  primitive  men. 

This  sort  of  men  may  have  wandered,  squatted  about  their 
fires,  and  died  in  Europe  for  a  period  extending  over  100,000 
years,  if  we  assume,  that  is,  that  the  Heidelberg  jaw-bone 


64  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

belongs  to  a  member  of  the  species,  a  period  so  vast  that  all  the 
subsequent  history  of  our  race  becomes  a  thing  of  yesterday. 
Along  its  own  line  this  species  of  men  was  accumulating  a  dim 
tradition,  and  working  out  its  limited  possibilities.  Its  thick 
skull  imprisoned  its  brain,  and  to  the  end  it  was  low-browed 
and  brutish. 


IX 

THE  LATEK  POSTGLACIAL  PALAEOLITHIC  MEN, 
THE  FIRST  TRUE  MEN 

(Later  Palaeolithic  Age) 

§  1.  The  Coming  of  Men  Like  Ourselves.   §  2.  Hunters  Give 
Place  to  Herdsmen.  §  3.  No  Sub-Men  in  America. 


THE  Neanderthal  type  of  man  prevailed  in  Europe  at 
least  for  tens  of  thousands  of  years.  For  ages  that  make 
all  history  seem  a  thing  of  yesterday,  these  nearly  human 
creatures  prevailed.  If  the  Heidelberg  jaw  was  that  of  a 
Neanderthaler,  and  if  there  is  no  error  in  the  estimate  of  the 
age  of  that  jaw,  then  the  Neanderthal  Race  lasted  out  for  more 
than  200,000  years!  Finally,  between  40,000  and  25,000 
years  ago,  as  the  Fourth  Glacial  Age  softened  towards  more 
temperate  conditions  (see  Map  on  p.  68),  a  different  human 
type  came  upon  the  scene,  and,  it  would  seem,  exterminated 
Homo  Neanderthalensis.1  This  new  type  was  probably  de- 
veloped in  South  Asia  or  North  Africa,  or  in  lands  now  sub- 

irlhe  opinion  that  the  Neanderthal  race  (Homo  Neanderthalensis)  is 
an  extinct  species  which  did  not  interbreed  with  the  true  men  (Homo 
sapiens)  is  held  by  Professor  Osborn,  and  it  is  the  view  to  which  the 
writer  inclines  and  to  which  he  has  pointed  in  the  treatment  of  this 
section;  but  it  is  only  fair  to  the  reader  to  note  that  many  writers  do  not 
share  this  view.  They  write  and  speak  of  living  "Neanderthalers"  in 
contemporary  populations.  One  observer  has  written  in  the  past  of  such 
types  in  the  west  of  Ireland;  another  has  observed  them  in  Greece.  These 
so-called  "living  Neanderthalers"  have  neither  the  peculiarities  of  neck, 
thumb,  nor  teeth  that  distinguish  the  Neanderthal  race  of  pre-men.  The 
cheek  teeth  of  true  men,  for  instance,  have  what  we  call  fangs,  long  fangs; 
the  Neanderthaler's  cheek  tooth  is  a  more  complicated  and  specialized 
cheek  tooth,  a  long  tooth  with  short  fangs,  and  his  canine  teeth  were  less 
marked,  less  like  dog-teeth,  than  ours.  Nothing  could  show  more  clearly 
that  he  was  on  a  different  line  of  development.  We  must  remember  that 
so  far  only  western  Europe  has  been  properly  explored  for  Palaeolithic 

65 


66 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


merged  in  the  Mediterranean  basin,  and,  as  more  remains  are 
collected  and  evidence  accumulates,  men  will  learn  more  of 
their  early  stages.  At  present  we  can  only  guess  where  and 
how,  through  the  slow  ages,  parallel  with  the  Neanderthal 
cousin,  these  first  true  men  arose  out  of  some  more  ape-like 
progenitor.  For  hundreds  of  centuries  they  were  acquiring 
skill  of  hand  and  limb,  and  power  and  bulk  of  brain,  in  that 
still  unknown  environment.  They  were  already  far  above  the 
Neanderthal  level  of  achievement  and  intelligence,  when  first 

they  come  into  our 
ken,  and  they  had  al- 
ready split  into  two 
or  more  very  distinc- 
tive races. 

These  newcomers 
did  not  migrate  into 
Europe  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  word, 
but  rather,  as  cen- 
tury by  century  the 
climate  ameliorated, 
they  followed  the 
food  and  plants  to 
which  they  were  ac- 
customed, as  those 
spread  into  the  new 
realms  that  opened 
to  them.  The  ice  was  receding,  vegetation  was  increasing, 
big  game  of  all  sorts  was  becoming  more  abundant.  Steppe- 
like  conditions,  conditions  of  pasture  and  shrub,  were  bringing 
with  them  vast  herds  of  wild  horse.  Ethnologists  (students  of 
race)  class  these  new  human  races  in  one  same  species  as  our- 
selves, and  with  all  human  races  subsequent  to  them,  under  one 

remains,  and  that  practically  all  we  know  of  the  Neanderthal  species 
comes  from  that  area  (see  Map,  p.  56).  No  doubt  the  ancestor  of 
Homo  sapiens  (which  species  includes  the  Tasmanians)  was  a  very  similar 
and  parallel  creature  to  Homo  neanderthalensis.  And  we  are  not  so 
far  from  that  ancestor  as  to  have  eliminated  not  indeed  "Neanderthal," 
but  "JS'eanderthaloid"  types.  The  existence  of  such  types  no  more  proves 
that  the  Neanderthal  species,  the  makers  of  the  Chellean  and  Mousterian 
implements,  interbred  with  Homo  sapiens  in  the  European  area  than  do 
monkey-faced  people  testify  to  an  interbreeding  with  monkeys;  or  people 
with  faces  like  horses,  that  there  is  an  equine  strain  in  our  population. 


THE  FIRST  TRUE  MEN  67 

common  specific  name  of  Homo  sapiens.  They  had  quite  human 
brain-cases  and  hands.  Their  teeth  and  their  necks  were 
anatomically  as  ours  are. 

We  know  of  two  distinct  sorts  of  skeletal  remains  in  this 
period,  the  first  of  these  known  as  the  Cro-Magnon  race,  and 
the  second  the  Grimaldi  race ;  but  the  great  bulk  of  the  human 
traces  and  appliances  we  find  are  either  without  human  bones 
or  with  insufficient  bones  for  us  to  define  their  associated  phys- 
ical type.  There  may  have  been  many  more  distinct  races  than 
these  two.  There  may  have  been  intermediate  types.  In  the 
grotto  of  Cro-Magnon  it  was  that  complete  skeletons  of  one 
main  type  of  these  Newer  Paleolithic  men,  these  true  men, 
were  first  found,  and  so  it  is  that  they  are  spoken  of  as  Cro- 
Magnards. 

These  Cro-Magnards  were  a  tall  people  with  very  broad  faces, 
prominent  noses,  and,  all  things  considered,  astonishingly  big 
brains.  The  brain  capacity  of  the  woman  in  the  Cro-Magnon 
cave  exceeded  that  of  the  average  male  to-day.  Her  head  had 
been  smashed  by  a  heavy  blow.  There  were  also  in  the  same 
cave  with  her  the  complete  skeleton  of  an  older  man,  nearly  six 
feet  high,  the  fragments  of  a  child's  skeleton,  and  the  skeletons 
of  two  young  men.  There  were  also  flint  implements  and 
perforated  sea-shells,  used  no  doubt  as  ornaments.  Such  is  one 
sample  of  the  earliest  true  men.  But  at  the  Grimaldi  cave, 
near  Mentone,  were  discovered  two'  skeletons  also  of  the  later 
Paleolithic  Period,  but  of  a  widely  contrasted  type,  with, 
negroid  characteristics  that  point  rather  to  the  negroid  type. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  we  have  to  deal  in  this  period  with 
at  least  two,  and  probably  more,  highly  divergent  races  of  true 
men.  They  may  have  overlapped  in  time,  or  Cro-Magnards 
may  have  followed  the  Grimaldi  race,  and  either  or  both  may 
have  been  contemporary  with  the  late  Neanderthal  men.  Vari- 
ous authorities  have  very  strong  opinions  upon  these  points, 
but  they  are,  at  most,  opinions. 

The  appearance  of  these  truly  human  postglacial  Paleolithic 
peoples  was  certainly  an  enormous  leap  forward  in  the  history 
of  mankind.  Both  of  these  main  races  had  a  human  fore- 
brain,  a  human  hand,  an  intelligence  very  like  our  own.  They 
dispossessed  Homo  NcandertJialensis  from  his  caverns  and  his 
stone  quarries.  And  they  agreed  with  modern  ethnologists,  it 
would  seem,  in  regarding  him  as  a  different  species.  Unlike 


68 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  FIRST  TRUE  MEN 


69 


most  savage  conquerors,  who  take  the  women  of  the  defeated 
side  for  their  own  and  interbreed  with  them,  it  would  seem  that 
the  true  men  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  Neanderthal 


"Sane  points 


Australian  nahx&s* 
method  of  using 
th^cwing-stick  or 
apear-throiver 


(reindeer  horn) 


race,  women  or  men.  There  is  no  trace  of  any  intermixture 
between  the  races,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  newcomers,  being 
also  flint  users,  were  establishing  themselves  in  the  very  same 
spots  that  their  predecessors  had  occupied.  We  know  nothing 


70  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  the  appearance  of  the  Neanderthal  man,  but  this  absence  of 
intermixture  seems  to  suggest  an  extreme  hairiness,  an  ugliness, 
or  a  repulsive  strangeness  in  his  appearance  over  and  above  his 
low  forehead,  his  beetle  brows,  his  ape  neek,  and  his  inferior 
stature.  Or  he — and  she — may  have  been  too  fierce  to  tame. 
Says  Sir  Harry  Johnston,  in  a  survey  of  the  rise  of  modern 
man  in  his  Views  and  Reviews:  "The  dim  racial  remembrance 
of  such  gorilla-like  monsters,  with  cunning  brains,  shambling 
gait,  hairy  bodies,  strong  teeth,  and  possibly  cannibalistic  tend- 
encies, may  be  the  germ  of  the  ogre  in  folklore.  .  .  ." 

These  true  men  of  the  Paleolithic  Age,  who  replaced  the 
Neanderthalers,  were  coming  into  a  milder  climate,  and  al- 
though they  used  the  caves  and  shelters  of  their  predecessors, 
they  lived  largely  in  the  open.  They  were  hunting  peoples, 
and  some  or  all  of  them  appear  to  have  hunted  the  mammoth 
and  the  wild  horse  as  well  as  the  reindeer,  bison,  and  aurochs. 
They  ate  much  horse.  At  a  great  open-air  camp  at  Solutre, 
where  they  seem  to  have  had  annual  gatherings  for  many  cen- 
turies, it  is  estimated  that  there  are  the  bones  of  100,000  horses, 
besides  reindeer,  mammoth,  and  bison  bones.  They  probably 
followed  herds  of  horses,  the  little  bearded  ponies  of  that  age, 
as  these  moved  after  pasture.  They  hung  about  on  the  flanks 
of  the  herd,  and  became  very  wise  about  its  habits  and  disposi- 
tions. A  large  part  of  these  men's  lives  must  have  been  spent 
in  watching  animals. 

Whether  they  tamed  and  domesticated  the  horse  is  still  an 
open  question.  Perhaps  they  learnt  to  do  so  by  degrees  as  the 
centuries  passed.  At  any  rate,  we  find  late  Paleolithic  draw- 
ings of  horses  with  marks  about  the  heads  that  are  strongly 
suggestive  of  bridles,  and  there  exists  a  carving  of  a  horse's 
head  showing  what  is  perhaps  a  rope  of  twisted  skin  or  tendon. 
But  even  if  they  tamed  the  horse,  it  is  still  more  doubtful 
whether  they  rode  it  or  had  much  use  for  it  when  it  was  tamed. 
The  horse  they  knew  was  a  wild  pony  with  a  beard  under  its 
chin,  not  up  to  carrying  a  man  for  any  distance.  It  is  improb- 
able that  these  men  had  yet  learnt  the  rather  unnatural  use  of 
animal's  milk  as  food.  If  they  tamed  the  horse  at  last,  it 
was  the  only  animal  they  seem  to  have  tamed.  They  had  no 
dogs,  and  they  had  little  to  do  with  any  sort  of  domesticated 
sheep  or  cattle. 

It  greatly  aids  us  to  realize  their  common  humanity  that 


THE  FIRST  TRUE  MEN  71 

these  earliest  true  men  could  draw.  Both  races,  it  would  seem, 
drew  astonishingly  well.  They  were  by  all  standards  savages, 
but  they  were  artistic  savages.  They  drew  better  than  any  of 
their  successors  down  to  the  beginnings  of  history.  They  drew 
and  painted  on  the  cliffs  and  cave  walls  th#t  they  had  wrested 
from  the  Neanderthal  men.  And  the  surviving  drawings  come 
to  the  ethnologist,  puzzling  over  bones  and  scraps,  with  the 
effect  of  a  plain  message  shining  through  guesswork  and  dark- 
ness. They  drew  on  bones  and  antlers;  they  carved  little 
figures. 

These  later  Palaeolithic  people  not  only  drew  remarkably  well 
for  our  information,  and  with  an  increasing  skill  as  the  cen- 
turies passed,  but  they  have  also  left  us  other  information  about 
their  lives  in  their  graves.  They  buried.  They  buried  their 
dead,  often  with  ornaments,  weapons,  and  food;  they  used  a 
lot  of  colour  in  the  burial,  and  evidently  painted  the  body. 
From  that  one  may  infer  that  they  painted  their  bodies  during 
life.  Paint  was  a  big  fact  in  their  lives.  They  were  inveterate 
painters;  they  used  black,  brown,  red,  yellow,  and  white  pig- 
ments,  and  the  pigments  they  used  endure  to  this  day  in  the 
caves  of  France  and  Spain.  Of  all  modern  races,  none  have 
shown  so  pictorial  a  disposition ;  the  nearest  approach  to  it  has 
been  among  the  American  Indians. 

These  drawings  and  paintings  of  the  later  Palaeolithic  people 
went  on  through  a  long  period  of  time,  and  present  wide  fluctua- 
tions in  artistic  merit.  We  give  here  some  early  sketches,  from 
which  we  learn  of  the  interest  taken  by  these  early  men  in  the 
bison,  horse,  ibex,  cave  bear,  and  reindeer.  In  its  early  stages 
the  drawing  is  often  primitive  like  the  drawing  of  clever  chil- 
dren; quadrupeds  are  usually  drawn  with  one  hind-leg  and 
one  fore-leg,  as  children  draw  them  to  this  day.  The  legs  on 
the  other  side  were  too  much  for  the  artist's  technique.  Possi- 
bly the  first  drawings  began  as  children's  drawings  begin,  out 
of  idle  scratchings.  The  savage  scratched  with  a  flint  on  a 
smooth  rock  surface,  and  was  reminded  of  some  line  or  gesture. 
But  their  solid  carvings  are  at  least  as  old  as  their  first  pic- 
tures. The  earlier  drawings  betray  a  complete  incapacity  to 
group  animals.  As  the  centuries  progressed,  more  skilful  artists 
appeared.  The  representation  of  beasts  became  at  last  astonish- 
ingly vivid  and  like.  But  even  at  the  crest  of  their  artistic 
time  they  still  drew  in  profile  as  children  do;  perspective  and 


72  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  fore-shortening  needed  for  back  and  front  views  were  too 
much  for  them.1  They  rarely  drew  themselves.  The  vast 
majority  of  their  drawings  represent  animals.  The  mammoth 
and  the  horse  are  among  the  commonest  themes.  Some  of  the 
people,  whether  Grimaldi  people  or  Cro-Magnon  people,  also 
made  little  ivory  and  soapstone  statuettes,  and  among  these  are 
some  very  fat  female  figures.  These  latter  suggest  the  physique 
of  Grimaldi  rather  than  of  Cro-Magnon  artists.  They  are  like 


dT.F1.KX. 


*Paiirhna  in  -four  colours    (Gave  ofAJtamirvL ,  Spain) 


Bushmen  women.  The  human  sculpture  of  the  earlier  times 
inclined  to  caricature,  and  generally  such  human  figures  as 
they  represent  are  far  below  the  animal  studies  in  vigour  and 
veracity. 

Later  on  there  was  more  grace  and  less  coarseness  in  the 
human  representations.  One  little  ivory  head  discovered  is 
that  of  a  girl  with  an  elaborate  coiffure.  These  people  at  a 
later  stage  also  scratched  and  engraved  designs  on  ivory  and 
bone.  Some  of  the  most  interesting  groups  of  figures  are 

1R.  I.  Pocock. 


THE  FIRST  TRUE  MEN  73 

carved  very  curiously  round  bone,  and  especially  round  rods 
of  deer  bone,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to  see  the  entire  design 


Stag  and  salmon. 
gruxmvcd-  on 
rdndeerluani 


u        o 

•^—-      Snorraved 
Stone... 


"Head,  of  A  woman,  carved  in- 


altogether.     Figures  have  also  been  found  modelled  in  clay, 
although  no  Palaeolithic  people  made  any  use  of  pottery. 

Many  of  the   paintings  are  found  in  the  depths  of  unlit 
caves.     They  are  often  difficult  of  access.     The  artists  must 


74  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

have  employed  lamps  to  do  their  work,  and  shallow  soapstone 
lamps  in  which  fat  could  have  been  burnt  have  been  found. 
Whether  the  seeing  of  these  cavern  paintings  was  in  some  way 
ceremonial  or  under  what  circumstances  they  were  seen,  we 
are  now  altogether  at  a  loss  to  imagine. 

At  last  it  would  seem  that  circumstances  began  to  turn  alto- 
gether against  these  hunting  Newer  Palaeolithic  people  who  had 
flourished  for  so  long  in  Europe.  They  disappeared.  New 
kinds  of  men  appeared  in  Europe,  replacing  them.  These 
latter  seem  to  have  brought  in  bow  and  arrows;  they  had  do- 
mesticated animals  and  cultivated  the  soil.  A  new  way  of 
living,  the  Neolithic  way  of  living,  spread  over  the  European 
area ;  and  the  life  of  the  Reindeer  Age  and  of  the  races  of  Rein- 
deer men,  the  Later  Palaeolithic  men,  after  a  reign  vastly  greater 
than  the  time  between  ourselves  and  the  very  earliest  begin- 
nings of  recorded  history,  passed  off  the  European  stage. 


It  was  about  12,000  or  fewer  years  ago  that,  with  the  spread 
of  forests  and  a  great  change  of  the  fauna,  the  long  prevalence 
of  the  hunting  life  in  Europe  drew  to  its  end.  Reindeer  van- 
ished. Changing  conditions  frequently  bring  with  them  new 
diseases.  There  may  have  been  prehistoric  pestilences.  For 
many  centuries  there  may  have  been  no  men  in  Britain  or 
Central  Europe  (Wright).  For  a  time  there  were  in  Southern 
Europe  drifting  communities  of  some  little  known  people  who 
are  called  the  Azilians.1  They  may  have  been  transition  gen- 
erations; they  may  have  been  a  different  race.  We  do  not 
know.  Some  authorities  incline  to  the  view  that  the  Azilians 
were  the  first  wave  of  a  race  which,  as  we  shall  see  later,  has 
played  a  great  part  in  populating  Europe,  the  dark-white  or 
Mediterranean  or  Iberian  race.  These  Azilian  people  have 
left  behind  them  a  multitude  of  pebbles,  roughly  daubed  with 
markings  of  an  unknown  purport  (see  illus.  p.  73).  The  use  or 
significance  of  these  Azilian  pebbles  is  still  a  profound  mystery. 
Was  this  some  sort  of  token  writing?  Were  they  counters  in 
some  game  ?  Did  the  Azilians  play  with  these  pebbles  or  tell  a 
story  with  them,  as  imaginative  children  will  do  with  bits  of 

1  From  the  cavq  of  Mas  d'Azil. 


THE  FIRST  TRUE  MEN  75 

wood  and  stone  nowadays  ?    At  present  we  are  unable  to  cope 
with  any  of  these  questions. 

We  will  not  deal  here  with  the  other  various  peoples  who 
left  their  scanty  traces  in  the  world  during  the  close  of  the 
New  Palaeolithic  period,  the  spread  of  the  forests  where  for- 
merly there  had  been  steppes,  and  the  wane  of  the  hunters, 
some  10,000  or  12,000  years  ago.  We  will  go  on  to  describe 
the  new  sort  of  human  community  that  was  now  spreading  over 
the  northern  hemisphere,  whose  appearance  marks  what  is  called 
the  Neolithic  Age.  The  map  of  the  world  was  assuming  some- 
thing like  its  present  outlines,  the  landscape  and  the  flora  and 
fauna  were  taking  on  their  existing  characteristics.  The  pre- 
vailing animals  in  the  spreading  woods  of  Europe  were  the  royal 
stag,  the  great  ox,  and  the  bison ;  the  mammoth  and  the  musk 
ox  had  gone.  The  great  ox,  or  aurochs,  is  now  extinct,  but  it 
survived  in  the  German  forests  up  to  the  time  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  It  was  never  domesticated.1  It  stood  eleven  feet 
high  at  the  shoulder,  as  high  as  an  elephant.  There  were  still 
lions  in  the  Balkan  peninsula,  and  they  remained  there  until 
about  1,000  or  1,200  B.C.  The  lions  of  Wiirtemberg  and  South 
Germany  in  those  days  were  twice  the  size  of  the  modern  lion. 
South  Russia  and  Central  Asia  were  thickly  wooded  then,  and 
there  were  elephants  in  Mesopotamia  and  Syria,  and  a  fauna 
in  Algeria  that  was  tropical  African  in  character. 

Hitherto  men  in  Europe  had  never  gone  farther  north  than 
the  Baltic  Sea  or  the  British  Isles,  but  now  the  Scandinavian 
peninsula  and  perhaps  Great  Russia  were  becoming  possible 
regions  for  human  occupation.  There  are  no  Paleolithic  re 
mains  in  Sweden  or  Norway.  Man,  when  he  entered  these 
countries,  was  apparently  already  at  the  Neolithic  stage  of 
social  development. 

§  3 

Nor  is  there  any  convincing  evidence  of  man  in  America 
before  the  end  of  the  Pleistocene.2  The  same  relaxation  of  the 

1  But   our   domestic    cattle   are  derived    from    some    form    of   aurochs — 
probably  from  some  lesser  Central  Asiatic  variety. — H.  H.  J. 

2  "The  various   finds   of  human   remains   in   North  America   for   which 
the  geological  antiquity  has  been  claimed  have  been  thus  briefly  passed 
under  review.     In  every  instance  where  enough  of  the  bones  is  preserved 
for  comparison,  the  evidence  bears  witness  against  the  geological  antiquity 
of  the  remains  and  for  their  close  affinity  to  or  identity  with  the  modern 


76  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

climate  that  permitted  the  retreat  of  the  reindeer  hunters  into 
Russia  and  Siberia,  as  the  Neolithic  tribes  advanced,  may  have 
allowed  them  to  wander  across  the  land  that  is  now  cut  by 
Bering  Strait,  and  so  reach  the  American  continent.  They 
spread  thence  southward,  age  by  age.  When  they  reached 
South  America,  they  found  the  giant  sloth  (the  Megatherium), 
the  glyptodon,  and  many  other  extinct  creatures,  still  flourish- 
ing. The  glyptodon  was  a  monstrous  South  American  arma- 
dillo, and  a  human  skeleton  has  been  found  by  Roth  buried 
beneath  its  huge  tortoise-like  shell.  1 

All  the  human  remains  in  America,  even  the  earliest,  it  is 
to  be  noted,  are  of  an  Amer-Indian  character.  In  America 
there  does  not  seem  to  have  been  any  preceding  races  of  sub- 
men.  Man  was  fully  man  when  he  entered  America.  The  old 
world  was  the  nursery  of  the  sub-races  of  mankind. 

Indian."  (Smithsonian  Institute,  Bureau  of  American  Ethnology,  Bul- 
letin 33.  Dr.  Hrdlicka.) 

But  J.  Deniker  quotes  evidence  to  show  that  eoliths  and  early  palseoliths 
have  been  found  in  America.  See  his  compact  but  full  summary  of  the 
evidence  and  views  for  and  against  in  his  Races*  of  Man,  pp.  510,  511. 

*  "Questioned  by  some  authorities,"  says  J.  Deniker  in  The  Races  of  Man. 


X 

NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE 

1.  The  Age  of  Cultivation  Begins.  §  2.  Where  Did  the 
Neolithic  Culture  Arise?  §  3.  Everyday  Neolithic  Life. 
§  4.  Primitive  Trade.  §  5.  The  Flooding  of  the  Medi- 
terranean Valley. 


THE  Neolithic  phase  of  human  affairs  began  in  Europe 
about  10,000  or  12,000  years  ago.     But  probably  men 
had  reached  the  Neolithic  stage  elsewhere  some  thou- 
sands of  years  earlier.    Neolithic  men  came  slowly  into  Europe 
from  the  south   or   south-east  as  the  reindeer  and  the  open 
steppes  gave  way  to  forest  and  modern  European  conditions. 

The  Neolithic  stage  in  culture  is  characterized  by:  (1)  the 
presence  of  polished  stone  implements,  and  in  particular  the 
stone  axe,  which  was  perforated  so  as  to  be  the  more  effectually 
fastened  to  a  wooden  handle,  and  which  was  probably  used 
rather  for  working  wood  than  in  conflict.  There  are  also  abun- 
dant arrow-heads.  The  fact  that  some  implements  are  polished 
does  not  preclude  the  presence  of  great  quantities  of  implements 
of  unpolished  stone.  But  there  are  differences  in  the  make 
between  even  the  unpolished  tools  of  the  Neolithic  and  of  the 
Palaeolithic  Period.  (2)  The  beginning  of  a  sort  of  agricul- 
ture, and  the  use  of  plants  and  seeds.  But  at  first  there  are 
abundant  evidences  that  hunting  was  still  of  great  importance 
in  the  Neolithic  Age.  Neolithic  man  did  not  at  first  sit  down 
to  his  agriculture.  He  took  snatch  crops.  He  settled  later. 

(3)  Pottery  and  proper  cooking.     The  horse  is  no  longer  eaten. 

(4)  Domesticated  animals.     The  dog  appears  very  early.    The 
Neolithic  man  had  domesticated  cattle,  sheep,  goats,  and  pigs. 

77 


78  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

lie  was  a  huntsman  turned  herdsman  of  the  herds  he  once 
hunted.  (5)  Plaiting  and  weaving. 

These  Neolithic  people  probably  "migrated"  into  Europe, 
in  the  same  way  that  the  Reindeer  Men  had  migrated  before 
them;  that  is  to  say,  generation  by  generation  and  century  by 
century,  as  the  climate  changed,  they  spread  after  their  accus- 
tomed food.  They  were  not  "nomads."  Nomadism,  like  civili- 
zation, had  still  to  be  developed.  At  present  we  are  quite  un- 
able to  estimate  how  far  the  Neolithic  peoples  were  new-comers 
and  how  far  their  arts  were  developed  or  acquired  by  the  de- 
scendants of  some  of  the  hunters  and  fishers  of  the  Later 
Paleolithic  Age. 

Whatever  our  conclusions  in  that  matter,  this  much  we  may 
say  with  certainty ;  there  is  no  great  break,  no  further  sweeping 
away  of  one  kind  of  man  and  replacement  by  another  kind  be- 
tween the  appearance  of  the  Neolithic  way  of  living  and  our 
own  time.  There  are  invasions,  conquests,  extensive  emigra- 
tions and  intermixtures,  but  the  races  as  a  whole  carry  on  and 
continue  to  adapt  themselves  to  the  areas  into  which  they  began 
to  settle  in  the  opening  of  the  Neolithic  Age.  The  Neolithic 
men  of  Europe  were  white  men  ancestral  to  the  modern  Euro- 
peans. They  may  have  been  of  a  darker  complexion  than  many 
of  their  descendants;  of  that  we  cannot  speak  with  certainty. 
But  there  is  no  real  break  in  culture  from  their  time  onward 
until  we  reach  the  age  of  coal,  steam,  and  power-driven  ma- 
chinery that  began  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

After  a  long  time  gold,  the  first  known  of  the  metals,  appears 
among  the  bone  ornaments  with  jet  and  amber.  Irish  Neolithic 
remains  are  particularly  rich  in  gold.  Then,  perhaps  6,000 
or  7,000  years  ago  in  Europe,  Neolithic  people  began  to  use 
copper  in  certain  centres,  making  out  of  it  implements  of  much 
the  same  pattern  as  their  stone  ones.  They  cast  the  copper  in 
moulds  made  to  the  shape  of  the  stone  implements.  Possibly 
they  first  found  native  copper  and  hammered  it  into  shape.1 
Later — we  will  not  venture  upon  figures — men  had  found  out 
how  to  get  copper  from  its  ore.  Perhaps,  as  Lord  Avebury  sug- 
gested, they  discovered  the  secret  of  smelting  by  the  chance  put- 
ting of  lumps  of  copper  ore  among  the  ordinary  stones  with 
which  they  built  the  fire  pits  they  used  for  cooking.  In  China, 

1  Native  copper  is  still  found  to-day  in  Italy,  Hungary,  Cornwall,  and 
many  other  places. 


NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE 


79 


Hungary,  Cornwall,  and  elsewhere  copper  ore  and  tinstone 
occur  in  the  same  veins ;  it  is  a  very  common  association,  and 
so,  rather  through  dirtiness  than  skill,  the  ancient  smelters,  it 


Implements 

(drawn  to 


Axe-hammers- 

cff*  polished  stone. 


may  be,  hit  upon  the  harder  and  better  bronze,  which  is  an 
alloy  of  copper  and  tin.  Bronze  is  not  only  harder  than  copper, 
but  the  mixture  of  tin  and  copper  is  more  fusible  and  easier  to 
reduce.  The  so-called  "pure-copiper"  implements  usually  con- 


80  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tain  a  small  proportion  of  tin,  and  there  are  no  tin  implements 
known,  nor  very  much  evidence  to  show  that  early  men  knew 
of  tin  as  a  separate  metal.1  2  The  plant  of  a  prehistoric  copper 
smelter  has  been  found  in  Spain,  and  the  material  of  bronze 
foundries  in  various  localities.  The  method  of  smelting  re- 
vealed by  these  finds  carries  out  Lord  Avebury's  suggestion. 
In  India,  where  zinc  and  copper  ore  occur  together,  brass 
(which  is  an  alloy  of  the  two  metals)  was  similarly  hit  upon. 

So  slight  was  the  change  in  fashions  and  methods  produced 
by  the  appearance  of  bronze,  that  for  a  long  time  such  bronze 
axes  and  so  forth  as  were  made  were  cast  in  moulds  to  the  shape 
of  the  stone  implements  they  were  superseding. 

Finally,  perhaps  as  early  as  3,000  years  ago  in  Europe,  and 
even  earlier  in  Asia  Minor,  men  began  to  smelt  iron.  Once 
smelting  was  known  to  men,  there  is  no  great  marvel  in  the 
finding  of  iron.  They  smelted  iron  by  blowing  up  a  charcoal 
fire,  and  wrought  it  by  heating  and  hammering.  They  produced 
it  at  first  in  comparatively  small  pieces ; 3  its  appearance 
worked  a  gradual  revolution  in  weapons  and  implements;  but  it 
did  not  suffice  to  change  the  general  character  of  men's  sur- 
roundings. Much  the  same  daily  life  that  was  being  led  by 
the  more  settled  Neolithic  men  10,000  years  ago,  was  being  led 
by  peasants  in  out-of-the-way  places  all  over  Europe  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  eighteenth  century. 

People  talk  of  the  Stone  Age,  the  Bronze  Age,  and  the  Iron 
Age  in  Europe,  but  it  is  misleading  to  put  these  ages  as  if  they 
were  of  equal  importance  in  history.  Much  truer  is  it  to  say 
that  there  was: 

(1)  An  Early  Palaeolithic  Age,  of  vast  duration;  (2)  a 
Later  Palceolithic  Age,  that  lasted  not  a  tithe  of  the  time;  and 

*Ridgeway  (Early  Age  of  Greece)  says  a  lump  of  tin  has  been  found 
in  the  Swiss  pile-dwelling  deposits. 

3  Tin  was  known  as  a  foreign  import  in  Egypt  under  the  XVIIIth 
Dynasty;  there  is  (rare)  Mycenaan  tin,  and  there  are  (probably  later, 
but  not  clearly  dated)  tin  objects  in  the  Caucasus.  But  it  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  distinguish  tin  from  antimony.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  Cyprus 
bronze  which  contains  antimony;  a  good  deal  which  seems  to  be  tin  is 
antimony — the  ancients  trying  to  get  tin,  but  actually  getting  antimony 
and  thinking  it  was  tin. — J.  L.  M. 

aln  connection  with  iron,  note  the  distinction  of  ornamental  and  useful 
iron.  Ornamental  iron,  a  rarity,  perhaps  meteoric,  as  jewellery  or  magical 
stuff,  occurs  in  east  Europe  sporadically  in  the  time  of  the  XVIIIth 
Dynasty.  This  must  be  distinguished  from  the  copious  useful  iron 
which  appears  in  Greece  much  later  from  the  North. — J.  \*.  M, 


NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE  81 

(3)  the  Age  of  Cultivation,  the  age  of  the  white  men  in  Europe, 
which  began  10,000  or  at  most  12,000  years  ago,  of  which  the 
Neolithic  Period  was  the  beginning,  and  which  is  still  going  on. 

§  2 

We  do  not  know  yet  the  region  in  which  the  ancestors  of  the 
brownish  Neolithic  peoples  worked  their  way  up  from  the 
Palaeolithic  stage  of  human  development.  Probably  it  was  some- 
where about  south-western  Asia,  or  in  some  region  now  sub- 
merged beneath  the  Mediterranean  Sea  or  the  Indian  Ocean, 
that,  while  the  Neanderthal  men  still  lived  their  hard  lives  in 
the  bleak  climate  of  a  glaciated  Europe,  the  ancestors  of  the 
white  men  developed  the  rude  arts  of  their  Later  Palaeolithic 
period.  But  they  do  not  seem  to  have  developed  the  artistic 
skill  of  their  more  northerly  kindred,  the  European  Later 
Palaeolithic  races.  And  through  the  hundred  centuries  or  so 
while  Reindeer  men  were  living  under  comparatively  unprogres- 
sive  conditions  upon  the  steppes  of  France,  Germany,  and 
Spain,  these  more  favoured  and  progressive  people  to  the  south 
were  mastering  agriculture,  learning  to  develop1  their  appli- 
ances, taming  the  dog,  domesticating  cattle,  and,  as  the  climate 
to  the  north  mitigated  and  the  equatorial  climate  grew  more 
tropical,  spreading  northward.  All  these  early  chapters  of 
our  story  have  yet  to  be  disinterred.  They  will  probably  be 
found  in  Asia  Minor,  Persia,  Arabia,  India,  or  north  Africa, 
or  they  lie  beneath  the  Mediterranean  waters.  Twelve  thou- 
sand years  ago,  or  thereabouts — we  are  still  too  early  for  any- 
thing but  the  roughest  chronology — Neolithic  peoples  were  scat- 
tered all  over  Europe,  north  Africa,  and  Asia.  They  were 
peoples  at  about  the  level  of  many  of  the  Polynesian  islanders 
of  the  last  century,  and  they  were  the  most  advanced  peoples 
in  the  world. 

§  3 

It  will  be  of  interest  here  to  give  a  brief  account  of  the  life 
of  the  European  Neolithic  people  before  the  appearance  of 
metals.  We  get  our  light  upon  that  life  from  various  sources. 
They  scattered  their  refuse  about,  and  in  some  places  (e.g.  on 
the  Danish  coast)  it  accumulated  in  great  heaps,  known  as  the 
kitchen-middens.  They  buried  some  of  their  people,  but  not 


82 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


the  common  herd,  with  great  care  and  distinction,  and  made 
huge  heaps  of  earth  over  their  sepulchres;  these  heaps  are  the 
barrows  or  dolmens  which  contribute  a  feature  to  the  Euro- 
pean, Indian,  and  American  scenery  in  many  districts  to  this 
day.  In  connection  with  these  mounds,  or  independently  of 
them,  they  set  up  great  stones  (megaliths),  either  singly  or 
in  groups,  of  which  Stonehenge  in  Wiltshire  and  Carnac  in 
Brittany  are  among  the  best-known  examples.  In  various 
places  their  villages  are  still  traceable. 

One  fruitful  source  of  knowledge  about  Neolithic  life  comes 
from  Switzerland,  and  was  first  revealed  by  the  very  dry  winter 
of  1854,  when  the  water  level  of  one  of  the  lakes,  sinking  to 
an  unheard-of  lowness,  revealed  the  foundations  of  prehistoric 


Petbartr  from  Lake 


pile  dwellings  of  the  Neolithic  and  early  Bronze  Ages,  built 
out  over  the  water  after  the  fashion  of  similar  homes  that  exist 
to-day  in  Celebes  and  elsewhere.  Not  only  were  the  timbers 
of  those  ancient  platforms  preserved,  but  a  great  multitude  of 
wooden,  bone,  stone,  and  earthenware  utensils  and  ornaments, 
remains  of  food  and  the  like,  were  found  in  the  peaty  accumu- 
lations below  them.  Even  pieces  of  net  and  garments  have 
been  recovered.  Similar  lake  dwellings  existed  in  Scotland, 
Ireland,  and  elsewhere — there  are  well-known  remains  at  Glas- 
tonbury  in  Somersetshire;  in  Ireland  lake  dwellings  were  in- 
habited from  prehistoric  times  up  to  the  days  when  O'Neil  of 
Tyrone  was  fighting  against  the  English  before  the  plantation 
of  Scotch  colonists  to  replace  the  Irish  in  Ulster  in  the  reign 
of  James  I  of  England.  These  lake  villages  had  considerable 
defensive  value,  and  there  was  a  sanitary  advantage  in  living 
over  flowing  water. 


NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE  83 

Probably  these  Neolithic  Swiss  pile  dwellings  did  not  shelter 
the  largest  comrmmities  that  existed  in  those  days.  They  were 
the  homes  of  small  patriarchal  groups.  Elsewhere  upon  fertile 
plains  and  in  more  open  country  there  were  probably  already 
much  larger  assemblies  of  homes  than  in  those  mountain  valleys. 
There  are  traces  of  such  a  large  community  of  families  in  Wilt- 
shire in  England,  for  example;  the  remains  of  the  stone  circle 
of  Avebury  near  Silbury  mound  were  once  the  "finest  mega- 
lithic  ruin  in  Europe."  It  consisted  of  two  circles  of  stones 
surrounded  by  a  larger  circle  and  a  ditch,  and  covering  alto- 
gether twenty-eight  and  a  half  acres.  From  it  two  avenues  of 
stones,  each  a  mile  and  a  half  long,  ran  west  and  south  on  either 
side  of  Silbury  Hill.  Silbury  Hill  is  the  largest  prehistoric 
artificial  mound  in  England.  The  dimensions  of  this  centre  of 
a  faith  and  a  social  life  now  forgotten  altogether  by  men  indi- 
cate the  concerted  efforts  and  interests  of  a  very  large  number 
of  people,  widely  scattered  though  they  may  have  been  over 
the  west  and  south  and  centre  of  England.  Possibly  they  as- 
sembled at  some  particular  season  of  the  year  in  a  primitive 
sort  of  fair.  The  whole  community  "lent  a  hand"  in  building 
the  mounds  and  hauling  the  stones.  The  Swiss  pile  dwellers, 
on  the  contrary,  seem  to  have  lived  in  practically  self-contained 
villages. 

These  lake-village  people  were  considerably  more  advanced 
in  methods  and  knowledge,  and  probably  much  later  in  time 
than  the  early  Neolithic  people  who  accumulated  the  shell 
mounds,  known  as  kitchen-middens,  on  the  Danish  and  Scotch 
coasts.  These  kitchen-midden  folk  may  have  been  as  early  as 
10,000  B.C.  or  earlier;  the  lake  dwellings  were  probably  occu- 
pied continuously  from  5,000  or  4,000  B.C.  down  almost  to  his- 
toric times.  Those  early  kitchen-midden  people  were  among 
the  most  barbaric  of  Neolithic  peoples,  their  stone  axes  were 
rough,  and  they  had  no  domesticated  animal  except  the  dog. 
The  lake  dwellers,  on  the  other  hand,  had,  in  addition  to  the 
dog,  which  was  of  a  medium-sized  breed,  oxen,  goats,  and  sheep. 
Later  on,  as  they  were  approaching  the  Bronze  Age,  they  got 
swine.  The  remains  of  cattle  and  goats  prevail  in  their  debris, 
and,  having  regard  to  the  climate  and  country  about  them,  it 
seems  probable  that  these  beasts  were  sheltered  in  the  buildings 
upon  the  piles  in  winter,  and  that  fodder  was  stored  for  them. 
Probably  the  beasts  lived  in  the  same  houses  with  the  people, 


84,  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

as  the  men  and  beasts  do  now  in  Swiss  chalets.  The  people 
in  the  houses  possibly  milked  the  cows  and  goats,  and  milk  per- 
haps played  as  important  a  part  in  their  economy  as  it  does 
in  that  of  the  mountain  Swiss  of  to-day.  But  of  that  we  are 
not  sure  at  present.  Milk  is  not  a  natural  food  for  adults;  it 
must  have  seemed  queer  stuff  to  take  at  first ;  and  it  may  have 
been  only  after  much  breeding  that  a  continuous  supply  of 
milk  was  secured  from  cows  and  goats.  Some  people  think  that 
the  use  of  milk,  cheese,  butter,  and  other  milk  products  came 
later  into  human  life  when  men  became  nomadic.  The  writer 
is,  however,  disposed  to  give  the  Neolithic  men  credit  for  hav- 
ing discovered  milking.  The  milk,  if  they  did  use  it  (and, 
no  doubt,  in  that  case  sour  curdled  milk  also,  but  not  well- 
made  cheese  and  butter),  they  must  have  kept  in  earthenware 
pots,  for  they  had  pottery,  though  it  was  roughly  hand-made 
pottery  and  not  the  shapely  product  of  the  potter's  wheel.  They 
eked  out  this  food  supply  by  hunting.  They  killed  and  ate 
red  deer  and  roe  deer,  bison  and  wild  boar.  And  they  ate  the 
fox,  a  rather  high-flavoured  meat,  and  not  what  any  one  would 
eat  in  a  world  of  plenty.  Oddly  enough,  they  do  not  seem  to 
have  eaten  the  hare,  although  it  was  available  as  food. 
They  are  supposed  to  have  avoided  eating  it,  as  some  savages 
are  said  to  avoid  eating  it  to  this  day,  because  they  feared  that 
the  flesh  of  so  timid  a  creature  might  make  them,  by  a  sort  of 
infection,  cowardly.1 

Of  their  agricultural  methods  we  know  very  little.  No 
ploughs  and  no  hoes  have  been  found.  They  were  of  wood  and 
have  perished.  Neolithic  men  cultivated  and  ate  wheat,  barley, 
and  millet,  but  they  knew  nothing  of  oats  or  rye.  Their  grain 
they  roasted,  ground  between  stones  and  stored  in  pots,  to  be 
eaten  when  needed.  And  they  made  exceedingly  solid  and  heavy 
bread,  because  round  flat  slabs  of  it  have  been  got  out  of  these 
deposits.  Apparently  they  had  no  yeast.  If  they  had  no  yeast, 
then  they  had  no  fermented  drink.  One  sort  of  barley  that 
they  had  is  the  sort  that  was  cultivated  by  the  ancient  Greeks, 
Romans,  and  Egyptians,  and  they  also  had  an  Egyptian  variety 
of  wheat,  showing  that  their  ancestors  had  brought  or  derived 
this  cultivation  from  the  south-east.  The  centre  of  diffusion  of 
wheat  was  somewhere  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean  region.  A 

•Caesar    do  Bella    Gallico   says  the   Britons    tabooed   hare,    fowl,   and 
goose. — G.  Wh. 


NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE  85 

wild  form  is  still  found  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Mt.  Hermon 
(see  Footnote  to  Chap.  XIV,  §  1).  When  the  lake  dwellers 
sowed  their  little  patches  of  wheat  in  Switzerland,  they  were 
already  following  the  immemorial  practice  of  mankind.  The 
seed  must  have  been  brought  age  by  age  from  that  distant  centre 
of  diffusion.  In  the  ancestral  lands  of  the  south-east  men  had 
already  been  sowing  wheat  perhaps  for  thousands  of  years.1 
Those  lake  dwellers  also  ate  peas,  and  crab-apples  —  the  only 
apples  that  then  existed  in  the  world.  Cultivation  and  selection 
had  not  yet  produced  the  apple  of  to-day. 

They  dressed  chiefly  in  skins,  but  they  also  made  a  rough 
cloth  of  flax.  Fragments  of  that  flaxen  cloth  have  been  dis- 
covered. Their  nets  were  made  of  flax;  they  had  as  yet  no 
knowledge  of  hemp  and  hempen  rope.  With  the  coming  of 
bronze,  their  pins  and  ornaments  increased  in  number.  There 
is  reason  to  believe  they  set  great  store  upon  their  hair, 
wearing  it  in  large  shocks  with  pins  of  bone  and  afterwards 
6f  metal.  To  judge  from  the  absence  of  realistic  carvings  or 
engravings  or  paintings,  they  either  did  not  decorate  their  gar- 
ments or  decorated  them  with  plaids,  spots,  interlacing  designs, 
or  similar  conventional  ornament.  Before  the  coming  of  bronze 
there  is  no  evidence  of  stools  or  tables;  the  Neolithic  people 
probably  squatted  on  their  clay  floors.  There  were  no  cats  in 
these  lake  dwellings;  no  mice  or  rats  had  yet  adapted  them- 
selves to  human  dwellings  ;  the  cluck  of  the  hen  was  not  as  yet 
added  to  the  sounds  of  human  life,  nor  the  domestic  egg  to  its 
diet.2 

The  chief  tool  and  weapon  of  Neolithic  man  was  his  axe; 
his  next  the  bow  and  arrow.  His  arrow-heads  were  of  flint, 


Old  World  peoples  who  had  entered  upon  the  Neolithic  stage  grew 
and  ate  wheat,  but  the  American  Indians  must  have  developed  agriculture 
independently  in  America  after  their  separation  from  the  Old  World 
populations.  They  never  had  wheat.  Their  cultivation  was  maize,  In- 
dian corn,  a  New  World  grain. 

a  Poultry  and  hens'  eggs  were  late  additions  to  the  human  cuisine,  in 
spite  of  the  large  part  they  now  play  in  our  dietary.  The  hen  is  not 
mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament  (but  note  the  allusion  to  an  egg,  Job 
vi,  6)  nor  by  Homer.  Up  to  about  1,500  B.C.  the  only  fowls  in  the  world 
were  jungle  denizens  in  India  and  Burmah.  The  crowing  of  jungle  cocks 
is  noted  by  Glasfurd  in  his  admirable  accounts  of  tiger  shooting  as  the 
invariable  preliminary  of  dawn  in  the  Indian  jungle.  Probably  poultry 
were  first  domesticated  in  Burmah.  They  got  to  China,  according  to  the 
records,  only  about  1,100  B.C.  They  reached  Greece  via  Persia  before  the 
time  of  Socrates.  In  the  New  Testament  the  crowning  of  the  cock  re- 
proaches Peter  for  his  desertion  of  the  Master. 


86  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

beautifully  made,  and  he  lashed  them  tightly  to  their  shafts. 
Probably  he  prepared  the  ground  for  his  sowing  with  a  pole, 
or  a  pole  upon  which  he  had  stuck  a  stag's  horn.  Fish  he 
hooked  or  harpooned.  These  implements  no  doubt  stood  about 
in  the  interior  of  the  house,  from  the  walls  of  which  hung  his 
fowling-nets.  On  the  floor,  which  was  of  clay  or  trodden  cow- 
dung  (after  the  fashion  of  hut  floors  in  India  to-day),  stood 
pots  and  jars  and  woven  baskets  containing  grain,  milk,  and 
such-like  food.  Some  of  the  pots  and  pans  hung  by  rope  loops 
to  the  walls.  At  one  end  of  the  room,  and  helping  to  keep  it 
warm  in  winter  by  their  animal  heat,  stabled  the  beasts.  The 


urns,  the  first  probably  representing  a  lake.-  dutelluLcr 
After 


children  took  the  cows  and  goats  out  to  graze,  and  brought  them 
in  at  night  before  the  wolves  and  bears  came  prowling. 

Since  Neolithic  man  had  the  bow,  he  probably  also  had 
stringed  instruments,  for  the  rhythmic  twanging  of  a  bow- 
string seems  almost  inevitably  to  lead  to  that.  He  also  had 
earthenware  drums  across  which  skins  were  stretched  ;  perhaps 
also  he  made  drums  by  stretching  skins  over  hollow  tree  stems.1 
We  do  not  know  when  man  began  to  sing,  but  evidently  he  was 
making  music,  and  since  he  had  words,  songs  were  no  doubt 
being  made.  To  begin  with,  perhaps,  he  just  let  his  voice  loose 
as  one  may  hear  Italian  peasants  now  behind  their  ploughs 
singing  songs  without  words.  After  dark  in  the  winter  he  sat 
in  his  house  and  talked  and  sang  and  made  implements  by 

1  Later  Palaeolithic  bone  whistles  are  known.     One  may  guess  that  reed 
pipes  were  an  early  invention. 


NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE  87 

touch  rather  than  sight.  His  lighting  must  have  been  poor, 
and  chiefly  firelight,  but  there  was  probably  always  some  fire 
in  the  village,  summer  or  winter.  Fire  was  too  troublesome  to 
make  for  men  to  be  willing  to  let  it  out  readily.  Sometimes  a 
great  disaster  happened  to  those  pile  villages,  the  fire  got  free, 
and  they  were  burnt  out.  The  Swiss  deposits  contain  clear 
evidence  of  such  catastrophes. 

All  this  we  gather  from  the  remains  of  the  Swiss  pile  dwell- 
ings, and  such  was  the  character  of  the  human  life  that  spread 
over  Europe,  coming  from  the  south  and  from  the  east  with 
the  forests  as,  10,000  or  12,000  years  ago,  the  reindeer  and 
the  Reindeer  men  passed  away.  It  is  evident  that  we  have  here 
a  way  of  life  already  separated  by  a  great  gap  of  thousands  of 
years  of  invention  from  its  original  Palaeolithic  stage.  The 
steps  by  which  it  rose  from  that  condition  we  can  only  guess 
at.  From  being  a  hunter  hovering  upon  the  outskirts  of  flocks 
and  herds  of  wild  cattle  and  sheep,  and  from  being  a  co-hunter 
with  the  dog,  man  by  insensible  degrees  may  have  developed  a 
sense  of  proprietorship  in  the  beasts  and  struck  up  a  friendship 
with  his  canine  competitor.  ITe  learnt  to  turn  the  cattle  when 
they  wandered  too  far;  he  brought  his  better  brain  to  bear  to 
guide  them  to  fresh  pasture.  He  hemmed  the  beasts  into 
valleys  and  enclosures  where  he  could  be  sure  to  find  them  again. 
He  fed  them  when  they  starved,  and  so  slowly  he  tamed  them. 
Perhaps  his  agriculture  began  with  the  storage  of  fodder.  He 
reaped,  no  doubt,  before  he  sowed.  The  Paleolithic  ancestor 
away  in  that  unknown  land  of  origin  to  the  south-east  first  sup- 
plemented the  precarious  meat  supply  of  the  hunter  by  eating 
roots  and  fruits  and  wild  grains.  Man  storing  graminiferous 
grasses  for  his  cattle  might  easily  come  to  beat  out  the  grain 
for  himself. 


All  these  early  beginnings  must  have  taken  place  far  back 
in  time,  and  in  regions  of  the  world  that  have  still  to  be  effec- 
tively explored  by  the  archaeologists.  They  were  probably  going 
on  in  Asia  or  Africa,  in  what  is  now  the  bed  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean, or  in  the  region  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  while  the  Rein- 
deer man  was  developing  his  art  in  Europe.  The  Neolithic 
men  who  drifted  over  Europe  and  Western  Asia  12,000  or 
10,000  years  ago  were  long  past  these  beginnings;  they  were 


88  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

already  close,  a  few  thousand  years,  to  the  dawn  of  written 
tradition  and  the  remembered  history  of  mankind.  Without 
any  very  great  shock  or  break,  bronze  came  at  last  into  human 
life,  giving  a  great  advantage  in  warfare  to  those  tribes  who 
first  obtained  it.  Written  history  had  already  begun  before 
weapons  of  iron  came  into  Europe  to  supersede  bronze. 

Already  in  those  days  a  sort  of  primitive  trade  had  sprung 
up.  Bronze  and  bronze  weapons,  and  such  rare  and  hard  stones 
as  jade,  gold  because  of  its  plastic  and  ornamental  possibilities, 
and  skins  and  flax-net  and  cloth,  were  being  swapped  and  stolen 
and  passed  from  hand  to  hand  over  great  stretches  of  country. 
Salt  also  was  probably  being  traded.  On  a  meat  dietary  men 
can  live  without  salt,  but  grain-consuming  people  need  it  just 
as  herbivorous  animals  need  it.  Hopf  says  that  bitter  tribal  wars 
have  been  carried  on  by  the  desert  tribes  of  the  Soudan  in  re- 
cent years  for  the  possession  of  the  salt  deposits  between  Fezzan 
and  Murzuk.  To  begin  with,  barter,  blackmail,  tribute,  and 
robbery  by  violence  passed  into  each  other  by  insensible  de- 
grees. Men  got  what  they  wanted  by  such  means  as  they  could. 

§  5 

So  far  we  have  been  telling  of  a  history  without  events,  a 
history  of  ages  and  periods  and  stages  in  development.  But  be- 
fore we  conclude  this  portion  of  the  human  story,  we  must 
record  what  was  probably  an  event  of  primary  importance  and 
at  first  perhaps  of  tragic  importance  to  developing  mankind, 
and  that  was  the  breaking  in  of  the  Atlantic  waters  to  the  great 
Mediterranean  valley. 

The  reader  must  keep  in  mind  that  we  are  endeavouring  to 
give  him  plain  statements  that  he  can  take  hold  of  comfortably. 
But  both  in  the  matter  of  our  time  charts  and  the  three  maps 
we  have  given  of  prehistoric  geography  there  is  necessarily  much 
speculative  matter.  We  have  dated  the  last  Glacial  Age  and 
the  appearance  of  the  true  men  as  about  40,000  or  35,000  years 
ago.  Please  bear  that  "about"  in  mind.  The  truth  may  be 
60,000  or  20,000.  But  it  is  no  good  saying  "a  very  long  time" 
or  "ages"  ago,  because  then  the  reader  will  not  know  whether 
we  mean  centuries  or  millions  of  years.  And  similarly  in  these 
maps  we  give,  they  represent  not  the  truth,  but  something  like 
the  truth.  The  outline  of  the  land  was  "some  such  outline." 


NEOLITHIC  MAN  IN  EUROPE  89 

There  were  such  seas  and  such  land  masses.  But  both  Mr. 
Horrabin,  who  has  drawn  these  maps,  and  I,  who  have  incited 
him  to  do  so,  have  preferred  to  err  on  the  timid  side.  We  are 
not  geologists  enough  to  launch  out  into  original  research  in 
these  matters,  and  so  we  have  stuck  to  the  40-fathom  line  and 
the  recent  deposits  as  our  guides  for  our  postglacial  map  and 
for  the  map  of  12,000  to  10,000  B.C.  But  in  one  matter  we 
have  gone  beyond  these  guides.  It  is  practically  certain  that 
at  the  end  of  the  last  Glacial  Age  the  Mediterranean  was  a 
couple  of  land-locked  sea  basins,  not  connected — or  only  con- 
nected by  a  torrential  overflow  river.  The  eastern  basin  was 
the  fresher;  it  was  fed  by  the  Nile,  the  "Adriatic'  river,  the 
"Red-Sea"  river,  and  perhaps  by  a  river  that  poured  down 
amidst  the  mountains  that  are  now  the  Greek  Archipelago 
from  the  very  much  bigger  Sea  of  Central  Asia  that  then  existed. 
Almost  certainly  human  beings,  and  possibly  even  Neolithic 
men,  wandered  over  that  now  lost  Mediterranean  valley. 

The  reasons  for  believing  this  are  very  good  and  plain.  To 
this  day  the  Mediterranean  is  a  sea  of  evaporation.  The  rivers 
that  flow  into  it  do  not  make  up  for  the  evaporation  from  its 
surface.  There  is  a  constant  current  of  water  pouring  into 
the  Mediterranean  from  the  Atlantic,  and  another  current 
streaming  in  from  the  Bosporus'  and  Black  Sea.  For  the 
Black  Sea  gets  more  water  than  it  needs  from  the  big  rivers 
that  flow  into  it;  it  is  an  overflowing  sea,  while  the  Mediter- 
ranean is  a  thirsty  sea.  From  which  it  must  be  plain  that  when 
the  Mediterranean  was  cut  off  both  from  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
and  the  Black  Sea  it  must  have  been  a  shrinking  sea  with  its  wa- 
ters sinking  to  a  much  lower  level  than  those  of  the  ocean  out- 
side. This  is  the  case  of  the  Caspian  Sea  to-day.  Still  more 
so  is  it  the  case  with  the  Dead  Sea. 

But  if  this  reasoning  is  sound,  then  where  to-day  roll  the 
blue  waters  of  the  Mediterranean  there  must  once  have  been 
great  areas  of  land,  and  land  with  a  very  agreeable  climate. 
This  was  probably  the  case  during  the  last  Glacial  Age,  and 
we  do  not  know  how  near  it  was  to  our  time  when  the  change 
occurred  that  brought  back  the  ocean  waters  into  the  Mediter- 
ranean basin.  Certainly  there  must  have  been  Grimaldi  peo- 
ple, and  perhaps  even  Azilian  and  Neolithic  people  going  about 
in  the  valleys  and  forests  of  these  regions  that  are  now  sub- 
merged. The  Neolithic  Dark  Whites,  the  people  of  the  Mediter- 


90  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ranean  race,  may  have  gone  far  towards  the  beginnings  of  settle- 
ment and  civilization  in  that  great  lost  Mediterranean  valley. 

Mr.  W.  B.  Wright l  gives  us  some  very  stimulating  sugges- 
tions here.  He  suggests  that  in  the  Mediterranean  basin  there 
were  two  lakes,  "one  a  fresh-water  lake,  in  the  eastern  depres- 
sion, which  drained  into  the  other  in  the  western  depression.  It 
is  interesting  to  think  what  must  have  happened  when  the 
ocean  level  rose  once  more  as  a  result  of  the  dissipation  of  the 
ice-sheets,  and  its  waters  began  to  pour  over  into  the  Mediter- 
ranean area.  The  inflow,  small  at  first,  must  have  ultimately 
increased  to  enormous  dimensions,  as  the  channel  was  slowly 
lowered  by  erosion  and  the  ocean  level  slowly  rose.  If  there 
were  any  unconsolidated  materials  on  the  sill  of  the  Strait, 
the  result  must  have  been  a  genuine  debacle,  and  if  we  consider 
the  length  of  time  which  even  an  enormous  torrent  would  take 
to  fill  such  a  basin  as  that  of  the  Mediterranean,  we  must  con- 
clude that  this  result  was  likely  to  have  been  attained  in  any 
case.  Now,  this  may  seem  all  the  wildest  speculation,  but  it 
is  not  entirely  so,  for  if  we  examine  a  submarine  contour  map 
of  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar,  we  find  there  is  an  enormous  valley 
running  up  from  the  Mediterranean  deep,  right  through  the 
Straits,  and  trenching  some  distance  out  on  to  the  Atlantic 
shelf.  This  valley  or  gorge  is  probably  the  work  of  the  inflow- 
ing waters  of  the  ocean  at  the  termination  of  the  period  of 
interior  drainage." 

This  refilling  of  the  Mediterranean,  which  by  the  rough 
chronology  we  are  employing  in  this  book  may  have  happened 
somewhen  between  30,000  and  10,000  B.C.,  must  have  been  one 
of  the  greatest  single  events  in  the  pre-history  of  our  race.  If 
the  later  date  is  the  truer,  then,  as  the  reader  will  see  plainly 
enough  after  reading  the  next  two  chapters,  the  crude  be- 
ginnings of  civilization,  the  first  lake  dwellings  and  the  first 
cultivation,  were  probably  round  that  eastern  Levantine  Lake 
into  which  there  flowed  not  only  the  Nile,  but  the  two  great 
rivers  that  are  now  the  Adriatic  and  the  Red  Sea.  Suddenly 
the  ocean  waters  began  to  break  through  over  the  westward  hills 
and  to  pour  in  upon  these  primitive  peoples — the  lake  that 
had  been  their  home  and  friend  became  their  enemy ;  its  waters 
rose  and  never  abated;  their  settlements  were  submerged;  the 
waters  pursued  them  in  their  flight.  Day  by  day  and  year  by 
*The  Quaternary  Ice  Age. 


NKOIJTHTC  MAN   IN  EUROPE  91 

year  the  waters  spread  up  the  valleys  and  drove  mankind  be- 
fore them.  Many  must  have  been  surrounded  and  caught  by 
the  continually  rising  salt  flood.  It  knew  no  check;  it  came 
faster  and  faster ;  it  rose  over  the  tree-tops,  over  the  hills,  until 
it  had  filled  the  whole  basin  of  the  present  Mediterranean  and 
until  it  lapped  the  mountain  cliffs  of  Arabia  and  Africa.  Far 
away,  long  before  the  dawn  of  history,  this  catastrophe  occurred. 


XI 

EARLY  THOUGHT 

§  1.  Primitive  Philosophy.  §  2.  The  Old  Man  in  Religion. 
§  3.  Fear  and  Hope  in  Religion.  §  4.  Stars  and  Seasons. 
§  5.  Story-telling  and  Myths-making.  §  6.  Complex  Ori- 
gins of  Religion. 


BEFORE  we  go  on  to  tell  how  6,000  or  7,000  years  ago 
men  began  to  gather  into  the  first  towns  and  to  develop 
something   more   than   the   loose-knit   tribes  that   had 
hitherto  been  their  highest  political  association,  something  must 
be  said  about  the  things  that  were  going  on  inside  these  brains 
of  which  we  have  traced  the  growth  and  development  through 
a  period  of  500,000  years  from  the  ape-man  stage. 

What  was  man  thinking  about  himself  and  about  the  world 
in  those  remote  days  ? 

At  first  he  thought  very  little  about  anything  but  immedi- 
ate things.  At  first  he  was  busy  thinking  such  things  as :  "Here 
is  a  bear;  what  shall  I  do?"  Or  "There  is  a  squirrel;  how 
can  I  get  it  V  Until  language  had  developed  to  some  extent 
there  could  have  been  little  thinking  beyond  the  range  of  actual 
experience,  for  language  is  the  instrument  of  thought  as  book- 
keeping is  the  instrument  of  business.  It  records  and  fixes  and 
enables  thought  to  get  on  to  more  and  more  complex  ideas.  It 
is  the  hand  of  the  mind  to  hold  and  keep.  Primordial  man,  be- 
fore he  could  talk,  probably  saw  very  vividly,  mimicked  very 
cleverly,  gestured,  laughed,  danced,  and  lived,  without  much 
speculation  about  whence  he  came  or  why  he  lived.  Hb  feared 
the  dark,  no  doubt,  and  thunderstorms  and  big  animals  and 
queer  things  and  whatever  he  dreamt  about,  and  no  doubt  he  did 
things  to  propitiate  what  he  feared  or  to  change  his  luck  and 

92 


EARLY  THOUGHT  93 

please  the  imaginary  powers  in  rock  and  beast  and  river.  He 
made  no  clear  distinction  between  animate  and  inanimate 
things ;  if  a  stick  hurt  him,  he  kicked  it ;  if  the  river  foamed 
and  flooded,  he  thought  it  was  hostile.  His  thought  was  prob- 
ably very  much  at  the  level  of  a  bright  little  contemporary 
boy  of  four  or  five.  He  had  the  same  subtle  unreasonableness 
of  transition  and  the  same  limitations.  But  since  he  had  little 
or  no  speech  he  would  do  little  to  pass  on  the  fancies  that  came 
to  him,  and  develop  any  tradition  or  concerted  acts  about  them. 
The  drawings  even  of  Late  Palaeolithic  man  do  not  suggest 
that  he  paid  any  attention  to  sun  or  moon  or  stars  or  trees.  He 
was  preoccupied  only  with  animals  and  men.  Probably  he 
took  day  and  night,  sun  and  stars,  trees  and  mountains,  as 
being  in  the  nature  of  things — as  a  child  takes  its  meal  times 
and  its  nursery  staircase  for  granted.  So  far  as  we  can  judge, 
he  drew  no  fantasies,  no  ghosts  or  anything  of  that  sort.  The 
Reindeer  men's  drawings  are  fearless  familiar  things,  with  no 
hint  about  them  of  any  religious  or  occult  feelings.  There  is 
scarcely  anything  that  we  can  suppose  to  be  a  religious  or  mysti- 
cal symbol  at  all  in  his  productions.  ~No  doubt  he  had  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  what  is  called  fetishism  in  his  life ;  he  did  things 
we  should  now  think  unreasonable  to  produce  desired  ends,  for 
that  is  all  fetishism  amounts  to;  it  is  only  incorrect  science 
based  on  guess-work  or  false  analogy,  and  entirely  different  in 
its  'nature  from  religion.  No  doubt  he  was  excited  by  his 
dreams,  and  his  dreams  mixed  up  at  times  in  his  mind  with  his 
waking  impressions  and  puzzled  him.  Since  he  buried  his  dead, 
and  since  even  the  later  Neanderthal  men  seem  to  have  buried 
their  dead,  and  apparently  with  food  and  weapons,  it  has  been 
argued  that  he  had  a  belief  in  a  future  life.  But  it  is  just  as 
reasonable  to  suppose  that  early  men  buried  their  dead  with  f  opd 
and  weapons  because  they  doubted  if  they  were  dead,  which  is 
not  the  same  thing  as  believing  them  to  have  immortal  spirits, 
and  that  their  belief  in  their  continuing  vitality  was  reinforced 
by  dreams  of  the  departed.  They  may  have  ascribed  a  sort  of 
were-wolf  existence  to  the  dead,  and  wished  to  propitiate  them. 
The  Reindeer  man,  we  feel,  was  too  intelligent  and  too  like 
ourselves  not  to  have  had  some  speech,  but  quite  probably  it 
was  not  very  serviceable  for  anything  beyond  direct  statement 
or  matter-of-fact  narrative.  He  lived  in  a  larger  community 
than  the  Neanderthaler,  but  how  large  we  do  not  know.  Ex- 


94  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

cept  when  game  is  swarming,  hunting  communities  must  not 
keep  together  in  large  bodies  or  they  will  starve.  The  Indians 
who  depend  upon  the  caribou  in  Labrador  must  be  living  under 
circumstances  rather  like  those  of  the  Reindeer  men.  They 
scatter  in  small  family  groups,  as  the  caribou  scatter  in  search 
of  food;  but  when  the  deer  collect  for  the  seasonal  migration, 
the  Indians  also  collect.  That  is  the  time  for  trade  and  feasts 
and  marriages.  The  simplest  American  Indian  is  10,000  years 
more  sophisticated  than  the  Reindeer  man,  but  probably  that 
sort  of  gathering  and  dispersal  was  also  the  way  of  Reindeer 
men.  At  Solutre  in  France  there  are  traces  of  v  great  camping 
and  feasting  place.  There  was  no  doubt  an  exchange  of  news 
there,  but  one  may  doubt  if  there  was  anything  like  an  exchange 
of  ideas.  One  sees  no  scope  in  such  a  life  for  theology  or  philos- 
ophy or  superstition  or  speculation.  Fears,  yes;  but  unsystem- 
atic fears ;  fancies  and  freaks  of  the  imagination,  but  personal 
and  transitory  freaks  and  fancies. 

Perhaps  there  was  a  certain  power  of  suggestion  in  these  en- 
counters. A  fear  really  felt  needs  few  words  for  its  transmis- 
sion ;  a  value  set  upon  something  may  be  very  simply  conveyed. 

In  these  questions  of  primitive  thought  and  religion,  we 
must  remember  that  the  lowly  and  savage  peoples  of  to-day  prob- 
ably throw  very  little  light  on  the  mental  state  of  men  before 
the  days  of  fully  developed  language.  Primordial  man  could 
have  had  little  or  no  tradition  before  the  development  of  speech. 
All  savage  and  primitive  peoples  of  to-day,  on  the  contrary,  are 
soaked  in  tradition — the  tradition  of  thousands  of  generations. 
They  may  have  weapons  like  their  remote  ancestors  and  methods 
like  them,  but  what  were  slight  and  shallow  impressions  on 
the  minds  of  their  predecessors  are  now  deep  and  intricate 
grooves  worn  throughout  the  intervening  centuries  generation 
by  generation. 

§2 

Certain  very  fundamental  things  there  may  have  been  in 
men's  minds  long  before  the  coming  of  speech.  Chief  among 
these  must  have  been  fear  of  the  Old  Man  of  the  tribe.  The 
young  of  the  primitive  squatt ing-place  grew  up  under  that  fear. 
Objects  associated  with  him  were  probably  forbidden.  Every 
one  was  forbidden  to  touch  his  spear  or  to  sit  in  his  place,  just 


EARLY  THOUGHT  95 

as  to-day  little  boys  must  not  touch  father's  pipe  or  sit  in  his 
chair.  He  was  probably  the  master  of  all  the  women.  The 
youths  of  the  little  community  had  to  remember  that.  The  idea 
of  something  forbidden ,  the  idea  of  things  being,  as  it  is  called, 
tabu,  not  to  be  touched,  not  to  be  looked  at,  may  thus  have  got 
well  into  the  human  mind  at  a  very  early  stage  indeed.  J.  J. 
Atkinson,  in  his  Primal  Law,  an  ingenious  analysis  of  these 
primitive  tabus  which  are  found  among  savage  peoples  all  over 
the  world,  the  tabus  that  separate  brother  and  sister,  the  tabus 
that  make  a  man  run  and  hide  from  his  stepHnother,  traces  them 
to  such  a  fundamental  cause  as  this.  Only  by  respecting  this 
primal  law  could  the  young  male  hope  to  escape  the  Old  Man's 
wrath.  And  the  Old  Man  must  have  been  an  actor  in  many 
a  primordial  nightmare.  A  disposition  to  propitiate  him  even 
after  he  was  dead  is  quite  understandable.  One  was  not  sure 
that  he  was  dead.  He  might  only  be  asleep  or  shamming. 
Long  after  an  Old  Man  was  dead,  when  there  was  nothing  to 
represent  him  but  a  mound  and  a  megalith,  the  women  would 
convey  to  their  children  how  awful  and  wonderful  he  was.  And 
being  still  a  terror  to  his  own  little  tribe,  it  was  easy  to  go  on 
to  hoping  that  he  would  be  a  terror  to  other  and  hostile  people. 
In  his  life  he  had  fought  for  his  tribe,  even  if  he  had  bullied 
it.  Why  not  when  he  was  dead  ?  One  sees  that  the  Old  Man 
idea  was  an  idea  very  natural  to  the  primitive  mind  and  capable 
of  great  development.  And  opposed  to  the  Old  Man,  more 
human  and  kindlier,  was  the  Mother,  who  helped  and  sheltered 
a»d  advised.  The  psycho-analysis  of  Freud  and  Jung  has  done 
much  to  help  us  to  realize  how  great  a  part  Father  fear  and 
Mother  love  still  play  in  the  adaptation  of  the  human  mind 
to  social  needs.  They  have  made  an  exhaustive  study  of  child- 
ish and  youthful  dreams  and  imaginations,  a  study  which  has 
done  much  to  help  in  the  imaginative  reconstruction  of  the  soul 
of  primitive  man.  It  was,  as  it  were,  the  soul  of  a  powerful 
child.  He  saw  the  universe  in  terms  of  the  family  herd.  His 
fear  of,  his  abjection  before,  the  Old  Man  mingled  with  his 
fear  of  the  dangerous  animals  about  him.  But  the  women  god- 
desses were  kindlier  and  more  subtle.  They  helped,  they  pro- 
tected, they  gratified  and  consoled.  Yet  at  the  same  time  there 
was  something  about  them  less  comprehensible  than  the  direct 
brutality  of  the  Old  Man,  a  greater  mystery.  So  that  the 
Woman  also  had  her  vestiture  of  fear  for  him. 


96  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

§  3 

Another  idea  probably  arose  early  out  of  the  mysterious  visita- 
tion of  infectious  diseases,  and  that  was  the  idea  of  unclean- 
ness  and  of  being  accurst.  From  that,  too,  there  may  have 
come  an  idea  of  avoiding  particular  places  and  persons,  and 
persons  in  particular  phases  of  health.  Here  was  the  root  of 
another  set  of  tabus.  Then  man,  from  the  very  dawn  of  his 
mental  life,  may  have  had  a  feeling  of  the  sinister  about  places 
and  things.  Animals  who  dread  traps,  have  that  feeling.  A 
tiger  will  abandon  its  usual  jungle  route  at  the  sight  of  a  few 
threads  of  cotton.1  Like  most  young  animals,  young  human 
beings  are  easily  made  fearful  of  this  or  that  by  their  nurses 
and  seniors.  Here  is  another  set  of  ideas,  ideas  of  repulsion  and 
avoidance,  that  sprang  up  almost  inevitably  in  men. 

As  soon  as  speech  began  to  develop,  it  must  have  got  to  work 
upon  such  fundamental  feelings  and  begun  to  systematize  them, 
and  keep  them  in  mind.  By  talking  together  men  would  re- 
inforce each  other's  fears,  and  establish  a  common  tradition  of 
tabus  of  things  forbidden  and  of  things  unclean.  With  the 
idea  of  uncleanness  would  come  ideas  of  cleansing  and  of  re- 
moving a  curse.  The  cleansing  would  be  conducted  through 
the  advice  and  with  the  aid  of  wise  old  men  or  wise  old  women, 
and  in  such  cleansing  would  lie  the  germ  of  the  earliest  priest- 
craft and  witchcraft. 

Speech  from  the  first  would  be  a  powerful  supplement  to 
the  merely  imitative  education  and  to  the  education  of  cuffs  and 
blows  conducted  by  a  speechless  parent.  Mothers  would  tell  their 
young  and  scold  their  young.  As  speech  developed,  men  would 
find  they  had  experiences  and  persuasions  that  gave  them  or 
seemed  to  give  them  power.  They  would  make  secrets  of  these 
things.  There  is  a  double  streak  in  the  human  mind,  a  streak  of 
cunning  secretiveness  and  a  streak  perhaps  of  later  origin  that 
makes  us  all  anxious  to  tell  and  astonish  and  impress  each  other. 
Many  people  make  secrets  in  order  to  have  secrets  to  tell.  These 
secrets  of  early  men  they  would  convey  to  younger,  more  im- 
pressionable people,  more  or  less  honestly  and  impressively  in 
some  process  of  initiation.  Moreover,  the  pedagogic  spirit 
overflows  in  the  human  mind;  most  people  like  "telling  other 
people  not  to."  Extensive  arbitrary  prohibitions  for  the  boys, 
'Glasfurd's  Rifle  and  Romance  in  the  Indian  Jungle,  1915. 


EARLY  THOUGHT  97 

for  the  girls,  for  the  women,  also  probably  came  very  early  into 
human  history. 

Then  the  idea  of  the  sinister  has  for  its  correlative  the  idea 
of  the  propitious,  and  from  that  to  the  idea  of  making  things 
propitious  by  ceremonies  is  an  easy  step*. 


Out  of  such  ideas  and  a  jumble  of  kindred  ones  grew  the 
first  quasi-religious  elements  in  human  life.  With  every  de- 
velopment of  speech  it  became  possible  to  intensify  and  de- 
velop the  tradition  of  tabus  and  restraints  and  ceremonies. 
There  is  not  a  savage  or  barbaric  race  to-day  that  is  not  held 
in  a  net  of  such  tradition.  And  with  the  coming  of  the  primi- 
tive herdsman  there  would  be  a  considerable  broadening  out 
of  all  this  sort  of  practice.  Things  hitherto  unheeded  would 
be  found  of  importance  in  human  affairs.  Neolithic  man  was 
nomadic  in  a  different  spirit  from  the  mere  daylight  drift  after 
food  of  the  primordial  hunter.  He  was  a  herdsman  upon  whose 
mind  a  sense  of  direction  and  the  lie  of  the  land  had  been 
forced.  He  watched  his  flock  by  night  as  well  as  by  day.  The 
sun  by  day  and  presently  the  stars  by  night  helped  to  guide 
his  migrations ;  he  began  to  find  after  many  ages  that  the  stars 
are  steadier  guides  than  the  sun.  He  would  begin  to  note 
particular  stars  and  star  groups,  and  to  distinguish  any  in- 
dividual thing  was,  for  primitive  man,  to  believe  it  individu- 
alized and  personal.  He  would  begin  to  think  of  the  chief 
stars  as  persons,  very  shining  and  dignified  and  trustworthy 
persons  looking  at  him  like  bright  eyes  in  the  night.  His  primi- 
tive tillage  strengthened  his  sense  of  the  seasons.  Particular 
stars  ruled  his  heavens  when  seedtime  was  due.  Up  to  a  cer- 
tain p'oint,  a  mountain  peak  or  what  not,  a  bright  star  moved, 
night  after  night.  It  stopped  there,  and  then  night  after  night 
receded.  Surely  this  was  a  sign,  a  silent,  marvellous  warning 
to  the  wise.  The  beginnings  of  agriculture,  we  must  remember, 
were  in  the  sub-tropical  zone,  or  even  nearer  the  equator,  where 
stars  of  the  first  magnitude  shine  with  a  splendour  unknown 
in  more  temperate  latitudes. 

And  Neolithic  man  was  counting,  and  falling  under  the  spell 
of  numbers.  There  are  savage  languages  that  have  no  word 
for  any  number  above  five.  Some  peoples  cannot  go  above 


98 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


two.  But  Neolithic  man  in  the  lands  of  his  origin  in  Asia  and 
Africa  even  more  than  in  Europe  was  already  counting  his 
accumulating  possessions.  He  was  beginning  to  use  tallies, 
and  wondering  at  the  triangularity  of  three  and  the  squareness 
of  four,  and  why  some  quantities  like  twelve  were  easy  to 
divide  in  all  sorts  of  ways,  and  ethers,  like  thirteen,  impossible. 

Twelve  became  a 
aioble,  generous,  and 
familiar  number  to 
him,  and  thirteen 
rather  an  outcast  and 
disreputable  one. 

Probably  man  be- 
gan reckoning  time 
by  the  clock  of  the 
full  and  new  moons. 
Moonlight  is  an  im- 
'portant  thing  to  herds- 
men who  no  longer 
merely  hunt  their 
herds,  but  watch  and 
guard  them.  Moon- 
light, too,  was,  per- 
haps, his  time  for 
love-making,  as  in- 
deed it  may  have  been 
for  primordial  man 
and  the  ground  ape 
ancestor  before  him. 
But  from  the  phases 
of  the  moon,  as  his 
tillage  increased, 
man's  attitude  would 
go  on  to  the  greater  cycle  of  the  seasons.  Primordial  man  prob- 
ably only  drifted  before  the  winter  as  the  days  grew  cold.  Neo- 
lithic man  knew  surely  that  the  winter  would  come,  and  stored 
his  fodder  and  presently  his  grain.  He  had  to  fix  a  seedtime, 
a  propitious  seedtime,  or  his  sowing  was  a  failure.  The  earliest 
recorded  reckoning  is  by  moons  and  by  generations  of  men. 
The  former  seems  to  be  the  case  in  the  Book  of  Genesis,  where, 
if  one  reads  the  great  ages  of  the  patriarchs  who  lived  before 


A  CARVED  STATUE   ("MENHIR")   OF  THE  NEO- 
LITHIC PEBIOD — A  CONTRAST  TO  THE  FREEDOM 
AND  VIGOUR  OF  PALAEOLITHIC  ART. 


EARLY  THOUGHT  99 

the  flood  as  lunar  months  instead  of  years,  Methusaleh  and  the 
others  are  reduced  to  a  credible  length  of  life.  But  with  agri- 
culture began  the  difficult  task  of  squaring  the  lunar  month 
with  the  solar  year;  a  task  which  has  left  its  scars  on  our 
calendar  to-day.  Easter  shifts  uneasily  from  year  to  year,  to 
the  great  discomfort  of  holiday-makers;  it  is  now  inconveni- 
ently early  and  now  late  in  the  season  because  of  this  ancient 
reference  of  time  to  the  moon. 

And  when  men  began  to  move  with  set  intention  from  place 
to  place  with  their  animal  and  other  possessions,  then  they 
would  begin  to  develop  the  idea  of  other  places  in  which  they 
were  not,  and  to  think  of  what  might  be  in  those  other  places. 
And  in  any  valley  where  they  lingered  for  a  time,  they  would, 
remembering  how  they  got  there,  ask,  "How  did  this  or  that 
other  thing  get  here  ?"  They  would  begin  to  wonder  what  was 
beyond  the  mountains,  and  where  the  sun  went  when  it  set, 
and  what  was  above  the  clouds. 

§  5 

The  capacity  for  telling  things  increased  with  their  vocabu- 
lary. The  simple  individual  fancies,  the  unsystematic  fetish 
tricks  and  fundamental  tabus  of  Palaeolithic  man  began  to  be 
handed  on  and  made  into  a  more  consistent  system.  Men  be- 
gan to  tell  stories  about  themselves,  about  the  tribe,  about  its 
tabus  and  why  they  had  to  be,  about  the  world  and  the  why 
for  the  world.  A  tribal  mind  came  into  existence,  a  tradition. 
Palaeolithic  man  was  certainly  more  of  a  free  individualist, 
more  of  an  artist,  as  well  as  more  of  a  savage  than  Neolithic 
man.  Neolithic  man  was  coming  under  prescription ;  he  could 
be  trained  from  his  youth  and  told  to  do  things  and  not  to  do 
things;  he  was  not  so  free  to  form  independent  ideas  of  his 
own  about  things.  He  had  thoughts  given  to  him ;  he  was  under 
a  new  power  of  suggestion.  And  to  have  more  words  and  to 
attend  more  to  words  is  not  simply  to  increase  mental  power; 
words  themselves  are  powerful  things  and  dangerous  things. 
Palaeolithic  man's  words,  perhaps,  were  chiefly  just  names.  He 
used  them  for  what  they  were.  But  Neolithic  man  was  think- 
ing about  these  words,  he  was  thinking  about  a  number  of  things 
with  a  great  deal  of  verbal  confusion,  and  getting  to  some  odd 
conclusions.  In  speech  he  had  woven  a  net  to  bind  his  race 


100  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

together,  but  also  it  was  a  net  about  his  feet.  Man  was  bind- 
ing himself  into  new  and  larger  and  more  efficient  combina- 
tions indeed,  but  at  a  price.  One  of  the  most  notable  things 
about  the  Neolithic  Age  is  the  total  absence  of  that  free,  direct 
artistic  impulse  which  was  the  supreme  quality  of  later  Palaeo- 
lithic man.  We  find  much  industry,  much  skill,  polished  im- 
plements, pottery  with  conventional  designs,  co-operation  upon 
all  sorts  of  things,  but  no  evidence  of  personal  creativeness.1 
Self-suppression  is  beginning  for  men.  Man  has  entered  upon 
the  long  and  tortuous  and  difficult  path  towards  a  life  for  the 
common  good,  with  all  its  sacrifice  of  personal  impulse,  which  he 
is  still  treading  to-day. 

Certain  things  appear  in  the  mythology  of  mankind  again 
and  again.  Neolithic  man  was  enormously  impressed  by  ser- 
pents —  and  he  no  longer  took  the  sun  for  granted.  Nearly 
everywhere  that  Neolithic  culture  went,  there  went  a  disposition 
to  associate  the  sun  and  the  serpent  in  decoration  and  worship. 
This  primitive  serpent  worship  spread  ultimately  far  beyond 
the  regions  where  the  snake  is  of  serious  practical  importance  in 
human  life. 


With  the  beginnings  of  agriculture  a  fresh  set  of  ideas  arose 
in  men's  minds.  We  have  already  indicated  how  easily  and 
naturally  men  may  have  come  to  associate  the  idea  of  sowing 
with  a  burial.  Sir  J.  G.  Frazer  has  pursued  the  development 
of  this  association  in  the  human  mind,  linking  up  with  it  the 
conception  of  special  sacrificial  persons  who  are  killed  at  seed- 
time, the  conception  of  a  specially  purified  class  of  people  to 
kill  these  sacrifices,  the  first  priests,  and  the  conception  of  a 
sacrament,  a  ceremonial  feast  in  which  the  tribe  eats  portions 
of  the  body  of  the  victim  in  order  to  share  in  the  sacrificial 
benefits. 

Out  of  all  these  factors,  out  of  the  Old  Man  tradition,  out  of 
the  emotions  that  surround  Women  for  men  and  Men  for 

1  Ludwig  Hopf,  in  The  Human  Species,  calls  the  later  Palaeolithic  art 
"masculine"  and  the  Neolithic  "feminine."  The  pottery  was  made  by 
women,  he  says,  and  that  accounts  for  it.  But  the  arrow-heads  were  made 
by  men,  and  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  Neolithic  men  from  taking 
scraps  of  bone  or  slabs  of  rock  and  carving  them  —  had  they  dared.  We 
suggest  they  did  not  dare  to  do  so. 


EARLY  THOUGHT 


101 


women,  out  of  the  desire  to  escape  infection? J>and 

out  of  the  desire  for  power  and  success  tnrough'  magic/  but*  bf 

the  sacrificial  tradition  of  seedtime,  and  out  of  a  number  of  like 


'Bnnu&e  Acu 

(S^ 


beliefs  and  mental  experiments  and  misconceptions,  a  complex 
something  was  growing  up  in  the  lives  of  men  which  was  be- 
ginning to  bind  them  together  mentally  and  emotionally  in  a 
common  life  and  action.  This  something  we  may  call  religion 


102  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

(Lat.  religw.e,  to  bino  *).  It  was  not  a  simple  or  logical  some- 
tiling,  'it  was  a;  cangle  of  ideas  about  commanding  beings  and 
spirits,  about  gods,  about  all  sorts  of  "musts"  and  "must-nots." 
Like  all  other  human  matters,  religion  has  grown.  It  must 
be  clear  from  what  has  gone  before  that  primitive  man — much 
less  his  ancestral  apes  and  his  ancestral  Mesozoic  mammals — 
could  have  had  no  idea  of  God  or  Religion;  only  very  slowly 
did  his  brain  and  his  powers  of  comprehension  become  capable 
of  such  general  conceptions.  Religion  is  something  that  has 
grown  up  with  and  through  human  association,  and  God  has 
been  and  is  still  being  discovered  by  man. 

This  book  is  not  a  theological  book,  and  it  is  not  for  us  to 
embark  upon  theological  discussion;  but  it  is  a  part,  a  neces- 
sary and  central  part,  of  the  history  of  man  to  describe  the 
dawn  and  development  of  his  religious  ideas  and  their  influ- 
ence upon  his  activities.  All  these  factors  we  have  noted  must 
have  contributed  to  this  development,  and  various  writers  have 
laid  most  stress  upon  one  or  other  of  them.  Sir  J.  G.  Erazer 
has  been  the  leading  student  of  the  derivation  of  sacraments 
from  magic  sacrifices.  Grant  Allen,  following  Herbert  Spencer, 
in  his  Evolution  of  the  Idea  of  God,  laid  stress  chiefly  on  the 
posthumous  worship  of  the  "Old  Man."  Sir  E.  B.  Tylor 
(Primitive  Culture)  gave  his  attention  mainly  to  the  disposi- 
tion of  primitive  man  to  ascribe  a  soul  to  every  object  animate 
and  inanimate.  Mr.  A.  E.  Crawley,  in  The  Tree  of  Life,  has 
called  attention  to  other  centres  of  impulse  and  emotion,  and 
particularly  to  sex  as  a  source  of  deep  excitement.  The  thing 
we  have  to  bear  in  mind  is  that  Neolithic  man  was  still  mentally 
undeveloped,  he  could  be  confused  and  illogical  to  a  degree 
quite  impossible  to  an  educated  modern  person.  Conflicting 
and  contradictory  ideas  could  lie  in  his  mind  without  challeng- 
ing one  another;  now  one  thing  ruled  his  thoughts  intensely 
and  vividly  and  now  another;  his  fears,  his  acts,  were  still 
disconnected  as  children's  are. 

Confusedly  under  the  stimulus  of  the  need  and  possibility  of 
co-operation  and  a  combined  life,  Neolithic  mankind  was  feel- 
ing out  for  guidance  and  knowledge.  Men  were  becoming  aware 
that  personally  they  needed  protection  and  direction,  cleansing 

1But  Cicero  says  relegere,  "to  read  over,"  and  the  "binding"  by  those 
who  accept  religare  is  often  written  of  as  being  merely  the  binding  of  a 
vow. 


EARLY  THOUGHT 


103 


from  impurity,  power  beyond  their  own  strength.  Confusedly 
in  response  to  that  demand,  bold  men,  wise  men,  shrewd  and 
cunning  men  were  arising  to  become  magicians,  priests,  chiefs, 


EUROPE 

EGYPT    [MESOPOTAMIA 

15.000  Ee.- 

Men  crttfcrtrux  upon  "NcolitkLc 

c4^/-r^ 

fera* 

andxxc  . 
Agcurulfoire  bccnnruna 

rvcwixic^t*  ttvcn 

15.000  -  •• 

•v          5°™$ 

£.000  •-• 

\  forest  (transitum) 
Period 
Aiv&uv 

10,000-- 

"Neolitklc  m^n 
yr  >  i  *y^  <\vnct  vrvti? 
Eut-opc              £j^ 

olithic 

8.000  -- 

T^uwa-^ 

culture 
(levclopuT. 

oumcrt^m  CT^VIXZ* 
3    atlon  daxinvs' 

6.000  -« 

5.ooo  »- 

4.000  ••- 

First-  TXrruLstii 

^.        _—  —  (7/—     J7j 

TKeRjramuLs- 

"Mlopur  &  Et-ixlu 

Firart  «Sxurvcrtan 
urrvfcuux 

3000  — 
2.000  -  »- 
1.000  -  - 

^wcamng  oF  Aruazv 

Iron 

TV  I  e  x^k.t^<ie 
;^                        J  u,liuj 

f    tke      G  t*  c 
•      Ca.e^«.r 

Oftntcoti.  * 

Irxm 
&  t- 

<?  hristiAtt      S  r^ 

19*9  "- 

J 

TIME  DIAGRAM  SHOWING  THE  GENEKAL  DUBATION  OF  THE  NEOLITHIC 

PERIOD  IN  WHICH  EARLY  THOUGHT  DEVELOPED. 

By  this  scale,  the  diagram  on  p.  47  of  the  period  since  the  earliest 

subhuman  traces  would  be  12  feet  long,  and  the  diagram  of  geological 

time   (ch.  ii,  §  2)  somewhere  between  1,500  feet  and  three  miles. 

and  kings.  They  are  not  to  be  thought  of  as  cheats  or  usurpers 
of  power,  nor  the  rest  of  mankind  as  their  dupes.  All  men 
are  mixed  in  their  motives;  a  hundred  things  move  men  to 


104  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

seek  ascendancy  over  other  men,  but  not  all  such  motives  are 
base  or  bad.  The  magicians  usually  believed  more  or  less 
in  their  own  magic,  the  priests  in  their  ceremonies,  the  chiefs 
in  their  right.  The  history  of  mankind  henceforth  is  a  history 
of  more  or  less  blind  endeavours  to  conceive  a  common  purpose 
in  relation  to  which  all  men  may  live  happily,  and  to  create  and 
develop  a  common  consciousness  and  a  common  stock  of  knowl- 
edge which  may  serve  and  illuminate  that  purpose.  In  a  vast 
variety  of  forms  this  appearance  of  kings  and  priests  and  magic 
men  was  happening  all  over  the  world  under  Neolithic  condi- 
tions. Everywhere  mankind  was  seeking  where  knowledge  and 
mastery  and  magic  power  might  reside;  everywhere  individual 
men  were  willing,  honestly  or  dishonestly,  to  rule,  to  direct,  or  to 
be  the  magic  beings  who  would  reconcile  the  confusions  of  the 
community.  Another  queer  development  of  the  later  Paleo- 
lithic and  Neolithic  ages  was  the  development  of  self -mutilation. 
Men  began  to  cut  themselves  about,  to  excise  noses,  ears,  fingers, 
teeth  and  the  like,  and  to  attach  all  sorts  of  superstitious  ideas 
to  these  acts.  Many  children  to-day  pass  through  a  similar 
phase  in  their  mental  development.  There  is  a  phase  in  the  life 
of  most  little  girls  when  they  are  not  to  be  left  alone  with  a  pair 
of  scissors  for  fear  that  they  will  cut  off  their  hair.  No  ani- 
mal does  anything  of  this  sort. 

In  many  ways  the  simplicity,  directness,  and  detachment  of 
a  later  Palaeolithic  rock-painter  appeal  more  to  modern  sympa- 
thies than  does  the  state  of  mind  of  these  Neolithic  men,  full 
of  the  fear  of  some  ancient  Old  Man  who  had  developed  into 
a  tribal  God  obsessed  by  ideas  of  sacrificial  propitiations,  mutila- 
tions, and  magic  murder.  No  doubt  the  reindeer  hunter  was 
a  ruthless  hunter  and  a  combative  and  passionate  creature,  but 
he  killed  for  reasons  we  can  still  understand;  Neolithic  man, 
under  the  sway  of  talk  and  a  confused  thought  process,  killed 
on  theory,  he  killed  for  monstrous  and  now  incredible  ideas,  he 
killed  those  he  loved  through  fear  and  under  direction.  Those 
Neolithic  men  not  only  made  human  sacrifices  at  seedtime; 
there  is  every  reason  to  suppose  they  sacrificed  wives  and  slaves 
at  the  burial  of  their  chieftains;  they  killed  men,  women,  and 
children  whenever  they  were  under  adversity  and  thought  the 
'rods  were  athirst.  They  practised  infanticide.  All  these  things 
passed  on  into  the  Bronze  Age. 

Hitherto  a  social  consciousness  had  been  asleep  and  not  even 


EARLY  THOUGHT  105 

dreaming  in  human  history.     Before  it  awakened  it  produced 
nightmares. 

Away  beyond  the  dawn  of  history,  3,000  or  4,000  years  ago, 
one  thinks  of  the  Wiltshire  uplands  in  the  twilight  of  a  mid- 
summer day's  morning.  The  torches  pale  in  the  growing  light. 
One  has  a  dim  apprehension  of  a  procession  through  the  avenue 
of  stone,  of  priests,  perhaps  fantastically  dressed  with  skins 
and  horns  and  horrible  painted  masks — not  the  robed  and 
bearded  dignitaries  our  artists  represent  the  Druids  to  have 
been — of  chiefs  in  skins  adorned  with  necklaces  of  teeth  and 
bearing  spears  and  axes,  their  great  heads  of  hair  held  up  with 
pins  of  bone,  of  women  in  skins  or  flaxen  robes,  of  a  great 
peering  crowd  of  shock-headed  men  and  naked  children.  They 
have  assembled  from  many  distant  places;  the  ground  between 
the  avenues  and  Silbury  Hill  is  dotted  with  their  encamp- 
ments. A  certain  festive  cheerfulness  prevails.  And  amidst 
the  throng  march  the  appointed  human  victims,  submissive, 
helpless,  staring  towards  the  distant  smoking  altar  at  which 
they  are  to  die — that  the  harvests  may  be  good  and  the  tribe 
increase.  ...  To  that  had  life  progressed  3,000  or  4,000  years 
ago  from  its  starting-place  in  the  slime  of  the  tidal  beaches. 


XII 
THE  RACES  OF  MANKIND 

1.  7s  Mankind  Still  Differentiating?     §  2.  The  Main  Races 
of  Mankind.     §  3.  The  Brunei  Peoples. 


IT  is  necessary  now  to  discuss  plainly  what  is  meant  by  a 
phrase,  used  often  very  carelessly,  "The  Races  of  Man- 
kind." 

It  must  be  evident  from  what  has  already  been  explained 
in  Chapter  III  that  man,  so  widely  spread  and  subjected  there- 
fore to  great  differences  of  climate,  consuming  very  different 
food  in  different  regions,  attacked  by  different  enemies,  must 
always  have  been  undergoing  considerable  local  modification 
and  differentiation.  Man,  like  every  other  species  of  living 
thing,  has  constantly  been  tending  to  differentiate  into  several 
species;  wherever  a  body  of  men  has  been  cut  off,  in  islands 
or  oceans  or  by  deserts  or  mountains,  from  the  rest  of  humanity, 
it  must  have  begun  very  soon  to  develop  special  characteristics, 
specially  adapted  to  the  local  conditions.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  man  is  usually  a  wandering  and  enterprising  animal 
for  whom  there  exist  few  insurmountable  barriers.  Men  imi- 
tate men,  fight  and  conquer  them,  interbreed,  one  people  with 
another.  Concurrently  for  thousands  of  years  there  have  been 
two  sets  of  forces  at  work,  one  tending  to  separate  men  into  a 
multitude  of  local  varieties,  and  another  to  remix  and  blend 
these  varieties  together  before  a  separate  series  has  been 
established. 

These  two  sets  of  forces  may  have  fluctuated  in  this  relative 
effect  in  the  past.  Palaeolithic  man,  for  instance,  may  have 
been  more  of  a  wanderer,  he  may  have  drifted  about  over  a 
much  greater  area,  than  later  Neolithic  man ;  he  was  less  fixed 
to  any  sort  of  home  or  lair,  he  was  tied  by  fewer  possessions. 
Being  a  hunter,  he  was  obliged  to  follow  the  migrations  of  his 

106 


THE  RACES  OF  MANKIND  107 

ordinary  quarry.  A  few  bad  seasons  may  have  shifted  him 
hundreds  of  miles.  He  may  therefore  have  mixed  very  widely 
and  developed  few  varieties  over  the  greater  part  of  the  world. 

The  appearance  of  agriculture  tended  to  tie  those  com- 
munities of  mankind  that  took  it  up  to  the  region  in  which  it 
was  most  conveniently  carried  on,  and  so  to  favour  differentia- 
tion. Mixing  or  differentiation  is  not  dependent  upon  a  higher 
or  lower  stage  of  civilization;  many  savage  tribes  wander  now 
for  hundreds  of  miles ;  many  English  villagers  in  the  eighteenth 
century,  on  the  other  hand,  had  never  been  more  than  eight 
or  ten  miles  from  their  villages,  neither  they  nor  their  fathers 
nor  grandfathers  before  them.  Hunting  peoples  often  have 
enormous  range.  The  Labrador  country,  for  instance,  is  in- 
habited by  a  few  thousand  Indians,  who  follow  the  one  great 
herd  of  caribou  as  it  wanders  yearly  north  and  then  south 
again  in  pursuit  of  food.  This  mere  handful  of  people  covers 
a  territory  as  large  as  France.  Nomad  peoples  also  range  very 
widely.  Some  Kalmuck  tribes  are  said  to  travel  nearly  a  thou- 
sand miles  between  summer  and  winter  pasture. 

It  carries  out  this  suggestion,  that  Palaeolithic  man  ranged 
widely  and  was  distributed  thinly  indeed  but  uniformly, 
throughout  the  world,  that  the  Palaeolithic  remains  we  find  are 
everywhere  astonishingly  uniform.  To  quote  Sir  John  Evans, 
"The  implements  in  distant  lands  are  so  identical  in  form  and 
character  with  the  British  specimens  that  they  might  have  been 
manufactured  by  the  same  hands.  .  .  .  On  the  banks  of  the 
Nile,  many  hundreds  of  feet  above  its  present  level,  implements 
of  the  European  types  have  been  discovered;  while  in  Soma- 
liland,  in  an  ancient  river-valley  at  a  great  elevation  above  the 
sea,  Sir  H.  W.  Seton-Karr  has  collected  a  large  number  of 
implements  formed  of  flint  and  quartzite,  which,  judging  from 
their  form  and  character,  might  have  been  dug  out  of  the  drift- 
deposits  of  the  Somme  and  the  Seine,  the  Thames  or  the  ancient 
Solent." 

Phases  of  spreading  and  intermixture  have  probably  alter- 
nated with  phases  of  settlement  and  specialization  in  the  history 
of  mankind.  But  up  to  a  few  hundred  years  ago  it  is  probable 
that  since  the  days  of  the  Palaeolithic  Age  at  least  mankind  has 
on  the  whole  been  differentiating.  The  species  has  differentiated 
in  that  period  into  a  very  great  number  of  varieties,  many  of 
which  have  reblended  with  others,  which  have  spread  and  under- 


108  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

gone  further  differentiation  or  become  extinct.  Wherever 
there  has  been  a  strongly  marked  local  difference  of  condi- 
tions and  a  check  upon  intermixture,  there  one  is  almost  obliged 
to  assume  a  variety  of  mankind  must  have  appeared.  Of  such 
local  varieties  there  must  have  been  a  great  multitude. 

In  one  remote  corner  of  the  world,  Tasmania,  a  little  cut- 
off population  of  people  remained  in  the  early  Paleolithic 
stage  until  the  discovery  of  that  island  by  the  Dutch  in  1642. 
They  are  now,  unhappily,  extinct.  The  last  Tasmanian  died  in 
1877.  They  may  have  been  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  mankind 
for  15,000  or  20,000  or  25,000  years. 

But  among  the  numerous  obstacles  and  interruptions  to  in- 
termixture there  have  been  certain  main  barriers,  such  as  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  the  highlands,  once  higher,  and  the  now  van- 
ished seas  of  Central  Asia  and  the  like,  which  have  cut  off  great 
groups  of  varieties  from  other  great  groups  of  varieties  over 
long  periods  of  time.  These  separated  groups  of  varieties  devel- 
oped very  early  certain  broad  resemblances  and  differences. 
Most  of  the  varieties  of  men  in  eastern  Asia  and  America, 
but  not  all,  have  now  this  in  common,  that  they  have  yellowish 
buff  skins,  straight  black  hair,  and  often  high  cheek-bones. 
Most  of  the  native  peoples  of  Africa  south  of  the  Sahara,  but  not 
all,  have  black  or  blackish  skins,  flat  noses,  thick  lips,  and 
frizzy  hair.  In  north  and  western  Europe  a  great  number  of 
peoples  have  fair  hair,  blue  eyes,  and  ruddy  complexions;  and 
about  the  Mediterranean  there  is  a  prevalence  of  white-skinned 
peoples  with  dark  eyes  and  black  hair.  The  black  hair  of  many 
of  these  dark  whites  is  straight,  but  never  so  strong  and  wave- 
less  as  the  hair  of  the  yellow  peoples.  It  is  straighter  in 
the  east  than  in  the  west.  In  southern  India  we  find  brownish 
and  darker  peoples  with  straight  black  hair,  and  these  as  we 
pass  eastward  give  place  to  more  distinctly  yellow  peoples. 
In  scattered  islands  and  in  Papua  and  New  Guinea  we  find 
another  series  of  black  and  brownish  peoples  of  a  more  lowly 
type  with  frizzy  hair. 

But  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  these  are  very  loose- 
fitting  generalizations.  Some  of  the  areas  and  isolated  pockets 
of  mankind  in  the  Asiatic  area  may  have  been  under  conditions 
more  like  those  in  the  European  area ;  some  of  the  African 
areas  are  of  a  more  Asiatic  and  less  distinctively  African  type. 
We  find  a  wavy-haired,  fairish,  hairy-skinned  race,  the  Ainu, 


THE  RACES  OF  MANKIND 


109 


in  Japan.  They  are  more  like  the  Europeans  in  their  facial 
type  than  the  surrounding  yellow  Japanese.  They  may  be 
a  drifted  patch  of  the  whites  or  they  may  be  a  quite  distinct 
people.  We  find  primitive  black  people  in  the  Andaman  Islands 
far  away  from  Australia  and  far  away  from  Africa.  There  is 
a  streak  of  very  negroid  blood  traceable  in  south  Persia  and 
some  parts  of  India.  These  are  the  "Asiatic"  negroids.  There 


is  little  or  no  proof  that  all  black  people,  the  Australians,  the 
Asiatic  negroids,  and  the  negroes,  derive  from  one  origin,  but 
only  that  they  have  lived  for  vast  periods  under  similar  con- 
ditions. We  must  not  assume  that  human  beings  in  the  east- 
ern Asiatic  area  were  all  differentiating  in  one  direction  and 
all  the  human  beings  in  Africa  in  another.  There  were  great 
currents  of  tendency,  it  is  true,  but  there  were  also  backwaters, 
eddies,  admixtures,  readmixtures,  and  leakages  from  one  main 
area  to  the  other.  A  coloured  map  of  the  world  to  show  the 
races  would  not  present  just  four  great  areas  of  colour;  it 
would  have  to  be  dabbed  over  with  a  multitude  of  tints  and 
intermediate  shades,  simple  here,  mixed  and  overlapping  there. 
In  the  early  Neolithic  Period  in  Europe — it  may  be  10,000 
or  12,000  years  ago  or  so — man  was  differentiating  all  over  the 
world,  and  he  had  already  differentiated  into  a  number  of 
varieties,  but  he  has  never  differentiated  into  different  species. 
A  "species,"  we  must  remember,  in  biological  language  is  dis- 


110  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tinguished  from  a  "variety"  by  the  fact  that  varieties  can 
interbreed,  while  species  either  do  not  do  so  or  produce  off- 
spring which,  like  mules,  are  sterile.  All  mankind  can  inter- 
breed freely,  can  learn  to  understand  the  same  speech,  can 
adapt  itself  to  co-operation.  And  in  the  present  age,  man  is 
probably  no  longer  undergoing  differentiation  at  all.  Re- 
admixture  is  now  a  far  stronger  force  than  differentiation.  Men 
mingle  more  and  more.  Mankind  from  the  view  of  a  biologist 
is  an  animal  species  in  a  state  of  arrested  differentiation  and 
possible  readmixture. 

§  2 

It  is  only  in  the  last  fifty  or  sixty  years  that  the  varieties 
of  men  came  to  be  regarded  in  this  light,  as  a  tangle  of  differ- 
entiations recently  arrested  or  still  in  progress.  Before  that 
time  students  of  mankind,  influenced,  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously, by  the  story  of  Noah  and  the  Ark  and  his  three  sons, 
Shem,  Ham,  and  Japhet,  were  inclined  to  classify  men  into 
three  or  four  great  races  and  they  were  disposed  to  regard  these 
races  as  having  always  been  separate  things,  descended  from 
originally  separate  ancestors.  They  ignored  the  great  possi- 
bilities of  blended  races  and  of  special  local  isolations  and  varia- 
tions. The  classification  has  varied  considerably,  but  there 
has  been  rather  too  much  readiness  to  assume  that  mankind 
must  be  completely  divisible  into  three  or  four  main  groups. 
Ethnologists  (students  of  race)  have  fallen  into  grievous  dis- 
putes about  a  multitude  of  minor  peoples,  as  to  whether  they 
were  of  this  or  that  primary  race  or  "mixed,"  or  strayed  early 
forms,  or  what  not.  But  all  races  are  more  or  less  mixed.  There 
are,  no  doubt,  four  main  groups,  but  each  is  a  miscellany,  and 
there  are  little  groups  that  will  not  go  into  any  of  the  four 
main  divisions. 

Subject  to  these  reservations,  when  it  is  clearly  understood 
that  when  we  speak  of  these  main  divisions  we  mean  not  simple 
and  pure  races,  but  groups  of  races,  then  they  have  a  certain 
convenience  in  discussion.  Over  the  European  and  Mediter- 
ranean area  and  western  Asia  there  are,  and  have  been  for  many 
thousand  years,  white  peoples,  usually  called  the  CAUCASIANS, 
subdivided  into  two  or  three  subdivisions,  the  northern  blonds 
or  Nordic  race,  an  alleged  intermediate  race  about  which  many 
authorities  are  doubtful,  the  so-called  A 1  pi  no  raop.  and  the 


THE  RACES  OF  MANKIND 


111 


southern  dark  whites,  the  Mediterranean  or  Iberian  race;  over 
eastern  Asia  and  America  a  second  group  of  races  prevails,  the 
MONGOLIANS,  generally  with  yellow  skins,  straight  black  hair, 
and  sturdy  bodies ;  over  Africa  the  NEGROES,  and  in  the  region 
of  Australia  and  New  Guinea  the  black,  primitive  Aus- 
TEALOIDS.  These  are  convenient  terms,  provided  the  student 
bears  in  mind  that  they  are  not  exactly  defined  terms.  They 
represent  only  the  common  characteristics  of  certain  main 
groups  of  races ;  they  leave  out  a  number  of  little  peoples  who 
belong  properly  to  none  of  these  divisions,  and  they  disregard 
the  perpetual  mixing  where  the  main  groups  overlap. 


§  3 

The  Mediterranean  or 
Iberian  division  of  the 
Caucasian  race  had  a 
wider  range  in  early 
times,  and  was  a  less  spe- 
cialized and  distinctive 
type  than  the  Nordic.  It 
is  very  hard  to  define  its 
southward  boundaries 
from  the  Negro,  or  to 
mark  off  its  early  traces 
in  Central  Asia  from 
those  of  early  Mongolians. 
Wilfred  Scawen  Blunt 1  says  that  Huxley  "had  long  suspected 
a  common  origin  of  the  Egyptians  and  the  Dravidians  of  India, 
perhaps  a  long  belt  of  brown-skinned  men  from  India  to  Spain 
in  very  early  days." 

It  is  possible  that  this  "belt"  of  Huxley's  of  dark-white  and 
brown-skinned  men,  this  race  of  brunet-brown  folk,  ultimately 
spread  even  farther  than  India ;  that  they  reached  to  the  shores 
of  the  Pacific,  and  that  they  were  everywhere  the  original 
possessors  of  the  Neolithic  culture  and  the  beginners  of  what 
we  call  civilization.  It  is  possible  that  these  Brunet  peoples 
are  so  to  speak  the  basic  peoples  of  our  modern  world.  The 
Nordic  and  the  Mongolian  peoples  may  have  been  but  north- 
western and  north-eastern  branches  from  this  more  fundft- 
*My  Diaries,  under  date  of  July  25,  1894, 


112 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


mental  stem.  Or  the  Nordic  race  may  have  been  a  branch, 
while  the  Mongolian,  like  the  Negro,  may  have  been  another 
equal  and  distinct  stem  with  which  the  brunet-browns  met  and 
mingled  in  South  China.  Or  the  Nordic  peoples  also  may 
have  developed  separately  from  a  paleolithic  stage. 

At  some  period  in  human  history  (see  Elliot  Smith's  Migra- 
tions of  Early  Culture)  there  seems  to  have  been  a  special  type 
of  Neolithic  culture  widely  distributed  in  the  world  which  had 
a  group  of  features  so  curious  and  so  unlikely  to  have  been 
independently  developed  in  different  Regions  of  the  earth, 


as  to  compel  us  to  believe  that  it  was  in  effect  one  culture.  It 
reached  through  all  the  regions  inhabited  by  the  brunet  Medi- 
terranean race,  and  beyond  through  India,  Further  India,  up 
the  Pacific  coast  of  China,  and  it  spread  at  last  across  the 
Pacific  and  to  Mexico  and  Peru.  It  was  a  coastal  culture  not 
reaching  deeply  inland. 

This  peculiar  development  of  the  Neolithic  culture,  which 
Elliot  Smith  called  the  heliolithic  1  culture,  included  many  or 
all  of  the  following  odd  practices:  (1)  circumcision,  (2)  the 
very  queer  custom  of  sending  the  father  to  bed  when  a  child 

1"Sunstone"  culture  became  of  the  sun  worship  and  the  megaliths. 
This  is  not  a  very  happily  chosen  term.  It  suggests  a  division  equivalent 
to  paleolithic  (old  stone)  and  neolithic  (new  stone),  whereas  it  is  a  sub- 
division of  the  neolithic  culture. 


THE  RACES  OF  MANKIND 


113 


is  born,  known  as  the  couvade,  (3)  the  practice  of  massage, 
(4)  the  making  of  mummies,  (5)  megalithic  monuments  l  (e.g. 
Stonehenge),  (6)  artificial  deformation  of  the  heads  of  the 


Kalmuck 


Ameruuliaiv 
woman. 


young  by  bandages,  (7)  tattooing,  (8)  religious  association  of 
the  sun  and  the  serpent,  and  (9)  the  use  of  the  symbol  known 
as  the  swastika  (see  figure)  for  good  luck.  This  odd  little 


(Jew  of  Algiers) 


"Nordic 

(Englishman) 


symbol  spins  gaily  round  the  world;  it  seems  incredible  that 
men  would  have  invented  and  made  a  pet  of  it  twice  over. 
Elliot  Smith  traces  these  associated  practices  in  a  sort  of 

1  Megalithic   monuments   have   been   made    quite    recently   by    primitive 
Indian  peoples. 


114. 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  RACES  OF  MANKIND  115 

constellation  all  over  this  great  Mediterranean-India  Ocean-Pa- 
cific area.  Where  one  occurs,  most  of  the  others  occur.  They 
link  Brittany  with  Borneo  and  Peru.  But  this  constellation 
of  practices  does  not  crop  up  in  the  primitive  homes  of  Nordic 
or  Mongolian  peoples,  nor  does  it  extend  southward  much  be- 
yond equatorial  Africa. 

For  thousands  of  years,  from  15,000  to  1,000  B.C.,  such  a 
heliolithic  Neolithic  culture  and  its  brownish  possessors  may 
have  been  oozing  round  the  world  through 
the  warmer  regions  of  the  world,  drifting  by 
canoes  often  across  wide  stretches  of  sea. 
It  was  then  the  highest  culture  in  the  world ; 
it  sustained  the  largest,  most  highly  de- 
veloped communities.  And  its  region  of 
origin  may  have  been,  as  Elliot  Smith  sug- 
gests, the  Mediterranean  and  North  African 
region.  It  migrated  slowly  age  by  age.  It 
must  have  been  spreading  up  the  Pacific  Coast  and  across  the 
island  stepping-stones  to  America,  long  after  it  had  passed 
on  into  other  developments  in  its  areas  of  origin.  Many  of 
the  peoples  of  the  East  Indies,  Melanesia  and  Polynesia  were 
etill  in  this  heliolithic  stage  of  development  when  they  were 
discovered  by  European  navigators  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
The  first  civilizations  in  Egypt  and  the  Euphrates-Tigris  val- 
ley probably  developed  directly  out  of  this  widespread  culture. 
We  will  discuss  later  whether  the  Chinese  civilization  had  a 
different  origin.  The  Semitic  nomads  of  the  Arabian  desert 
seem  also  to  have  had  a  heliolithic  stage. 


116 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


XIII 
THE  LANGUAGES  OF  MANKIND 

1.  No  One  Primitive  Language.  §  2.  The  Aryan  Lan- 
guages. §  3.  The  Semitic  Languages.  §  4.  The  Hamitic 
Languages.  §  5.  The  Ural-Altaic  Languages.  §  6.  The 
Chinese  Languages.  §  7.  Other  Language  Groups.  §  8.  A 
Possible  Primitive  Language  Group.  §  9.  Some  Isolated 
Languages. 


IT  is  improbable  that  there  was  ever  such  a  thing  as  a  com- 
mon human  language.  We  know  nothing  of  the  language 
of  Palaeolithic  man ;  we  do  not  even  know  whether  Palaeo- 
lithic man  talked  freely. 

We  know  that  Paleolithic  man  had  a  keen  sense  of  form 
and  attitude,  because  of  his  drawings ;  and  it  has  been  sug- 
gested that  he  communicated  his  ideas  very  largely  by  gesture. 
Probably  such  words  as  the  earlier  men  used  were  mainly  cries 
of  alarm  or  passion  or  names  for  concrete  things,  and  in  many 
cases  they  were  probably  imitative  sounds  made  by  or  associ- 
ated with  the  things  named.1 

The  first  languages  were  probably  small  collections  of  such 
words ;  they  consisted  of  interjections  and  nouns.  Probably  the 
nouns  were  said  in  different  intonations  to  convey  different 
meanings.  If  Palaeolithic  man  had  a  word  for  "horse"  or 
"bear,"  he  probably  showed  by  tone  or  gesture  whether  he 
meant  "bear  is  coming,"  "bear  is  going,"  "bear  is  to  be  hunted," 
"dead  bear,"  "bear  has  been  here,"  "bear  did  this,"  and  so 
on.  Only  very  slowly  did  the  human  mind  develop  methods 
of  indicating  action  and  relationship  in  a  formal  manner. 

*Sir  Arthur  Evans  suggests  that  in  America  sign-language  arose  before 

speech,   because   the   sign-language    is   common  to    all    Indians    in    North 

America,  whereas  the  languages  are  different.  See  his  Anthropology  and 
the  Classics.— G.  M. 

117 


118  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Modern  languages  contain  many  thousands  of  words,  but  the 
earlier  languages  could  have  consisted  only  of  a  lew  hundred. 
It  is  said  that  even  modern  European  peasants  can  get  along 
with  something  less  than  a  thousand  words,  and  it  is  quite 
conceivable  that  so  late  as  the  Early  Neolithic  Period  that  was 
the  limit  of  the  available  vocabulary.  Probably  men  did  not 
indulge  in  those  days  in  conversation  or  description.  For  nar- 
rative purposes  they  danced  and  acted  rather  than  told.  They 
had  no  method  of  counting  beyond  a  method  of  indicating  two 
by  a  dual  number,  and  some  way  of  expressing  many.  The 
growth  of  speech  was  at  first  a  very  slow  process  indeed,  and 
grammatical  forms  and  the  expression  of  abstract  ideas  may 
have  come  very  late  in  human  history,  perhaps  only  400  or 
500  generations  ago. 

§2 

The  students  of  languages  (philologists)  tell  us  that  they  are 
unable  to  trace  with  certainty  any  common  features  in  all  the 
languages  of  mankind.  They  cannot  even  find  any  elements 
common  to  all  the  Caucasian  languages.  They  find  over  great 
areas  groups  of  languages  which  have  similar  root  words  and 
similar  ways  of  expressing  the  same  idea,  but  then  they  find 
in  other  areas  languages  which  appear  to  be  dissimilar  down 
to  their  fundamental  structure,  which  express  action  and  rela- 
tion by  entirely  dissimilar  devices,  and  have  an  altogether  dif- 
ferent grammatical  scheme.  One  great  group  of  languages, 
for  example,  now  covers  nearly  all  Europe  and  stretches  out  to 
India;  it  includes  English,  French,  German,  Spanish,  Italian, 
Greek,  Russian,  Armenian,  Persian,  and  various  Indian  tongues. 
It  is  called  the  Indo-European  or  ARYAN  family.  The  same 
fundamental  roots,  the  same  grammatical  ideas,  are  traceable 
through  all  this  family.  Compare,  for  example,  English  father, 
mother,  German  vater,  mutter,  Latin  pater,  mater,  Greek  pater, 
meter,  French  pere,  mere,  Armenian  hair,  mair,  Sanscrit  pitar, 
matar,  etc.,  etc.  In  a  similar  manner  the  Aryan  languages  ring 
the  changes  on  a  great  number  of  fundamental  words,  /  in  the 
Germanic  languages  becoming  p  in  Latin,  and  so  on.  They 
follow  a  law  of  variation  called  Grimm's  Law.  These  languages 
are  not  different  things,  they  are  variations  of  one  thing.  The 
people  who  use  these  languages  think  in  the  same  way. 


THE  LANGUAGES  OF  MANKIND  119 

At  one  time  in  the  remote  past,  in  the  Neolithic  Age,  that  is 
to  say  6,000  years  or  more  ago,  there  may  have  been  one  simple 
original  speech  from  which  all  these  Aryan  languages  have 
differentiated.  Somewhere  between  Central  Europe  and  West- 
ern Asia  there  must  have  wandered  a  number  of  tribes  suffi- 
ciently intermingled  to  develop  and  use  one  tongue.  It  is 
convenient  here  to  call  them  the  Aryan  peoples.  Sir  H.  H. 
Johnston  has  called  them  "Aryan  Russians/5  They  belonged 
mostly  to  the  Caucasian  group  of  races  and  to  the  blond 
and  northern  subdivision  of  the  group,  to  the  Nordic  race 
that  is. 

Here  one  must  sound  a  note  of  warning.  There  was  a  time 
when  the  philologists  were  disposed  to  confuse  languages  and 
races,  and  to  suppose  that  people  who  once  all  spoke  the  same 
tongue  must  be  all  of  the  same  blood.  That,  however,  is  not 
the  case,  as  the  reader  will  understand  if  he  will  think  of  the 
negroes  of  the  United  States  who  now  all  speak  English,  or  of 
the  Irish,  who — except  for  purposes  of  political  demonstration 
— no  longer  speak  the  old  Erse  language  but  English,  or  of 
the  Cornish  people,  who  have  lost  their  ancient  Keltic  speech. 
But  what  a  common  language  does  do,  is  to  show  that  a  com- 
mon intercourse  has  existed,  and  the  possibility  of  intermix- 
ture; and  if  it  does  not  point  to  a  common  origin,  it  points 
at  least  to  a  common  future. 

But  even  this  original  Aryan  language,  which  was  a  spoken 
speech  perhaps  4,000  or  3,000  B.C.,  was  by  no  means  a 
primordial  language  or  the  language  of  a  savage  race.  Its 
earliest  speakers  were  in  or  past  the  Neolithic  stage  of  civiliza- 
tion. It  had  grammatical  forms  and  verbal  devices  of  some  com- 
plexity. The  vanished  methods  of  expression  of  the  later  Palaeo- 
lithic peoples,  of  the  Azilians,  or  of  the  early  Neolithic  kitchen- 
midden  people  for  instance,  were  probably  much  cruder  than 
the  most  elementary  form  of  Aryan. 

Probably  the  Aryan  group  of  languages  became  distinct  in 
a  wide  region  of  which  the  Danube,  Dnieper,  Don,  and  Volga 
were  the  main  rivers,  a  region  that  extended  eastward  beyond 
the  Ural  mountains  north  of  the  Caspian  Sea.  The  area  over 
which  the  Aryan  speakers  roamed  probably  did  not  for  a  long 
time  reach  to  the  Atlantic  or  to  the  south  of  the  Black  Sea  be- 
yond Asia  Minor.  There  was  no  effectual  separation  of  Europe 
from  Asia  then  at  the  Bosporus.  The  Danube  flowed  east- 


120  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ward  to  a  great  sea  that  extended  across  the  Volga  region  of 
south-eastern  Russia  right  into  Turkestan,  and  included  the 
Black,  Caspian,  and  Aral  Seas  of  to-day.  Perhaps  it  sent  out 
arms  to  the  Arctic  Ocean.  It  must  have  been  a  pretty  effec- 
tive barrier  between  the  Aryan  speakers  and  the  people  in  north- 
eastern Asia.  South  of  this  sea  stretched  a  continuous  shore 
from  the  Balkans  to  Afghanistan.  North-west  of  it  a  region 
of  swamps  and  lagoons  reached  to  the  Baltic. 


§  3 

Next  to  Aryan,  philologists  distinguish  another  group  of 
languages  which  seem  to  have  been  made  quite  separately  from 
the  Aryan  languages,  the  Semitic.  Hebrew  and  Arabic  are 
kindred,  but  they  seem  to  have  even  a  different  set  of  root 
words  from  the  Aryan  tongues ;  they  express  their  ideas  of  rela- 
tionship in  a  different  way;  the  fundamental  ideas  of  their 
grammars  are  generally  different.  They  were  in  all  probability 
made  by  human  communities  quite  out  of  touch  with  the  Aryans, 
separately  and  independently.  Hebrew,  Arabic,  Abyssinian, 
ancient  Assyrian,  ancient  Phoenician,  and  a  number  of  associated 
tongues  are  put  together,  therefore,  as  being  derived  from  a  sec- 
ond primary  language,  which  is  called  the  SEMITIC.  In  the 
very  beginnings  of  recorded  history  we  find  Aryan-speaking 
peoples  and  Semitic-speaking  peoples  carrying  on  the  liveliest 
intercourse  of  war  and  trade  round  and  about  the  eastern  end 
of  the  Mediterranean,  but  the  fundamental  differences  of  the 
primary  Aryan  and  primary  Semitic  languages  oblige  us  to 
believe  that  in  early  Neolithic  times,  before  the  historical 
period,  there  must  for  thousands  of  years  have  been  an  almost 
complete  separation  of  the  Aryan-speaking  and  the  Semitic- 
speaking  peoples.  The  latter  seem  to  have  lived  either  in  south 
Arabia  or  in  north-east  Africa.  In  the  opening  centuries  of  the 
Neolithic  Age  the  original  Aryan  speakers  and  the  original 
Semitic  speakers  were  probably  living,  so  to  speak,  in  different 
worlds  with  a  minimum  of  intercourse.  Racially,  it  would 
seem,  they  had  a  remote  common  origin ;  both  Aryan  speakers 
and  Semites  are  classed  as  Caucasians,;  but  while  the  original 
Aryan  speakers  seem  to  have  been  of  Nordic  race,  the  original 
Semites  were  rather  of  the  Mediterranean  type. 


THE  LANGUAGES  OF  MANKIND  121 


Philologists  speak  with  less  unanimity  of  a  third  group  of 
languages,  the  HAMITIC,  which  some  declare  to  be  distinct  from, 
and  others  allied  to,  the  Semitic.  The  weight  of  opinion  in- 
clines now  towards  the  idea  of  some  primordial  connection  of 
these  two  groups.  The  Hamitic  group  is  certainly  a  much 
wider  and  more  various  language  group  than  the  Semitic  or  the 
Aryan,  and  the  Semitic  tongues  are  more  of  a  family,  have 
more  of  a  common  likeness,  than  the  Aryan.  The  Semitic 
languages  may  have  arisen  as  some  specialized  proto-Hamitic 
group,  just  as  the  birds  arose  from  a  special  group  of  reptiles 
(Chap.  IV).  It  is  a  tempting  speculation,  but  one  for  which 
there  is  really  no  basis  of  justifying  fact,  to  suppose  that  the 
rude  primordial  ancestor  group  of  the  Aryan  tongues  branched 
off  from  the  proto-Hamitic  speech  forms  at  some  still  earlier 
date  than  the  separation  and  specialization  of  Semitic.  The 
Hamitic  speakers  to-day,  like  the  Semitic  speakers,  are  mainly 
of  the  Mediterranean  Caucasian  race.  Among  the  Hamitic 
languages  are  the  ancient  Egyptian  and  Coptic,  the  Berber 
languages  (of  the  mountain  people  of  North  Africa,  the  Masked 
Tuaregs,  and  other  such  peoples),  and  what  are  called  the 
Ethiopic  group  of  African  languages  in  eastern  Africa,  includ- 
ing the  speech  of  the  Gallas  and  the  Somalis.  The  general 
grouping  of  these  various  tongues  suggests  that  they  originated 
over  some  great  area  to  the  west,  as  the  primitive  Semitic  may 
have  arisen  to  the  east,  of  the  Red  Sea  divide.  That  divide  was 
probably  much  more  effective  in  Pleistocene  times ;  the  sea  ex- 
tended across  to  the  west  of  the  Isthmus  of  Suez,  and  a  great 
part  of  lower  Egypt  was  under  water.  Long  before  the  dawn 
of  history,  however,  Asia  and  Africa  had  joined  at  Suez,  and 
these  two  language  systems  were  in  contact  in  that  region.  And 
if  Asia  and  Africa  were  separated  then  at  Suez,  they  may, 
on  fhe  other  hand,  have  been  joined  by  way  of  Arabia  and 
Abyssinia. 

These  Hamitic  languages  may  have  radiated  from  a  centre 
on  the  African  coast  of  the  Mediterranean,  and  they  may  have 
extended  over  the  then  existing  land  connections  very  widely 
into  western  Europe. 

All  these  three  great  groups  of  languages,  it  may  be  noted, 
the  Aryan,  Semitic,  and  Hlarnitic,  have  one  feature  in  common 


122 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


•yr^°o~^—  V 

"UlTT^Clllt*^  ^Oyt^UV'-^"^' 


THE  LANGUAGES  OP  MANKIND  123 

which  they  do  not  share  with  any  other  language,  and  that 
is  grammatical  gender;  but  whether  that  has  much  weight 
as  evidence  of  a  remote  common  origin  of  Aryan,  Semitic,  and 
H'amitic,  is  a  question  for  the  philologist  rather  than  for  the 
general  student.  It  does  not  affect  the  clear  evidence  of  a  very 
long  and  very  ancient  prehistoric  separation  of  the  speakers  of 
these  three  diverse  groups  of  tongues. 

The  hulk  of  the  Semitic  and  Hamitic-speaking  peoples  are 
put  hy  ethnologists  with  the  Aryans  among  the  Caucasian  group 
of  races.  They  are  "white."  The  Semitic  and  Nordic  "races" 
have  a  much  more  distinctive  physiognomy;  they  seem,  like 
their  characteristic  languages,  to  be  more  marked  and  specialized 
than  the  Hamitic-speaking  peoples. 

§  5 

Across  to  the  north-east  of  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  areas  there 
must  once  have  spread  a  further  distinct  language  system  which 
is  now  represented  by  a  group  of  languages  known  as  the 
TuEAisriAN,  or  UKAL-ALTAIC  group.  This  includes  the  Lappish 
of  Lapland  and  the  Samoyed  speech  of  Siberia,  the  Finnish  lan- 
guage, Magyar,  Turkish  or  Tartar,  Manchu  and  Mongol;  it 
has  not  as  a  group  been  so  exhaustively  studied  by  European 
philologists,  and  there  is  insufficient  evidence  yet  whether  it  does 
or  does  not  include  the  Korean  and  Japanese  languages.  H.  B. 
Hulbert  has  issued  a  comparative  grammar  of  Korean  and  cer- 
tain of  the  Dravidian  languages  of  India  to  demonstrate  the 
close  affinity  he  finds  between  them. 

§  6 

A  fifth  region  of  language  formation  was  south-eastern  Asia, 
where  there  still  prevails  a  group  of  languages  consisting  of 
monosyllables  without  any  inflections,  in  which  the  tone  used 
in  uttering  a  word  determines  its  meaning.  This  may  be  called 
the  Chinese  or  MONOSYLLABIC  group,  and  it  includes  Chinese, 
Burmese,  Siamese,  and  Tibetan.  The  difference  between  any 
of  these  Chinese  tongues  and  the  more  western  languages  is  pro- 
found. In  the  Pekinese  form  of  Chinese  there  are  only  about 
420  primaiy  monosyllables,  and  consequently  each  of  these  has 
to  do  duty  for  a  great  number  of  things,  and  the  different  mean- 


124  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ings  are  indicated  either  by  the  context  or  by  saying  the  word 
in  a  distinctive  tone.  The  relations  of  these  words  to  each  other 
are  expressed  by  quite  different  methods  from  the  Aryan 
methods  ;  Chinese  grammar  is  a  thing  different  in  nature  from 
English  grammar;  it  is  a  separate  and  different  invention. 
Many  writers  declare  there  is  no  Chinese  grammar  at  all,  and 
that  is  true  if  we  mean  by  grammar  anything  in  the  European 
sense  of  inflections  and  concords.  Consequently  any  such  thing 
as  a  literal  translation  from  Chinese  into  English  is  an  impossi- 
bility. The  very  method  of  the  thought  is  different.1  Their 
philosophy  remains  still  largely  a  sealed  book  to  the  European 
on  this  account  and  vice  versa,  because  of  the  different  nature 
of  the  expressions. 


In  addition,  the  following  other  great  language  families  are 
distinguished  by  the  philologist.  All  the  American-Indian  lan- 
guages, which  vary  widely  among  themselves,  are  separable 
from  any  Old  World  group.  Here  we  may  lump  them  together 
not  so  much  as  a  family  as  a  miscellany.  There  is  one  great 
group  of  languages  in  Africa,  from  a  little  way  north  of  the 
equator  to  its  southern  extremity,  the  BANTU,  and  in  addition 
a  complex  of  other  languages  across  the  centre  of  the  continent 
about  which  we  will  not  trouble  here.  There  are  also  two  prob- 
ably separate  groups,  the  DRAVIDIAN  in  South  India,  and  the 
MALAY-POLYNESIAN  stretched  over  Polynesia,  and  also  now  in- 
cluding Indian  tongues. 

Now  it  seems  reasonable  to  conclude  irom  these  fundamental 
differences  that  about  the  time  when  men  were  beginning  to 
form  rather  larger  communities  than  the  family  tribe,  when 
they  were  beginning  to  tell  each  other  long  stories  and  argue 
and  exchange  ideas,  human  beings  were  distributed  about  the 

*The  four  characters  indicating  "Affairs,  query,  imperative,  old,"  placed 
in  that  order,  for  example,  represent  "Why  walk  in  the  ancient  ways?" 
The  Chinaman  gives  the  bare  cores  of  his  meaning;  the  Englishman  gets 
to  it  by  a  bold  metaphor.  He  may  be  talking  of  conservatism  in  cooking 
or  in  book-binding,  but  he  will  say:  "Why  walk  in  the  ancient  ways?" 
Mr.  Arthur  Waley,  in  the  interesting  essay  on  Chinese  thought  and 
poetry  which  precedes  his  book,  110  Chinese  Poems  (Constable,  1918), 
makes  it  clear  how  in  these  fields  Chinese  thought  is  kept  practical  and 
restricted  by  the  limitations  upon  metaphor  the  contracted  structure  of 
Chinese  imposes. 


THE  LANGUAGES  OF  MANKIND  125 

world  in  a  number  of  areas  which  communicated  very  little 
with  each  other.  They  were  separated  by  oceans,  seas,  thick 
forests,  deserts  or  mountains  from  one  another.  There  may 
have  been  in  that  remote  time,  it  may  be  15,000  years  ago  or 
more,  Aryan,  Semitic,  Hamitic,  Turanian,  American  and 
Chinese-speaking  tribes  and  families,  wandering  over  their  sev- 
eral areas  of  hunting  and  pasture,  all  at  very  much  the  same 
stage  of  culture,  and  each  developing  its  linguistic  instrument 
in  its  own  way.  Probably  each  of  these  original  tribes  was  not 
more  numerous  altogether  than  the  Indians  in  Hudson  Bay 
Territory  to-day.  Systematic  agriculture  was  barely  beginning 
then,  and  until  agriculture  made  a  denser  population  possible 
men  may  have  been  almost  as  rare  as  the  great  apes  have  always 
been.  If  agriculture  was  becoming  at  all  important  in  human 
life  at  that  time,  and  if  population  was  anywhere  denser,  it 
was  probably  in  the  Mediterranean  region  and  possibly  in  areas 
now  submerged. 

In  addition  to  these  Neolithic  tribes,  there  must  have  been 
various  still  more  primitive  forest  folks  in  Africa  and  in  India. 
Central  Africa,  from  the  Upper  Nile,  was  then  a  vast  forest,  im- 
penetrable to  ordinary  human  life,  a  forest  of  which  the  Congo 
forests  of  to-day  are  the  last  shrunken  remains. 

Possibly  the  spread  of  men  of  a  race  higher  than  primitive 
Australoids  into  the  East  Indies,1  and  the  development  of  the 
languages  of  the  Malay-Polynesian  type  came  later  in  time  than 
the  origination  of  these  other  language  groups. 

The  language  divisions  of  the  philologist  do  tally,  it  is  mani- 
fest, in  a  broad  sort  of  way  with  the  main  race  classes  of  the 
ethnologist,  and  they  carry  out  the  same  idea  of  age-long  sepa- 
rations between  great  divisions  of  mankind.  In  the  Glacial 
Age,  ice,  or  at  least  a  climate  too  severe  for  the  free  spreading 
of  peoples,  extended  from  the  north  pole  into  Central  Europe 
and  across  Russia  and  Siberia  to  the  great  tablelands  of  Central 
Asia.  After  the  last  Glacial  Age,  this  cold  north  mitigated  its 
severities  very  slowly,  and  was  for  long  without  any  other  popu- 
lation than  the  wandering  hunters  who  spread  eastward  and 
across  Bering  Strait.  North  and  Central  Europe  and  Asia  did 
not  become  sufficiently  temperate  for  agriculture  until  quite 
recent  times,  times  that  is  within  the  limit  of  12,000  or  possibly 

JThe  Polynesians  appear  to  be  a  later  eastward  extension  of  the  dark 
whites  or  brown  peoples. 


126  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

even  10,000  years,  and  a  dense  forest  period  intervened  between 
the  age  of  the  hunter  and  the  agricultural  clearings. 

This  forest  period  was  also  a  very  wet  period.  It  has  been 
called  the  Pluvial  or  Lacustrine  Age,  the  rain  or  pond  period. 
It  has  to  be  remembered  that  the  outlines  of  the  land  of  the 
world  have  changed  greatly  even  in  the  last  hundred  centuries. 
Across  European  Russia,  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Caspian  Sea, 
as  the  ice  receded  there  certainly  spread  much  water  and  many 
impassable  swamps ;  the  Caspian  Sea  and  the  Sea  of  Aral  and 
parts  of  the  Desert  of  Turkestan,  are  the  vestiges  of  a  great 
extent  of  sea  that  reached  far  up  to  the  Volga  valley  and  sent 
an  arm  westward  to  join  the  Black  Sea.  Mountain  barriers 
much  higher  than  they  are  now,  and  the  arm  of  the  sea  that  is 
now  the  region  of  the  Indus,  completed  the  separation  of  the 
early  Nordic  races  from  the  Mongolians  and  the  Dravidians, 
and  made  the  broad  racial  differentiation  of  those  groups 
possible. 

Again  the  blown-sand  Desert  of  Sahara — it  is  not  a  dried-up 
sea,  but  a  wind  desert,  and  was  once  fertile  and  rich  in  life — 
becoming  more  and  more  dry  and  sandy,  cut  the  Caucasians  off 
from  the  sparse  primitive  Negro  population  in  the  central  forest 
region  of  Africa. 

The  Persian  Gulf  extended  very  far  to  the  north  of  its  pres- 
ent head,  and  combined  with  the  Syrian  desert  to  cut  off  the 
Semitic  peoples  from  the  eastern  areas,  while  on  the  other  hand 
the  south  of  Arabia,  much  more  fertile  than  it  is  to-day,  may 
have  reached  across  what  is  now  the  Gulf  of  Aden  towards 
Abyssinia  and  Somaliland.  The  Mediterranean  and  Red  Sea 
may  even  have  been  fertile  valleys  containing  a  string  of  fresh- 
water lakes  during  the  Pluvial  Age.  The  Himalayas  and  the 
higher  and  vaster  massif  of  Central  Asia  and  the  northward 
extension  of  the  Bay  of  Bengal  up  to  the  present  Ganges  valley 
divided  off  the  Dravidians  from  the  Mongolians,  the  canoe  was 
the  chief  link  between  Dravidian  and  Southern  Mongol,  and 
the  Gobi  system  of  seas  and  lakes  which  presently  became  the 
Gobi  desert,  and  the  great  system  of  mountain  chains  which 
follow  one  another  across  Asia  from  the  centre  to  the  north- 
east, split  the  Mongolian  races  into  the  Chinese  and  the  Ural- 
Altaic  language  groups. 

Bering  Strait,  when  this  came  into  existence,  before  or  after 
the  Pluvial  Period,  isolated  the  Amerindians. 


THE  LANGUAGES  OF  MANKIND  127 

We  are  not  suggesting  here,  be  it  noted,  that  these  ancient 
separations  were  absolute  separations,  but  that  they  were 
effectual  enough  at  least  to  prevent  any  great  intermixture  of 
blood  or  any  great  intermixture  of  speech  in  those  days  of 
man's  social  beginnings.  There  was,  nevertheless,  some  amount 
of  meeting  and  exchange  even  then,  some  drift  of  knowledge 
that  spread  the  crude  patterns  and  use  of  various  implements, 
and  the  seeds  of  a  primitive  agriculture  about  the  world. 


The  fundamental  tongues  of  these  nine  main  language  groups 
we  have  noted  were  not  by  any  means  all  the  human  speech 
beginnings  of  the  Neolithic  Age.  They  are  the  latest  languages, 
the  survivors,  which  have  ousted  their  more  primitive  predeces- 
sors. There  may  have  been  other,  and  possibly  many  other, 
ineffective  centres  of  speech  which  were  afterwards  overrun 
by  the  speakers  of  still  surviving  tongues,  and  of  elementary 
languages  which  faded  out.  We  find  strange  little  patches  of 
speech  still  in  the  world  which  do  not  seem  to  be  connected 
with  any  other  language  about  them.  Sometimes,  however,  an 
exhaustive  inquiry  seems  to  affiliate  these  disconnected  patches, 
seems  to  open  out  to  us  tantalizing  glimpses  of  some  simpler, 
wider,  and  more  fundamental  and  universal  form  of  human 
speech.  One  language  group  that  has  been  keenly  discussed  is 
the  Basque  group  of  dialects.  The  Basques  live  now  on  the 
north  and  south  slopes  of  the  Pyrenees;  they  number  perhaps 
600,000  altogether  in  Europe,  and  to  this  day  they  are  a  very 
sturdy  and  independent-spirited  people.  Their  language,  as 
it  exists  to-day,  is  a  fully  developed  one.  But  it  is  developed 
upon  lines  absolutely  different  from  those  of  the  Aryan  lan- 
guages about  it.  Basque  newspapers  have  been  published  in 
the  Argentine  and  in  the  United  States  to  supply  groups  of 
prosperous  emigrants.  The  earliest  "French"  settlers  in  Canada 
were  Basque,  and  Basque  names  are  frequent  among  the 
French  Canadians  to  this  day.  Ancient  remains  point  to  a 
much  wider  distribution  of  the  Basque  speech  and  people  over 
Spain.  For  a  long  time  this  Basque  language  was  a  profound 
perplexity  to  scholars,  and  its  structural  character  led  to  the 
suggestion  that  it  might  be  related  to  some  Amerindian  tongue. 
A.  H.  Keane,  in  Man,  Past  and  Present,  assembles  reasons  for 


128 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


linking    it — though    remotely — with   the   Berber    language   of 
North  Africa,  and  through  the  Berber  with  the  general  body 

of  Hamitic  languages,  but 
this  relationship  is  ques- 
tioned by  other  philolo- 
gists. They  find  Basque 
more  akin  to  certain 
similarly  stranded  ves- 
tiges of  speech  found  in 
the  Caucasian  Mountains, 
and  they  are  disposed  to 
regard  it  as  a  last  surviv- 
ing member,  much 
changed  and  specialized, 
of  a  once  very  widely  ex- 
tended group  of  pre- 
Hamitic  languages,  other- 
wise extinet,  spoken  chief- 
ly by  peoples  of  that 
brunet  Mediterranean  race 
which  once  occupied  most 
of  western  and  southern 
Europe  and  western  Asia, 
and  which  may  have  been 
very  closely  related  to  the 
Dravidians  of  India  and 
the  peoples  with  a  helio- 
lithic  culture  who  spread 
eastward,  thence  through 
the  East  Indies  to  Poly- 
nesia and  beyond. 

It  is  quite  possible  that 
over  western  and  southern 
Europe  language  groups 
extended  eight  or  ten  thou- 
sand years  ago  that  have 
completely  vanished  be- 
fore Aryan  tongues.  Later  on  we  shall  note,  in  passing,  the 
possibility  of  three  lost  language  groups  represented  by  (1) 
Ancient  Cretan,  Lydian,  and  the  like  (though  these  may  have 


THE  LANGUAGES  OF  MANKIND  129 

belonged,  says  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston,  to  the  "Basque  —  Caucasian 
—  Dravidian  [  !]  group"),  (2)  Sumerian,  and  (3)  Elamite. 
The  suggestion  has  been  made  —  it  is  a  mere  guess  —  that  an- 
cient Sumerian  may  have  been  a  linking  language  between  the 
early  Basque-Caucasian  and  early  Mongolian  groups.  If  this 
is  true,  then  we  have  in  this  "Basque-Caucasian-Dravidian- 
Sumerian-proto-Mongolian"  group  a  still  more  ancient  and 
more  ancestral  system  of  speech  than  the  fundamental  Hamitic. 
We  have  something  more  like  the  linguistic  amissing  link," 
more  like  an  ancestral  language  than  anything  else  we  can 
imagine  at  the  present  time.  It  may  have  been  related  to  the 
Aryan  and  Semitic  and  Hamitic  languages  much  as  the  primi- 
tive lizards  of  later  Palaeozoic  times  were  related  to  the  mam- 
mals, birds,  and  dinosaurs  respectively. 


The  Hottentot  language  is  said  to  have  affinities  with  the 
Hamitic  tongues,  from  which  it  is  separated  by  the  whole 
breadth  of  Bantu-speaking  Central  Africa.  A  Hottentot-like 
language  with  Bushman  affinities  is  still  spoken  in  equatorial 
East  Africa,  and  this  strengthens  the  idea  that  the  whole  of 
East  Africa  was  once  Hamitic-speaking.  The  Bantu  languages 
and  peoples  spread,  in  comparatively  recent  times,  from  some 
centre  of  origin  in  West  Central  Africa  and  cut  off  the  Hotten- 
tots from  the  other  Hamitic  peoples.  But  it  is  at  least  equally 
probable  that  the  Hottentot  is  a  separate  language  group. 

Among  other  remote  and  isolated  little  patches  of  language 
are  the  Papuan  speech  of  New  Guinea  and  the  native  Aus- 
tralian. The  now  extinct  Tasmanian  language  is  but  little 
known.  What  we  do  know  of  it  is  in  support  of  what  we  have 
guessed  about  the  comparative  speechlessness  of  Palaeolithic 
man. 

We  may  quote  a  passage  from  Hutchinson's  Living  Races  of 
Mankind  upon  this  matter  :  — 

"The  language  of  the  natives  is  irretrievably  lost,  only  im- 
perfect indications  of  its  structure  and  a  small  proportion  of 
its  words  having  been  preserved.  In  the  absence  of  sibilants 
and  some  other  features,  their  dialects  resembled  the  Australian, 
but  were  of  ruder,  of  less  developed  structure,  and  so  imperfect 
that,  according  to  Joseph  Milligan,  our  best  authority  on  the 


130  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

subject,  they  observed  no  settled  order  or  arrangement  of  words 
in  the  construction  of  their  sentences,  but  conveyed  in  a  supple- 
mentary fashion  by  tone,  manner,  and  gesture  those  modifica- 
tions of  meaning  which  we  express  by  mood,  tense,  number,  etc. 
Abstract  terms  were  rare;  for  every  variety  of  gum-tree  or 
wattle-tree  there  was  a  name,  but  no  word  for  'tree'  in  general, 
nor  for  qualities  such  as  hard,  soft,  warm,  cold,  long,  short, 
round,  etc.  Anything  hard  was  'like  a  stone,7  anything  round 
'like  the  moon/  and  so  on,  usually  suiting  the  action  to  the 
word  and  confirming  by  some  sign  the  meaning  to  be 
understood." 


XIV 

THE  FIKST  CIVILIZATIONS 

1.  Early  Cities  and  Early  Nomads.  §  2A.  The  Sumerians. 
§  2s.  The  Empire  of  Sargon  the  First.  §  2c.  The  Empire 
of  Hammurabi.  §  2D.  The  Assyrians  and  their  Empire. 
§  2E.  The  Chaldean  Empire.  §  3.  The  Early  History  of 
Egypt.  §  4.  The  Early  Civilization  of  India.  §  5.  The 
Early  History  of  China.  §  6.  While  the  Civilizations  were 
Growing. 


IT  was  out  Of  the  so-called  heliolithic  culture  we  have 
described  in  Chapter  XII  that  the  first  beginnings  of  any- 
thing that  we  can  call  a  civilization  arose.  It  is  still  doubt- 
ful whether  we  are  to  consider  Mesopotamia  or  Egypt  the  earlier 
scene  of  the  two  parallel  beginnings  of  settled  communities  liv- 
ing in  towns.  By  4,000  B.C.,  in  both  these  regions  of  the  earth, 
such  communities  existed,  and  had  been  going  on  for  a  very 
considerable  time.  The  excavations  of  the  American  expedition 
at  Nippur  have  unearthed  evidence  of  a  city  community  ex- 
isting there  at  least  as  early  as  5,000  B.C.,  and  probably  as  early 
as  6,000  B.C.,  an  earlier  date  than  anything  we  know  of  in, 
Egypt.  The  late  Mr.  Aaron  Aaronson  found  a  real  wild  wheat 
upon  the  slopes  of  Mt,  Hermon,  and  it  must  be  that  somewhere 
in  that  part  of  the  world  its  cultivation  began.  It  may  be  that 
from  the  western  end  of  the  Mediteranean,  possibly  in  some 
region  now  submerged,  as  a  centre  that  the  cultivation  of  wheat 
spread  over  the  entire  eastern  hemisphere.  But  cultivation  is 
not  civilization ;  the  growing  of  wheat  had  spread  from  the  At- 
lantic to  the  Pacific  coast  with  the  distribution  of  the  Neolithic 
culture  by  perhaps  15,000  or  10,000  B.C.,  before  the  beginnings 
of  civilization.  Civilization  is  something  more  than  the  occa- 
sional seasonal  growing  of  wheat.  It  is  the  settlement  of  men 
upon  an  area  continuously  cultivated  and  possessed,  who  live  in 

131 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

buildings  continuously  inhabited  with  a  common  rule  and  a  com- 
mon city  or  citadel.  For  a  long  time  civilization  may  quite  pos- 
sibly have  developed  in  Mesopotamia  without  any  relations  with 
the  parallel  beginnings  in  Egypt.  The  two  settlements  may 
have  been  quite  independent,  arising  separately  out  of  the 
widely  diffused  Heliolithic  Neolithic  culture.  Or  they  may 
have  had  a  common  origin  in  the  region  of  the  Mediterranean, 
the  Red  Sea,  and  southern  Arabia. 

The  first  condition  necessary  to  a  real  settling  down  of  Neo- 
lithic men,  as  distinguished  from  a  mere  temporary  settlement 
among  abundant  food,  was  of  course  a  trustworthy  all-the-year- 
round  supply  of  water,  fodder  for  the  animals,  food  for  them- 
selves, and  building  material  for  their  homes.  There  had  to 
be  everything  they  could  need  at  any  season,  and  no  want  that 
would  tempt  them  to  wander  further.  This  was  a  possible  state 
of  affairs,  no  doubt,  in  many  European  and  Asiatic  valleys; 
and  in  many  such  valleys,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Swiss  lake  dwell- 
ings, men  settled  from  a  very  early  date  indeed ;  but  nowhere, 
of  any  countries  now  known  to  us,  were  these  favourable  con- 
ditions found  upon  such  a  scale,  and  nowhere  did  they  hold 
good  so  surely  year  in  and  year  out  as  in  Egypt  and  in  the 
country  between  the  upper  waters  of  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris 
and  the  Persian  Gulf.1  Here  was  a  constant  water  supply  un- 
der enduring  sunlight;  trustworthy  harvests  year  by  year;  in 
Mesopotamia  wheat  yielded,  says  Herodotus,  two  hundredfold 
to  the  sower;  Pliny  says  that  it  was  cut  twice  and  afterwards 
yielded  good  fodder  for  sheep;  there  were  abundant  palrns  and 
many  sorts  of  fruits;  and  as  for  building  material,  in  Egypt 
there  was  clay  and  easily  worked  stone,  and  in  Mesopotamia  a 
clay  that  becomes  a  brick  in  the  sunshine.  In  such  countries 
men  would  cease  to  wander  and  settle  down  almost  unawares ; 
they  would  multiply  and  discover  themselves  numerous  and  by 
their  numbers  safe  from  any  casual  assailant.  They  multiplied, 
producing  a  denser  human  population  than  the  earth  had  ever 
known  before ;  their  houses  became  more  substantial,  wild  beasts 

1  We  shall  use  "  Mesopotamia"  here  loosely  for  the  Euphrates-Tigris 
country  generally.  Strictly,  of  course,  as  its  name  indicates,  Mesopotamia 
(mid-rivers)  means  only  the  country  between  those  two  great  rivers.  That 
country  in  the  fork  was  probably  very  marshy  arid  unhealthy  in  early 
times  (Sayce),  until  it  was  drained  by  man,  and  the  early  cities  grew 
up  west  of  the  Euphrates  and  east  of  the  Tigris.  Probably  these  rivers 
then  flowed  separately  into  the  Persian  Gulf. 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS 


133 


were  exterminated  over  great  areas,  the  security  of  life  in- 
creased so  that  ordinary  men  went  about  in  the  towns  and  fields 
without  encumbering  themselves  with  weapons,  and  among 
themselves,  at  least,  they  became  peaceful  peoples.  Men  took 
root  as  man  had  never  taken  root  before. 


Fertile  LMtd:..^jjjj^     Forest 

•.• a 


Water.... 


. '..:•*•- 
&£V»v,*  «  fe 


WESTERN 
CIVILIZATION 

6,000  to  4.000 B.C. 
•$• 

*  ji  «• 


But  in  the  less  fertile  and  more  seasonal  lands  outside  these 
favoured  areas,  in  the  forests  of  Europe,  the  Arabian  deserts, 
and  the  seasonal  pastures  of  Central  Asia,  there  developed  on 
the  other  hand  a  thinner,  more  active  population  of  peoples, 
the  primitive  nomadic  peoples.  In  contrast  with  the  settled  folk, 
the  agriculturists,  these  nomads  lived  freely  and  dangerously. 


134  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

They  were  in  comparison  lean  and  hungry  men.  Their  herding 
was  still  blended  with  hunting ;  they  fought  constantly  for  their 
pastures  against  hostile  families.  The  discoveries  in  the  elabora- 
tion of  implements  and  the  use  of  metals  made  by  the  settled 
peoples  spread  to  them  and  improved  their  weapons.  They 
followed  the  settled  folk  from  Neolithic  phase  to  Bronze  phase. 
It  is  possible  that  in  the  case  of  iron,  the  first  users  were  no- 
madic. They  became  more  warlike  with  better  arms,  and  more 
capable  of  rapid  movements  with  the  improvement  of  their 
transport.  One  must  not  think  of  a  nomadic  stage  as  a  pre- 
decessor of  a  settled  stage  in  human  affairs.  To  begin  with, 
man  was  a  slow  drifter,  following  food.  Then  one  sort  of  men 
began  to  settle  down,  and  another  sort  became  more  distinctly 
nomadic.  The  settled  sort  began  to  rely  more  and  more  upon 
grain  for  food ;  the  nomad  began  to  make  a  greater  use  of  milk 
for  food.  He  bred  his  cows  for  milk.  The  two  ways  of  life 
specialized  in  opposite  directions.  It  was  inevitable  that  nomad 
folk  and  the  settled  folk  should  clash,  that  the  nomads  should 
seem  hard  barbarians  to  the  settled  peoples,  and  the  settled 
peoples  soft  and  effeminate  and  very  good  plunder  to  the  nomad 
peoples.  Along  the  fringes  of  the  developing  civilizations  there 
must  have  been  a  constant  raiding  and  bickering  between  hardy 
nomad  tribes  and  mountain  tribes  and  the  more  numerous  and 
less  warlike  peoples  in  the  towns  and  villages. 

For  the  most  part  this  was  a  mere  raiding  of.  the  borders. 
The  settled  folk  had  the  weight  of  numbers  on  their  side ;  the 
herdsmen  might  raid  and  loot,  but  they  could  not  stay.  That 
sort  of  mutual  friction  might  go  on  for  many  generations.  But 
ever  and  again  we  find  some  leader  or  some  tribe  amidst  the 
disorder  of  free  and  independent  nomads,  powerful  enough  to 
force  a  sort  of  unity  upon  its  kindred  tribes,  and  then  woe  be- 
tide the  nearest  civilization.  Down  pour  the  united  nomads  on 
the  unwarlike,  unarmed  plains,  and  there  ensues  a  war  of  con- 
quest. Instead  of  carrying  off  the  booty,  the  conquerors  settle 
down  on  the  conquered  land,  which  becomes  all  booty  for  them ; 
the  villagers  and  townsmen  are  reduced  to  servitude  and  tribute- 
paying,  they  become  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water,  and 
the  leaders"  of  the  nomads  become  kings  and  princes,  masters 
and  aristocrats.  They,  too,  settle  down,  they  learn  many  of  the 
arts  and  refinements  of  the  conquered,  they  cease  to  be  lean  and 
hungry,  but  for  many  generations  they  retain  traces  of  their 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS  135 

old  nomadic  habits,  they  hunt  and  indulge  in  open-air  sports, 
they  drive  and  race  chariots,  they  regard  work,  especially  agri- 
cultural work,  as  the  lot  of  an  inferior  race  and  class. 

This  in  a  thousand  variations  has  been  one  of  the  main  stories 
in  history  for  the  last  seventy  centuries  or  more.  In  the  first 
history  that  we  can  clearly  decipher  we  find  already  in  all  the 
civilized  regions  a  distinction  between  a  non-working  ruler  class 
and  the  working  mass  of  the  population.  And  we  find,  too,  that 
after  some  generations,  the  aristocrat,  having  settled  down,  be- 
gins to  respect  the  arts  and  refinements  and  lawabidingness  of 
settlement,  and  to  lose  something  of  his  original  hardihood.  He 
intermarries,  he  patches  up  a  sort  of  toleration  between  con- 
queror and  conquered;  he  exchanges  religious  ideas  and  learns 
the  lessons  upon  which  soil  and  climate  insist.  He  becomes  a 
part  of  the  civilization  he  has  captured.  And  as  he  does  so, 
events  gather  towards  a  fresh  invasion  by  the  free  adventurers 
of  the  outer  world. 


§  2A 

This  alternation  of  settlement,  conquest,  refinement,  fresh 
conquest,  refinement,  is  particularly  to  be  noted  in  the  region  of 
the  Euphrates  and  Tigris,  which  lay  open  in  every  direction  to 
great  areas  which  are  not  arid  enough  to  be  complete  deserts, 
but  which  were  not  fertile  enough  to  support  civilized  popula- 
tions. Perhaps  the  earliest  people  to  form  real  cities  in  this  part 
of  the  world,  or  indeed  in  any  part  of  the  world,  were  a  people 
of  mysterious  origin  called  the  Sumerians.  They  were  probably 
brunets  of  Iberian  or  Dravidian  affinities.  They  used  a  kind  of 
writing  which  they  scratched  upon  clay,  and  their  language  has 
been  deciphered.1  It  was  a  language  more  like  the  unclassified 
Caucasic  language  groups  than  any  others  that  now  exist.  These 
languages  may  be  connected  with  Basque,  and  may  represent 
what  was  once  a  widespread  primitive  language  group  extend- 
ing from  Spain  and  western  Europe  to  eastern  India,  and  reach- 

1  Excavations  conducted  at  Eridu  by  Capt.  R.  Campbell  Thompson  during 
the  recent  war  have  revealed  an  early  Neolithic  agricultural  stage,  before 
the  invention  of  writing  or  the  use  of  bronze  beneath  the  earliest  Sumerian 
foundations.  The  crops  were  cut  by  sickles  of  earthenware.  Capt.  Thomp- 
son thinks  that  these  pre-Sumerian  people  were  not  of  Sumerian  race, 
but  proto-Elamites.  Entirely  similar  Neolithic  remains  have  been 
found  at  Susa,  once  the  chief  city  of  Elam. 


136 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


ing  southwards  to  Central  Africa.  These  people  shaved  their 
heads  and  wore  simple  tunic-like  garments  of  wool.  They  set- 
tled first  on  the  lower  courses  of  the  great  river  and  not  very 
far  from  the  Persian  Gulf,  which  in  those  days  ran  up  for  a 
hundred  and  thirty  miles  l  and  more  beyond  its  present  head. 
They  fertilized  their  fields  by  letting  water  run  through  irriga- 
tion trenches,  and  they  gradually  became  very  skilful  hydraulic 
engineers ;  they  had  cattle,  asses,  sheep,  and  goats,  but  no  horses ; 
their  collections  of  mud  huts  grew  into  towns,  and  their  religion 
raised  up  tower-like  temple  buildings. 

Clay,  dried  in  the  sun,  was  a  very  great  fact  in  the  lives  of 
these  people.     This  lower  country  of  the  Euphrates-Tigris  val- 


A  very  earfy  Swneriaxi  stana  carving  showing  Sumeriati  warriors'  in,  phalanx 

leys  had  little  or  no  stone.  They  built  of  brick,  they  made  pot- 
tery and  earthenware  images,  and  they  drew  and  presently  wrote 
upon  thin  tile-like  cakes  of  clay.  They  do  not  seem  to  have 
had  paper  or  to  have  used  parchment.  Their  books  and  mem- 
oranda, even  their  letters,  were  potsherds. 

At  Nippur  they  built  a  great  tower  of  brick  to  their  chief 
god,  El-lil  (Enlil),  the  memory  of  which  is  supposed  to  be  pre- 
served in  the  story  of  the  Tower  of  Babel.  They  seem  to  have 
been  divided  up  into  city  states,  which  warred  among  them- 
selves and  maintained  for  many  centuries  their  military  ca- 
pacity. Their  soldiers  carried  long  spears  and  shields,  and 
fought  in  close  formation.  Sumerians  conquered  Sumerians. 
Sumeria  remained  unconquered  by  any  stranger  race  for  a  very 

1  Sayce,  in  Babylonian  and  Assyrian  Life,  estimates  that  in  6,500  B.C. 
Eridu  was  on  the  sea-coast. 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS  137 

long  period  of  time  indeed.  They  developed  their  civilization, 
their  writing,  and  their  shipping,  through  a  period  that  may  he 
twice  as  long  as  the  whole  period  from  the  Christian  era  to  the 
present  time. 

The  first  of  all  known  empires  was  that  founded  by  the  high 
priest  of  the  god  of  the  Sumerian  city  of  Erech.  It  reached, 
says  an  inscription  at  Nippur,  from  the  Lower  (Persian  Gulf) 
to  the  Upper  (Mediterranean  or  Red?)  Sea.  Among  the  mud 
heaps  of  the  Euphrates-Tigris  valley  the  record  of  that  vast 
period  of  history,  that  first  half  of  the  Age  of  Cultivation,  is 
huried.  There  flourished  the  first  temples  and  the  first  priest- 
rulers  that  we  know  of  among  mankind. 

§  2B 

Upon  the  western  edge  of  this  country  appeared  nomadic 
tribes  of  Semitic-speaking  peoples  who  traded,  raided,  and 
fought  with  the  Sumerians  for  many  generations.  Then  arose 
it  last  a  great  leader  among  these  Semites,  Sargon  (2,750  B.C), 
who  united  them,  and  not  only  conquered  the  Sumerians,  but 
extended  his  rule  from  beyond  the  Persian  Gulf  on  the  east 
to  the  Mediterranean  on  the  west.  His  own  people  were  called 
the  Akkadians  and  his  empire  is  called  the  Sumerian  Akkadian 
empire.  It  endured  for  over  two  hundred  years. 

But  though  the  Semites  conquered  and  gave  a  king  to  the 
Sumerian  cities,  it  was  the  Sumerian  civilization  which  pre- 
vailed Over  the  simpler  Semitic  culture.  The  newcomers  learnt 
the  Sumerian  writing  (the  "cuneiform"  writing)  and  the 
Sumerian  language;  they  set  up  no  Semitic  writing  of  their 
own.  The  Sumerian  language  became  for  these  barbarians  the 
language  of  knowledge  and  power,  as  Latin  was  the  language 
of  knowledge  and  power  among  the  barbaric  peoples  of  the  mid- 
dle ages  in  Europe.  This  Sumerian  learning  had  a  very  great 
vitality.  It  was  destined  to  survive  through  a  long  series  of 
conquests  and  changes  that  now  began  in  the  valley  of  the  two 
rivers. 

§  2c 

As  the  people  of  the  Sumerian  Akkadian  empire  lost  their 
political  and  military  vigour,  fresh  inundations  of  a  warlike 


138  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

people  began  from  the  east,  the  Elamites,1  while  from  the  west 
came  the  Semitic  Amorites,  pinching  the  Sumerian  Akkadian 
empire  between  them.  The  Amorites  settled  in  what  was  at 
first  a  small  up-river  town,  named  Babylon ;  and  after  a  hundred 
years  of  warfare  became  masters  of  all  Mesopotamia  under  a 
great  king,  Hammurabi  (2,100  B.C.),  who  founded  the  first 
Babylonian  empire. 

Again  came  peace  and  security  and  a  decline  in  aggressive 
prowess,  and  in  another  hundred  years  fresh  nomads  from  the 
east  were  invading  Babylonia,  bringing  with  them  the  horse  and 
the  war  chariot,  and  setting  up  their  own  king  in  Babylon.  .  .  . 

§  2o 

Higher  up  the  Tigris,  above  the  clay  lands  and  with  easy 
supplies  of  workable  stone,  a  Semitic  people,  the  Assyrians, 
while  the  Sumerians  were  still  unconquered  by  the  Semites,  were 
settling  about  a  number  of  cities  of  which  Assur  and  Nineveh 
were  the  chief.  Their  peculiar  physiognomy,  the  long  nose  and 
thick  lips,  was  very  like  that  of  the  commoner  type  of  Polish 
Jew  to-day.  They  wore  great  beards  and  ringletted  long  hair, 
tall  caps  and  long  robes.  They  were  constantly  engaged  in 
mutual  raiding  with  the  Hittites  to  the  west;  they  were  con- 
quered by  Sargon  I  and  became  free  again ;  a  certain  Tushratta, 
King  of  Mitanni,  to  the  north-west,  captured  and  held  their 
capital,  Nineveh,  for  a  time ;  they  intrigued  with  Egypt  against 
Babylon  and  were  in  the  pay  of  Egypt ;  they  developed  the  mili- 
tary art  to  a  very  high  pitch,  and  became  mighty  raiders  and 
exacters  of  tribute;  and  at  last,  adopting  the  horse  and  the 
war  chariot,  they  settled  accounts  for  a  time  with  the  Hittites, 
and  then,  under  Tiglath  Pileser  I,  conquered  Babylon  for  them- 
selves (about  1,100  B.C.).  But  their  hold  on  the  lower,  older, 
and  more  civilized  land  was  not  secure,  and  Nineveh,  the  stone 
city,  as  distinguished  from  Babylon,  the  brick  city,  remained 
their  capital.  For  many  centuries  power  swayed  between  Nine- 
veh and  Babylon,  and  sometimes  it  was  an  Assyrian  and  some- 
times a  Babylonian  who  claimed  to  be  "king  of  the  world." 

*Of  unknown  language  and  race,  "neither  Sumerians  nor  Semites," 
says  Sayce.  Their  central  city  was  Suaa.  Their  archaeology  is  still  largely 
an  unworked  mine.  They  are  believed  by  some,  says  Sir  H.  H.  Johnston, 
to  have  been  negroid  in  type.  There  is  a  strong  negroid  strain  in  the  mod- 
ern people  of  Elam. 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS 


139 


For  four  centuries  Assyria  was  restrained  from  expansion 
towards  Egypt  by  a  fresh  northward  thrust  and  settlement  of 
another  group  of  Semitic  peoples,  the  Arameans,  whose  chief 
city  was  Damascus,  and  whose  descendants  are  the  Syrians  of 
to-day.  (There  is,  we  may  note,  no  connection  whatever  be- 
tween the  words  Assyrian  and  Syrian.  It  is  an  accidental 
similarity.)  Across  these  Syrians  the  Assyrian  kings  fought 
for  power  and  expansion  south-westward.  In  745  B.C. 
arose  another  Tiglath  Pileser, 
Tiglath  Pileser  III,  the  Tiglath 
Pileser  of  the  Bible.1  He  not 
only  directed  the  transfer  of  the 
Israelites  to  Media  (the  "Lost 
Ten  Tribes"  whose  ultimate  fate 
has  exercised  so  many  curious 
minds)  but  he  conquered  and 
ruled  Babylon,  so  founding  what 
historians  know  as  the  New 
Assyrian  Empire.  His  son,  Shal- 
maneser  IV,2  died  during  the 
siege  of  Samaria,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  a  usurper,  who,  no 
doubt  to  flatter  Babylonian  sus- 
ceptibilities, took  the  ancient 
Akkadian  Sumerian  name  of  Sar- 
gon,  Sargon  II.  He  seems  to  have 
armed  the  Assyrian  forces  for  the 
first  time  with  iron  weapons.  It 
was  probably  Sargon  II  who 
actually  carried  out  the  deporta- 
tion  of  the  Ten  Tribes. 

Such  shiftings  about  of  popula- 


d .Sargon  H 


tion  became  a  very  distinctive  part  of  the  political  methods 
of  the  Assyrian  new  empire.  Whole  nations  who  were  difficult 
to  control  in  their  native  country  would  be  shifted  en  masse 
to  unaccustomed  regions  and  amidst  strange  neighbours,  where 
their  only  hope  of  survival  would  lie  in  obedience  to  the 
supreme  power. 

Sargon's  son,   Sennacherib,   led  the  Assyrian  hosts  to  the 
borders  of  Egypt.     There  Sennacherib's  army  was  smitten  by 

*II.  Kings,  xv.  29,  and  xvi.  7  et  seq.        'II.  Kings  xvii.  3. 


140  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

a  pestilence,  a  disaster  described  in  the  nineteenth  chapter  of  the 
Second  Book  of  Kings. 

"And  it  came  to  pass  that  night,  that  the  angel  of  the  Lord 
went  out,  and  smote  in  the  camp  of  the  Assyrians  an  hundred 
fourscore  and  five  thousand :  and  when  they  arose  early  in  the 
morning,  behold,  they  were  all  dead  corpses.  So  Sennacherib 
king  of  Assyria  departed,  and  went  and  returned,  and  dwelt 
at  Nineveh."  l 

Sennacherib's  grandson,  Assurbanipal  (called  by  the  Greeks 
Sardanapalus),  did  succeed  in  conquering  and  for  a  time  hold- 
ing lower  Egypt. 

§  2E 

The  Assyrian  empire  lasted  only  a  hundred  and  fifty  years 
after  Sargon  II.  Fresh  nomadic  Semites  coming  from  the 
south-east,  the  Chaldeans,  assisted  by  two  Aryan-speaking  peo- 
ples from  the  north,  the  Medes  and  Persians,  combined  against 
it,  and  took  Nineveh  in  606  B.C. 

The  Chaldean  Empire,  with  its  capital  at  Babylon  (Second 
Babylonian  Empire),  lasted  under  Nebuchadnezzar  the  Great 
(Nebuchadnezzar  II)  and  his  successors  until  539  B.C.,  when  it 
collapsed  before  the  attack  of  Cyrus,  the  founder  of  the  Persian 
power.  .  .  . 

So  the  story  goes  on.  In  330  B.C.,  as  we  shall  tell  later  in 
some  detail,  a  Greek  conqueror,  Alexander  the  Great,  is  looking 
on  the  murdered  body  of  the  last  of  the  Persian  rulers. 

The  story  of  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates  civilizations,  of  which 
we  have  given  as  yet  only  the  bare  outline,  is  a  story  of  con- 
quest following  after  conquest,  and  each  conquest  replaces  old 
rulers  and  ruling  classes  by  new ;  races  like  the  Sumerian  and 
the  Elamite  are  swallowed  up,  their  languages  vanish,  they 
interbreed  and  are  lost,  the  Assyrian  melts  away  into  Chaldean 
and  Syrian,  the  Hittites  become  Aryanized  and  lose  distinc- 
tion, the  Semites  who  swallowed  up  the  Sumerians  give  place  to 
Aryan  rulers,  Medes  and  Persians  appear  in  the  place  of  the 
Elamites,  the  Aryan  Persian  language  dominates  the  empire 
until  the  Aryan  Greek  ousts  it  from  official  life.  Meanwhile 

sTo  be  murdered  by  his  sons. 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS  141 

the  plough  does  its  work  year  by  year,  the  harvests  are  gathered, 
the  builders  build  as  they  are  told,  the  tradesmen  work  and 
acquire  fresh  devices;  the  knowledge  of  writing  spreads,  novel 
things,  the  horse  and  wheeled  vehicles  and  iron,  are  introduced 
and  become  part  of  the  permanent  inheritance  of  mankind ;  the 
volume  of  trade  upon  sea  and  desert  increases,  men's  ideas 
widen,  and  knowledge  grows.  There  are  set-backs,  massacres, 
pestilence;  but  the  story  is,  on  the  whole,  one  of  enlargement. 
For  four  thousand  years  this  new  thing,  civilization,  which 
had  set  its  root  into  the  soil  of  the  two  rivers,  grew  as  a  tree 
grows ;  now  losing  a  limb,  now  stripped  by  a  storm,  but  always 
growing  and  resuming  its  growth.  After  four  thousand  years 
the  warriors  and  conquerors  were  still  going  to  and  fro  over 
this  growing  thing  they  did  not  understand,  but  men  had  now 
(330  B.C.)  got  iron,  horses,  writing  and  computation,  money,  a 
greater  variety  of  foods  and  textiles,  a  wider  knowledge  of  their 
world. 

The  time  that  elapsed  between  the  empire  of  Sargon  I  and 
the  conquest  of  Babylon  by  Alexander  the  Great  was  as  long, 
be  it  noted,  at  the  least  estimate,  as  the  time  from  Alexander 
the  Great  to  the  present  day.  And  before  the  time  of  Sargon, 
men  had  been  settled  in  the  Sumerian  land,  living  in  towns, 
worshipping  in  temples,  following  an  orderly  Neolithic  agri- 
cultural life  in  an  organized  community  for  at  least  as  long 
again.  "Eridu,  Lagash,  Ur,  Uruk,  Larsa,  have  already  an  im- 
memorial past  when  first  they  appear  in  history."  l 

One  of  the  most  difficult  things  for  both  the  writer  and  stu- 
dent of  history  is  to  sustain  the  sense  of  these  time-intervals 
and  prevent  these  ages  becoming  shortened  by  perspective  in  his 
imagination.  Half  the  duration  of  human  civilization  and  the 
keys  to  all  its  chief  institutions  are  to  be  found  before  Sargon 
I.  Moreover,  the  reader  cannot  too  often  compare  the  scale 
of  the  dates  in  these  latter  fuller  pages  of  man's  history  with 
the  succession  of  countless  generations  to  which  the  time  dia- 
grams given  on  pages  11  and  47,  bear  witness. 


Parallel    with    the    ancient    beginnings    of    civilization    in 
Sumeria,  a  parallel  process  was  going  on  in  Egypt.     It  is  still 
1  Winckler  (Craig),  History  of  Babylonia  and  Assyria. 


142 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS 


a  matter  of  discussion  which  was  the  most  ancient  of  these  two 
beginnings,  or  how  far  they  had  a  common  origin  or  derived 
one  from  the  other. 

The  story  of  the  Nile  valley  from  the  dawn  of  its  trace- 
able history  until  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great  is  not  very 
dissimilar  from  that  of  Babylonia;  but  while  Babylonia  lay 
open  on  every  side  to  invasion,  Egypt  was  protected  by  desert 
to  the  west  and  by  desert  and  sea  to 
the  east,  while  to  the  south  she  had 
only  negro  peoples.  Consequently 
her  history  is  less  broken  by  the  in- 
vasions of  strange  races  than  is  the 
history  of  Assyria  and  Babylon,  and 
until  towards  the  eighth  century 
B.  c.,  when  she  fell  under  an  Ethio- 
pian dynasty,  whenever  a  conqueror 
did  come  into  her  story,  he  came  in 
from  Asia  by  way  of  the  Isthmus  of 
Suez. 

The  Stone  Age  remains  in  Egypt 
are  of  very  uncertain  date ;  there  are 
Paleolithic  and  then  Neolithic  re- 
mains. It  is  not  certain  whether  the 
Neolithic  pastoral  people  who  left 
those  remains  were  the  direct  ances- 
tors of  the  later  Egyptians.  In  many 
respects  they  differed  entirely  from 
their  successors.  They  buried  their 
dead,  but  before  they  buried  them 
they  cut  up  the  bodies  and  appar- 
ently ate  portions  of  the  flesh.  They 
seem  to  have  done  this  out  of  a  feel- 
ing of  reverence  for  the  departed; 
the  dead  were  "eaten  with  honour" 
according  to  the  phrase  of  Mr.  Flinders  Petrie.  It  may  have 
been  that  the  survivors  hoped  to  retain  thereby  some  vestige 
of  the  strength  and  virtue  that  had  died.  Traces  of  similar 
savage  customs  have  been  found  in  the  long  barrows  that  were 
scattered  over  western  Europe  before  the  spreading  of  the 
Aryan  peoples,  and  they  have  pervaded  negro  Africa,  where 
they  are  only  dying  out  at  the  present  time. 


Tarfc  iiure  oC&e.  JZuvtian 


luoofaxtws    o3des? 


144  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

About  5,000  B.C.,  or  earlier,  the  traces  of  these  primitive 
peoples  cease,  and  the  true  Egyptians  appear  on  the  scene.  The 
former  people  were  hut  builders  and  at  a  comparatively  low 
stage  of  Neolithic  culture,  the  latter  were  already  a  civilized 
Neolithic  people;  they  used  brick  and  wood  buildings  instead 
of  their  predecessors7  hovels,  and  they  were  working  stone. 
Very  soon  they  passed  into  the  Bronze  Age.  They  possessed  a 
system  of  picture  writing  almost  as  developed  as  the  con- 
temporary writing  of  the  Sumerians,  but  quite  different  in  char- 
acter. Possibly  there  was  an  irruption  from  southern  Arabia 
by  way  of  Aden,  of  a  fresh  people,  who  came  into  upper  Egypt 
and  descended  slowly  towards  the  delta  of  the  Nile.  Dr.  Wallis 
Budge  writes  of  them  as  "conquerors  from  the  East."  But 
their  gods  and  their  ways,  like  their  picture  writing,  were  very 
different  indeed  from  the  Sumerian.  One  of  the  earliest  known 
figures  of  a  deity  is  that  of  a  hippopotamus  goddess,  and  so  very 
distinctively  African. 

The  clay  of  the  Nile  is  not  so  fine  and  plastic  as  the  Sumerian 
clay,  and  the  Egyptians  made  no  use  of  it  for  writing.  But  they 
early  resorted  to  strips  of  the  papyrus  reed  fastened  together, 
from  whose  name  comes  our  word  "paper." 

The  broad  outline  of  the  history  of  Egypt  is  simpler  than 
the  history  of  Mesopotamia.  It  has  long  been  the  custom  to 
divide  the  rulers  of  Egypt  into  a  succession  of  Dynasties,  and 
in  speaking  of  the  periods  of  Egyptian  history  it  is  usual  to 
speak  of  the  first,  fourth,  fourteenth,  and  so  on,  Dynasty.  The 
Egyptians  were  ultimately  conquered  by  the  Persians  after 
their  establishment  in  Babylon,  and  when  finally  Egypt  fell  to 
Alexander  the  Great  in  332  B.C.,  it  was  Dynasty  XXXI  that 
came  to  an  end.  In  that  long  history  of  over  4,000  years,  a 
much  longer  period  than  that  between  the  career  of  Alexander 
the  Great  and  the  present  day,  certain  broad  phases  of  de- 
velopment may  be  noted  here.  There  was  a  phase  known  as 
the  "old  kingdom,"  which  culminated  in  the  IVth  Dynasty; 
this  Dynasty  marks  a  period  of  wealth  and  splendour,  and  its 
monarchs  were  obsessed  by  such  a  passion  for  making  monu- 
ments for  themselves  as  no  men  have  ever  before  or  since  had 
a  chance  to  display  and  gratify.  It  was  Cheops  l  and  Chephren 
and  Mycerinus  of  this  I\rth  Dynasty  who  raised  the  vast  piles 
of  the  great  and  the  second  and  the  third  pyramids  at  Gizeh, 
1 3,733  B.C.,  Wallis  Budge. 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS  145 

These  unmeaning  sepulchral  piles,  of  an  almost  incredible  vast- 
ness,1  erected  in  an  age  when  engineering  science  had  scarcely 
begun,  exhausted  the  resources  of  Egypt  through  three  long 
reigns,  and  left  her  wasted  as  if  by  a  war. 

The  story  of  Egypt  from  the  IVth  to  the  XVth  Dynasty  is  a 
story  of  conflicts  between  alternative  capitals  and  competing 
religions,  of  separations  into  several  kingdoms  and  reunions. 
It  is,  so  to  speak,  an  internal  history.  Here  we  can  name  only 
one  of  that  long  series  of  Pharaohs,  Pepi  II,  who  reigned  ninety 
years,  the  longest  reign  in  history,  and  left  a  great  abundance 
of  inscriptions  and  buildings.  At  last  there  happened  to  Egypt 
what  happened  so  frequently  to  the  civilizations  of  Mesopo- 
tamia. Egypt  was  conquered  by  nomadic  Semites,  who  founded 
a  "shepherd"  dynasty,  the  Hyksos  (XVIth),  which  was  finally 
expelled  by  native  Egyptians.  This  invasion  probably  hap- 
pened while  that  first  Babylonian  Empire  which  Hammurabi 
founded  was  flourishing,  but  the  exact  correspondences  of  dates 
between  early  Egypt  and  Babylonia  are  still  very .  doubtful. 
Only  after  a  long  period  of  servitude  did  a  popular  uprising 
expel  these  foreigners  again. 

After  the  war  of  liberation  (circa  1,600  B.C.)  there  followed  a 
period  of  great  prosperity  in  Egypt,  the  New  Empire.  Egypt 
became  a  great  and  united  military  state,  and  pushed  her  expedi- 
tions at  last  as  far  as  the  Euphrates,  and  so  the  age-long  struggle 
between  the  Egyptian  and  Babylonian- Assyrian  power  began. 

For  a  time  Egypt  was  the  ascendant  power.    Thothmes  III  2 

*The  great  pyramid  is  450  feet  high  and  its  side  700  feet  long.  It  is 
calculated  (says  Wallis  Budge)  to  weigh  4,883,000  tons.  All  this  stone 
was  lugged  into  place  chiefly  by  human  muscle. 

'There  are  variants  to  these  names,  and  to  most  Egyptian  names,  for 
few  self-respecting  Egyptologists  will  tolerate  the  spelling  of  their  col- 
leagues. One  may  find,  for  instance,  Thethmosis,  Thoutmosis,  Tahutmes, 
Thutmose,  or  Tet^mosis;  Amunothph,  Amenhotep  or  Amenothes.  A  pleas- 
ing variation  is  to  break  up  the  name,  as,  for  instance,  Amen  Hetep. 
This  particular  little  constellation  of  variants  is  given  here  not  only  be- 
cause it  is  amusing,  but  because  it  is  desirable  that  the  reader  should 
know  such  variations  exist.  For  most  names  the  rule  of  this  book  has 
been  to  follow  whatever  usage  has  established  itself  in  English  literature, 
regardless  of  the  possible  contemporary  pronunciation.  Amenophis,  for 
example,  has  been  so  written  in  English  books  for  two  centuries.  It 
came  into  the  language  by  indirect  routes,  but  it  is  now  as  fairly  estab- 
lished as  is  Damascus  as  the  English  name  of  a  Syrian  town.  Neverthe- 
less, there  are  limits  to  this  classicism.  The  writer,  after  some  vacilla- 
tion, has  abandoned  Oliver  Goldsmith  and  Dr.  Johnson  in  the  case  of 
"Peisistratus"  and  "Keltic,"  which  were  formerly  spelt  "Pisistratus"  and 
"Celtic." 


146  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  Amenophis  III  (XVIIIth  Dynasty)  ruled  from  Ethiopia 
to  the  Euphrates  in  the  fifteenth  century  B.C.  For  various 
reasons  these  names  stand  out  with  unusual  distinctness  in  the 
Egyptian  record.  They  were  great  builders,  and  left  many 
monuments  and  inscriptions.  Amenophis  III  founded  Luxor, 
and  added  greatly  to  Karnak.  At  Tel-el-Amarna  a  mass  of 
letters  has  been  found,  the  royal  correspondence  with  Babylonian 
and  Hittite  and  other  monarchs,  including  that  Tushratta  who 
took  Nineveh,  throwing  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  political  and 
social  affairs  of  this  particular  age.  Of  Amenophis  IV  we 
shall  have  more  to  tell  later,  but  of  one,  the  most  extraordinary 
and  able  of  Egyptian  monarchs,  Queen  Hatasu,  we  have  no 
space  to  tell.  She  is  represented  upon  her  monuments  in  mas- 
culine garb,  and  with  a  long  beard  as  a  symbol  of  wisdom. 

Thereafter  there  was  a  brief  Syrian  conquest  of  Egypt,  a 
series  of  changing  dynasties,  among  which  we  may  note  the 
XlXth,  which  included  Rameses  II,  a  great  builder  of  temples, 
who  reigned  seventy-seven  years  (about  1,317  to  1,250  B.C.), 
and  who  is  supposed  by  some  to  have  been  the  Pharaoh  of 
Moses,  and  the  XXIInd,  which  included  Shishak,  who 
plundered  Solomon's  temple  (circa  930  B.C.).  An  Ethiopian 
conqueror  from  the  Upper  Nile  founded  the  XXVth  Dynasty, 
a  foreign  dynasty,  which  went  down  (670  B.C.)  before  the  new 
Assyrian  Empire  created  by  Tiglath  Pileser  III,  Sargon  II, 
and  Sennacherib,  of  which  we  have  already  made  mention. 

The  days  of  any  Egyptian  predominance  over  foreign  nations 
were  drawing  to  an  end.  For  a  time  under  Psammetichus  I 
of  the  XXVIth  Dynasty  (664-610  B.C.)  native  rule  was  re- 
stored, and  Necho  II  recovered  for  a  time  the  old  Egyptian 
possessions  in  Syria  up  to  the  Euphrates  while  the  Medes  and 
Chaldeans  were  attacking  Nineveh.  From  those  gains  Necho  II 
was  routed  out  again  after  the  fall  of  Nineveh  and  the  Assyrians 
by  Nebuchadnezzar  II,  the  great  Chaldean  king,  the  Nebuchad- 
nezzar of  the  Bible.  The  Jews,  who  had  been  the  allies  of 
Necho  II,  were  taken  into  captivity  by  Nebuchadnezzar  to 
Babylon. 

When,  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  Chaldea  fell  to  the  Persians, 
Egypt  followed  suit,  a  rebellion  later  made  Egypt  independent 
once  more  for  sixty  years,  and  in  332  B.C.  she  welcomed  Alex- 
ander the  Great  as  her  conqueror,  to  be  ruled  thereafter  by  for- 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS  147 

eigners,  first  by  Greeks,  then  by  Romans,  then  in  succession 
by  Arabs,  Turks,  and  British,  until  the  present  day. 

Such  briefly  is  the  history  of  Egypt  from  its  beginnings; 
a  history  first  of  isolation  and  then  pf  increasing  entanglement 
with  the  affairs  of  other  nations,  as  increasing  facilities  of 
communication  drew  the  peoples  of  the  world  into  closer  and 
closer  interaction. 


The  history  we  need  to  tell  here  of  India  is  simpler  even 
than  this  brief  record  of  Egypt.  The  Dravidian  peoples  in 
the  Ganges  valley  developed  upon  parallel  lines  to  the  Sumerian 
and  Egyptian  societies.  But  it  is  doubtful  if  they  ever  got  to 
so  high  a  stage  of  social  development ;  they  have  left  few  monu- 
ments, and  they  never  achieved  any  form  of  writing. 

Somewhere  about  the  time  of  Hammurabi  or  later,  a  branch 
of  the  Aryan-speaking  people  who  then  occupied  North  Persia 
and  Afghanistan  pushed  down  the  north-west  passes  into  India. 
They  conquered  their  way  until  they  prevailed  over  all  the 
darker  populations  of  North  India,  and  spread  their  rule  or 
influence  over  the  whole  peninsula.  They  never  achieved  any 
unity  in  India ;  their  history  is  a  history  of  warring  kings  and 
republics. 

The  Persian  empire,  in  the  days  of  its  expansion  after  the 
capture  of  Babylon,  pushed  its  boundaries  beyond  the  Indus, 
and  later  Alexander  the  Great  marched  as  far  as  the  border  of 
the  desert  that  separates  the  Punjab  from  the  Ganges  valley. 
But  with  this  bare  statement  we  will  for  a  time  leave  the  history 
of  India. 

§  5 

Meanwhile,  as  this  triple  system  of  White  Man  civilization 
developed  in  India  and  in  the  lands  about  the  meeting-places 
of  Asia,  Africa,  and  Europe,  another  and  quite  distinct  civiliza- 
tion was  developing  and  spreading  out  from  the  then  fertile 
but  now  dry  and  desolate  valley  of  the  Tarim  and  from  the 
slopes  of  the  Eoien-lun  mountains  in  two  directions  down  the 
course  of  the  Hwang-ho,  and  later  into  the  valley  of  the  Yang- 
tse-kiang.  We  know  practically  nothing  as  yet  of  the  archaeol- 


148  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ogy  of  China,  we  do  not  know  anything  of  the  Stone  Age  in 
that  part  of  the  world,  and  at  present  our  ideas  of  this  early 
civilization  are  derived  from  the  still  very  imperfectly  ex- 
plored Chinese  literature.  It  has  evidently  been  from  the  first 
and  throughout  a  Mongolian  civilization.  Until  after  the  time 
of  Alexander  the  Great  there  are  few  traces  of  any  Aryan 
or  Semitic,  much  less  of  Hamitic  influence.  All  such  influ- 
ences were  still  in  another  world,  separated  by  mountains, 
deserts,  and  wild  nomadic  tribes  until  that  time.  The  Chinese 
seem  to  have  made  their  civilization  spontaneously  and  un- 
assisted. Some  recent  writers  suppose  indeed  a  connection  with 
ancient  Sumeria.  Of  course  both  China  and  Sumeria  arose 
on  the  basis  of  the  almost  world-wide  early  Neolithic  culture, 
but  the  Tarim  valley  and  the  lower  Euphrates  are  separated  by 
such  vast  obstacles  of  mountain  and  desert  as  to  forbid  the  idea 
of  any  migration  or  interchange  of  peoples  who  had  once  settled 
down.  Perhaps  the  movement  from  the  north  met  another 
movement  of  culture  coming  from  the  south. 

Though  the  civilization  of  China  is  wholly  Mongolian  (as 
we  have  defined  Mongolian),  it  does  not  follow  that  the  north- 
ern roots  are  the  only  ones  from  which  it  grew.  If  it  grew 
first  in  the  Tarim  valley,  then  unlike  all  other  civilization.^ 
(including  the  Mexican  and  Peruvian)  it  did  not  grow  out 
of  the  heliolithic  culture.  We  Europeans  know  very  little  as 
yet  of  the  ethnology  and  pre-history  of  southern  China.  There 
the  Chinese  mingle  with  such  kindred  peoples  as  the  Siamese 
and  Burmese,  and  seem  to  bridge  over  towards  the  darker 
Dravidian  peoples  and  towards  the  Malays.  It  ii  quite  clear 
from  the  Chinese  records  that  there  were  southern  as  well  as 
northern  beginnings  of  a  civilization,  and  that  the  Chinese  civ- 
ilization that  comes  into  history  2,000  years  B.C.  is  the  result  of 
a  long  process  of  conflicts,  minglings  and  interchanges  between 
a  southern  and  a  northern  culture  of  which  the  southern  may 
have  been  the  earlier  and  more  highly  developed.  The  southern 
Chinese  perhaps  played  the  role  towards  the  northern  Chinese 
that  the  Hamites  or  Sumerians  played  to  the  Aryan  and  Semitic 
peoples  in  the  west,  or  that  the  settled  Dravidians  played  to- 
wards the  Aryans  in  India.  They  may  have  been  the  first 
agriculturists  and  the  first  temple  builders.  But  so  little  is 
known  as  yet  of  this  attractive  chapter  in  pre-history,  that 
We  cannot  dwell  upon  it  further  here. 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS 


149 


150  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  chief  foreigners  mentioned  in  the  early  annals  of  China 
were  a  Ural-Altaic  people  on  the  north-east  frontier,  the  Huns, 
against  whom  certain  of  the  earlier  emperors  made  war. 

Chinese  history  is  still  very  little  known  to  European  stu- 
dents, and  our  accounts  of  the  eaily  records  ave  partieu'arly  un- 
satisfactory. Ahout  2,700  to  2,400  B.C.  reigned  five  emperors, 
who  seem  to  have  been  almost  incredibly  exemplary  beings. 

There  follows  upon  these  first  five  emperors  a  series  of 
dynasties,  of  which  the  accounts  become  more  and  more  exact 
and  convincing  as  they  become  more  recent.  China  has  to 
tell  a  long  history  of  border  warfare  and  of  graver  struggles 
between  the  settled  and  nomad  peoples.  To  begin  with,  China, 
like  Sumer  and  like  Egypt,  was  a  land  of  city  states.  The 
government  was  at  first  a  government  of  numerous  kings ;  they 
became  loosely  feudal  under  an  emperor,  as  the  Egyptians  did ; 
and  then  later,  as  with  the  Egyptians,  came  a  centralizing 
empire.  Shang  (1,750  to  1,125  B.C.)  and  Chow  (1,125  to 
250  B.C.)  are  named  as  being  the  two  great  dynasties  of  the 
feudal  period.  Bronze  vessels  of  these  earlier  dynasties,  beau- 
tiful, splendid,  and  with  a  distinctive  style  of  their  own,  still 
exist,  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  existence  of  a  high  state 
of  culture  even  before  the  days  of  Shang. 

It  is  perhaps  a  sense  of  symmetry  that  made  the  later  his- 
torians of  Egypt  and  China  talk  of  the  earlier  phases  of  their 
national  history  as  being  under  dynasties  comparable  to  the 
dynasties  of  the  later  empires,  and  of  such  early  "Emperors" 
as  Menes  (in  Egypt)  or  the  First  Five  Emperors  (in  China). 
The  early  dynasties  exercised  far  less  centralized  powers  than 
the  later  ones.  Such  unity  as  China  possessed  under  the  Shang 
Dynasty  was  a  religious  rather  than  an  effective  political  union. 
The  "Son  of  Heaven"  offered  sacrifices  for  all  the  Chinese. 
There  was  a  common  script,  a  common  civilization,  and  a  com- 
mon enemy  in  the  Huns  of  the  north-western  borders. 

The  last  of  the  Shang  Dynasty  was  a  cruel  and  foolish  mon- 
arch who  burnt  himself  alive  (1,125  B.C.)  in  his  palace  after  a 
decisive  defeat  by  Wu  Wang,  the  founder  of  the  Chow  Dynasty. 
Wu  Wang  seems  to  have  been  helped  by  allies  from  among 
the  south-western  tribes  as  well  as  by  a  popular  revolt. 

For  a  time  China  remained  loosely  united  under  the  Chow 
emperors,  as  loosely  united  as  was  Christendom  under  the  popes 
in  the  Middle  Ages ;  the  Chow  emperors  had  become  the  tradi- 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS  151 

tional  high  priests  of  the  land  in  the  place  of  the  Shang 
Dynasty  and  claimed  a  sort  of  overlordship  in  Chinese  affairs, 
but  gradually  the  loose  ties  of  usage  and  sentiment  that  held 
the  empire  together  lost  their  hold  upon  men's  minds.  Hunnish 
peoples  to  the  north  and  west  took  on  the  Chinese  civilization 
without  acquiring  a  sense  of  its  unity.  Feudal  princes  began 
to  regard  themselves  as  independent.  Mr.  Liang-Chi-Chao,1 
one  of  the  Chinese  representatives  at  the  Paris  Conference  of 
1919,  states  that  between  the  eighth  and  fourth  centuries  B.C. 
"there  were  in  the  Hwang-ho  and  Yang-tse  valleys  no  less  than 
five  or  six  thousand  small  states  with  about  a  dozen  powerful 
states  dominating  over  them."  The  land  was  subjected  to  per- 
petual warfare  ("Age  of  Confusion").  In  the  sixth  century 
B.C.  the  great  powers  in  conflict  were  Ts'i  and  Ts'in,  which 
were  northern  Hwang-ho  states,  and  Ch'u,  which  was  a  vigorous, 
aggressive  power  in  the  Yang-tse  valley.  A  confederation 
against  Ch'u  laid  the  foundation  for  a  league  that  kept  the 
peace  for  a  hundred  years ;  the  league  subdued  and  incorporated 
Ch'u  and  made  a  general  treaty  of  disarmament.  It  became 
the  foundation  of  a  new  pacific  empire. 

The  knowledge  of  iron  entered  China  at  some  unknown  date, 
but  iron  weapons  began  to  be  commonly  used  only  about  500 
B.C.,  that  is  to  say  two  or  three  hundred  years  or  more  after 
this  had  become  customary  in  Assyria,  Egypt,  and  Europe. 
Iron  was  probably  introduced  from  the  north  into  China  by  the 
Huns. 

The  last  rulers  of  the  Chow  Dynasty  were  ousted  by  the 
kings  of  Ts'in,  the  latter  seized  upon  the  sacred  sacrificial 
bronze  tripods,  and  so  were  able  to  take  over  the  imperial  duty 
of  offering  sacrifices  to  Heaven.  In  this  manner  was  the  Ts'in 
Dynasty  established.  It  ruled  with  far  more  vigour  and  effect 
than  any  previous  family.  The  reign  of  Shi  Hwang-ti  (mean- 
ing "first  universal  emperor")  of  this  dynasty  is  usually  taken 
to  mark  the  end  of  feudal  and  divided  China.  He  seems  to 
have  played  the  unifying  role  in  the  east  that  Alexander  the 
Great  might  have  played  in  the  west,  but  he  lived  longer,  and 
the  unity  he  made  (or  restored)  was  comparatively  permanent, 
while  the  empire  of  Alexander  the  Great  fell  to  pieces,  as  we 
shall  tell,  at  his  death.  Shi  Hwang-ti,  among  other  feats  in  the 

1  China  and  the  League  of  Nations,  a  pamphlet  by  Mr.  Liang-Chi-Chao. 
(Pekin  Leader  Office.) 


152  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

direction  of  common  effort,  organized  the  building  of  the  Great 
Wall  of  China  against  the  Huns.  A  civil  war  followed  close 
upon  his  reign,  and  ended  in  the  establishment  of  the  Han 
Dynasty.  Under  this  Han  Dynasty  the  empire  grew  greatly 
beyond  its  original  two  river  valleys,  the  Huns  were  effectively 
restrained,  and  the  Chinese  penetrated  westwarcj  until  they 
began  to  learn  at  last  of  civilized  races  and  civilisations  other 
than  their  own. 

By  100  B.C.  the  Chinese  had  heard  of  India,  their  power 
had  spread  across  Tibet  and  into  Western  Turkestan,  and  they 
were  trading  by  camel  caravans  with  Persia  and  the  western 
world.  So  much  for  the  present  must  suffice  for  our  account  of 
China.  We  shall  return  to  the  distinctive  characters  of  its 
civilization  later. 

§  6 

And  in  these  thousands  of  years  during  which  man  was 
making  his  way  step  by  step  from  the  barbarism  of  the  helio- 
lithic  culture  to  civilization  at  these  old-world  centres,  what  was 
happening  in  the  rest  of  the  world?  To  the  north  of  these 
centres,  from  the  Rhine  to  the  Pacific,  the  Nordic  and  Mon- 
golian peoples,  as  we  have  told,  were  also  learning  the  use 
of  metals ;  but  while  the  civilizations  were  settling  down  these 
men  of  the  great  plains  were  becoming  migratory  and  de- 
veloping from  a  slow  wandering  life  towards  a  complete  seasonal 
nomadism.  To  the  south  of  the  civilized  zone,  in  central  and 
southern  Africa,  the  negro  was  making  a  slower  progress,  and 
that,  it  would  seem,  under  the  stimulus  of  invasion  by  whiter 
tribes  from  the  Mediterranean  regions,  bringing  with  them 
in  succession  cultivation  and  the  use  of  metals.  These  white 
men  came  to  the  black  by  two  routes :  across  the  Sahara  to  the 
west  as  Berbers  and  Tuaregs  and  the  like,  to  mix  with  the  negro 
and  create  such  quasi-white  races  as  the  Fulas;  and  also  by 
way  of  the  Nile,  where  the  Baganda  (—  Gandafolk)  of  Uganda, 
for  example,  may  possibly  be  of  remote  white  origin.  The 
African  forests  were  denser  then,  and  spread  eastward  and 
northward  from  the  Upper  Nile. 

The  islands  of  the  East  Indies,  three  thousand  years  ago, 
were  probably  still  only  inhabited  here  and  there  by  stranded 
patches  of  Palaeolithic  Australoids,  who  had  wandered  thither 


THE  FIRST  CIVILIZATIONS  153 

in  those  immemorial  ages  when  there  was  a  nearly  complete 
land  hridge  by  way  of  the  East  Indies  to  Australia.  The 
islands  of  Oceania  were  uninhabited.  The  spreading  of  the 
heliolithic  peoples  by  sea-going  canoes  into  the  islands  of  the 
Pacific  came  much  later  in  the  history  of  man,  at  earliest  a 
thousand  years  B.C.  Still  later  did  they  reach  Madagascar. 
The  beautiy  of  New  Zealand  also  was  as  yet  wasted  upon  man- 
kind ;  its  highest  living  creatures  were  a  great  ostrich-like  bird, 
the  moa,  now  extinct,  and  the  little  kiwi  which  has  feathers 
like  coarse  hair  and  the  merest  rudiments  of  wings. 

In  North  America  a  group  of  Mongoloid  tribes  were  now 
cut  off  altogether  from  the  old  world.  They  were  spreading 
slowly  southward,  hunting  the  innumerable  bison  of  the 
plains.  They  had  still  to  learn  for  themselves  the  secrets  of  a 
separate  agriculture  based  on  maize,  and  in  South  America 
to  tame  the  lama  to  their  service,  and  so  build  up  in  Mexico 
and  Peru  two  civilizations  roughly  parallel  in  their  nature  tc 
that  of  Sumer,  but  different  in  many  respects,  and  later  by  six 
or  seven  thousand  years.  .  .  . 

When  men  reached  the  southern  extremity  of  America,  the 
Megatherium,  the  giant  sloth,  and  the  Glypiodon,  the  giant 
armadillo,  were  still  living. 

There  is  a  considerable  imaginative  appeal  in  the  obscure 
story  of  the  early  American  civilizations.  It  was  largely  a 
separate  development.  Somewhen  at  last  the  southward  drift 
of  the  Amerindians  must  have  met  and  mingled  with  the  east- 
ward, canoe-borne  drift  of  the  heliolithic  culture.  But  it  was 
the  heliolithic  culture  still  at  a  very  lowly  stage  and  probably 
before  the  use  of  metals.  It  has  to  be  noted  as  evidence  of 
this  canoe-borne  origin  of  American  culture,  that  elephant- 
headed  figures  are  found  in  Central  American  drawings.  Amer- 
ican metallurgy  may  have  arisen  independently  of  the  old- 
world  use  of  metal,  or  it  may  have  been  brought  by  these  ele- 
phant carvers.  These  American  peoples  got  to  the  use  of 
bronze  and  copper,  but  not  to  the  use  of  iron;  they  had  gold 
and  silver;  and  their  stonework,  their  pottery,  weaving,  and 
dyeing  were  carried  to  a  very  high  level.  In  all  these  things 
the  American  product  resembles  the  old-world  product  generally, 
but  always  it  has  characteristics  that  are  distinctive.  The 
American  civilizations  had  picture-writing  of  a  primitive  sort, 
but  it  never  developed  even  to  the  pitch  of  the  earliest  Egyptian 


154  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

hieroglyphics.  In  Yucatan  only  was  there  a  kind  of  script, 
the  Maya  writing,  but  it  was  used  simply  for  keeping  a  cal- 
endar. In  Peru  the  beginnings  of  writing  were  superseded 
by  a  curious  and  complicated  method  of  keeping  records  by 
means  of  knots  tied  upon  strings  of  various  colours  and  shapes. 
It  is  said  that  even  laws  and  orders  could  be  conveyed  by  this 
code.  These  string  bundles  were  called  qmpus,  but  though 
quipus  are  still  to  be  found  in  collections,  the  art  of  reading 
them  is  altogether  lost.  The  Chinese  histories,  Mr.  L.  Y.  Chen 
informs  us,  state  that  a  similar  method  of  record  by  knots  was 
used  in  China  before  the  invention  of  writing  there.  The 
Peruvians  also  got  to  making  maps  and  the  use  of  counting- 
frames.  "But  with  all  this  there  was  no  means  of  handing 
on  knowledge  and  experience  from  one  generation  to  another, 
nor  was  anything  done  to  fix  and  summarize  these  intellectual 
possessions,  which  are  the  basis  of  literature  and  science."  1 

When  the  Spaniards  came  to  America,  the  Mexicans  knew 
nothing  of  the  Peruvians  nor  the  Peruvians  of  the  Mexicans. 
Intercourse  there  was  none.  Whatever  links  had  ever  existed 
were  lost  and  forgotten.  The  Mexicans  had  never  heard  of 
the  potato  which  was  a  principal  article  of  Peruvian  diet.  In 
5,000  B.C.  the  Sumerians  and  Egyptians  probably  knew  as 
little  of  one  another.  American  was  6,000  years  behind  the 
Old  World. 

*F.  Ratzel,  History  of  Mankind. 


XV 

SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TKADING  PEOPLES 

§  1.  The  Earliest  Ships  and  Sailors.  §  2.  The  ^Egean  Cities 
before  History.  §  3.  The  First  Voyages  of  Exploration. 
§  4.  Early  Traders.  §  5.  Early  Travellers. 

§1 

THE  first  boats  were  made  very  early  indeed  in  the  Neo- 
lithic stage  of  culture  by  riverside  and  lakeside  peoples. 
They  were  no  more  than  trees  and  floating  wood,  used 
to  assist  the  imperfect  natural  swimming  powers  of  men.  Then 
came  the  hollowing  out  of  the  trees,  and  then,  with  the  de- 
velopment of  tools  and  a  primitive  carpentry,  the  building  of 
boats.  Men  in  Egypt  and  Mesopotamia  also  developed  a  primi- 
tive type  of  basketwork  boat,  caulked  with  bitumen.  Such 
was  the  "ark  of  bulrushes"  in  which  Moses  was  hidden  by  his 
mother.  A  kindred  sort  of  vessel  grew  up  by  the  use  of 
skins  and  hides  expanded  upon  a  wicker  framework.  To  this 
day  cow-hide  wicker  boats  (coracles)  are  used  upon  the  west 
coast  of  Ireland  where  there  is  plenty  of  cattle  and  a  poverty 
of  big  trees.  They  are  also  still  used  on  the  Euphrates,  and 
on  the  Towy  in  South  Wales.  Inflated  skins  may  have  preceded 
the  coracle,  and  are  still  used  on  the  Euphrates  and  upper 
Ganges.  In  the  valleys  of  the  great  rivers,  boats  must  early 
have  become  an  important  means  of  communication;  and  it 
seems  natural  to  suppose  that  it  was  from  the  mouths  of  the 
great  rivers  that  man,  already  in  a  reasonably  seaworthy  vessel, 
first  ventured  out  upon  what  must  have  seemed  to  him  then 
the  trackless  and  homeless  sea. 

No  doubt  he  ventured  at  first  as  a  fisherman,  having  learnt 
the  elements  of  seacraft  in  creeks  and  lagoons.  Men  may  have 
navigated  boats  upon  the  Levantine  lake  before  the  refilling 
of  the  Mediterranean  by  the  Atlantic  waters.  The  canoe  was 
an  integral  part  of  the  heliolithic  culture,  it  drifted  with  the 

155 


156  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

culture  upon  the  warm  waters  of  the  earth  from  the  Mediter- 
ranean to  (at  last)  America.  There  were  not  only  canoes,  but 
Sumerian  boats  and  ships  upon  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris,  when 
these  rivers  in  7,000  B.C.  fell  by  separate  mouths  into  the 
Persian  Gulf.  The  Sumerian  city  of  Eridu,  which  stood  at  the 
head  of  the  Persian  Gulf  (from  which  it  is  now  separated  by  a 
hundred  and  thirty  miles  of  alluvium  *),  had  ships  upon  the  sea 
then.  We  also  find  evidence  of  a  fully  developed  sea  life  six 
thousand  years  ago  at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Mediterranean,  and 
possibly  at  that  time  there  were  already  canoes  on  the  seas 
among  the  islands  of  the  nearer  East  Indies.  There  are  pre- 
dynastic  Neolithic  Egyptian  representations  of  Nile  ships  of  a 
fair  size,  capable  of  carrying  elephants.2 

Very  soon  the  seafaring  men  must  have  realized  the  peculiar 
freedom  and  opportunities  the  ship  gave  them.  They  could 
get  away  to  islands ;  no  chief  nor  king  could  pursue  a  boat  or 
ship  with  any  certainty;  every  captain  was  a  king.  The  sea- 
men would  find  it  easy  to  make  nests  upon  islands  and  in  strong 
positions  on  the  mainland.  There  they  could  harbour,  there 
they  could  carry  on  a  certain  agriculture  and  fishery ;  but  their 
specialty  and  their  main  business  was,  of  course,  the  expedition 
across  the  sea.  That  was  not  usually  a  trading  expedition; 
it  was  much  more  frequently  a  piratical  raid.  From  what 
we  know  of  mankind,  we  are  bound  to  conclude  that  the  first 
sailors  plundered  when  they  could,  and  traded  when  they  had  to. 

Because  it  developed  in  the  comparatively  warm  and  tran- 
quil waters  of  the  eastern  Mediterranean,  the  Red  Sea,  the 
Persian  Gulf,  and  the  western  horn  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  the 
shipping  of  the  ancient  world  retained  throughout  certain  char- 
acteristics that  make  it  .differ  very  widely  from  the  ocean-going 
sailing  shipping,  with  its  vast  spread  of  canvas,  of  the  last  four 
hundred  years.  "The  Mediterranean,"  says  Mr.  Torr,3  "is  a 
sea  where  a  vessel  with  sails  may  lie  becalmed  for  days  to- 
gether, while  a  vessel  with  oars  would  easily  be  traversing  the 
smooth  waters,  with  coasts  and  islands  everywhere  at  hand 
to  give  her  shelter  in  case  of  storm.  In  that  sea,  therefore,  oars 
became  the  characteristic  instruments  of  navigation,  and  the 
arrangement  of  oars  the  chief  problem  in  shipbuilding.  And 

1  Sayce. 

2Mosso,  The  Dami  of  Mediterranean  Civilization. — R.  L.  C. 

"Cecil  Torr.  Ancient  Ships. 


SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TRADING  PEOPLES 


157 


so  long  as  the  Mediterranean  nations  dominated  Western  Eu- 
rope, vessels  of  the  southern  type  were  built  upon  the  northern 
coasts,  though  there  generally  was  wind 
enough  here  for  sails  and  too  much  wave 
for  oars.  .  .  .  The  art  of  rowing  can 
first  he  discerned  upon  the  Nile.  Boats 
with  oars  are  represented  in  the  earliest 
pictorial  monuments  of  Egypt,  dating 
from  about  2,500  B.C.  ;  and  although 
some  crews  are  paddling  with  their 
faces  towards  the  bow,  others  are  row- 
ing with  their  faces  towards  the  stern. 
The  paddling  is  certainly  the  older 
practice,  for  the  hieroglyph  chen  depicts 
two  arms  grasping  an  oar  in  the  attitude 
of  paddling,  and  the  hieroglyphs  were 
invented  in  the  earliest  ages.  And  that 
practice  may  really  have  ceased  before 
2,500  B.C.,  despite  the  testimony  of 
monuments  of  that  date;  for  in  monu- 
ments dating  from  about  1,250  B.C., 
crews  are  represented  unmistakably 
rowing  with  their  faces  towards  the 
stern  and  yet  grasping  their  oars  in  the 
attitude  of  paddling,  so  that  even  then 
Egyptian  artists  mechanically  followed 
the  turn  of  the  hieroglyph  to  which 
their  hands  were  accustomed.  In  these 
reliefs  there  are  twenty  rowers  on  the 
boats  on  the  Nile,  and  thirty  on  the 
ships  on  the  Red  Sea ;  but  in  the  earliest 
reliefs  the  number  varies  considerably, 
and  seems  dependent  on  the  amount  of 
space  at  the  sculptor's  disposal." 

The  Aryan  peoples  came  late  to  the 
sea.  The  earliest  ships  on  the  sea  were 
either  Sumerian  or  Hamitic;  the 
Semitic  peoples  followed  close  upon 
these  pioneers.  Along  the  eastern  end 
of  the  Mediterranean,  the  Phoenicians,  a  Semitic  people,  set 
up  a  string  of  indep"endent  harbour  towns  of  which  Acre, 


158 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Tyre,  and  Sidon  were  the  chief;  and  later  they  pushed  their 
voyages  westward  and  founded  Carthage  and  IJtica  in  North 

Africa  Possibly 
Phoenician  keels 
,  were  already  in 
the  Mediterra- 
|1  nean  by  2,000  B.C. 
bc|p  Both  Tyre  and 
c  %  Sidon  were  origi- 
§fe  nally  on  islands, 
°°*|  and  so  easily  de- 
§«g  fensible  against  a 
is  ^  land  raid.  But  be- 
te ^  fore  we  go  on  to 
=3.3  the  marine  ex- 
,2  g  ploits  of  this  great 
^  §  sea-going  race,  we 
•2  g  must  note  a  very 
p  §  remarkable  and 
«"2  curious  nest  of 
§,'g  early  sea  people 
^  g  whose  remains 
K*£  have  been  discov- 
0^  ered  in  Crete. 

+•>   <4H 

|i        §2 

|-g  These  early 
05  S  Cretans  were  of  a 
=  J  race  akin  to  the 
°"o  Iberians  of  Spain 
o^  and  Western  Eu- 
l  .  rope  and  the  dark 
S2  whites  of  Asia 
Minor  and  North 
Africa,  and  their 
g*®  language  is  un- 
known. This  race 
lived  not  only  in 
Crete,  but  in  Cyprus,  Greece,  Asia  Minor,  Sicily,  and  South 
Italy.  It  was  a  civilized  people  for  long  ages  before  the 
fair  Nordic  Greeks  spread  southward  through  Macedonia.  At 


SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TRADING  PEOPLES     159 

Cnossos,  in  Crete,  there  have  been  found  the  most  astonishing 
ruins  and  remains,  and  Cnossos,  therefore,  is  apt  to  overshadow 
the  rest  of  these  settlements  in  people's  imaginations,  but  it  is 
well  to  bear  in  mind  that  though  Cnossos  was  no  doubt  a  chief 
city  of  this  ^Egean  civilization,  these  "JEgeans"  had  in  the  full- 
ness of  their  time  many  cities  and  a  wide  range.  Possibly,  all 
that  we  know  of  them  now  are  but  the  vestiges  of  the  far  more 
extensive  heliolithic  Neolithic  civilization  which  is  now  sub- 
merged under  the  waters  of  the  Mediterranean. 

At  Cnossos  there  are  Neolithic  remains  as  old  or  older  than 
any  of  the  pre-dynastic  remains  of  Egypt.  The  Bronze  Age 
began  in  Crete  as  soon  as  it  did  in  Egypt,  and  there  have  been 
vases  found  by  Elinders  Petrie  in  Egypt  and  referred  by 
him  to  the  1st  Dynasty,  which  he  declared  to  be  importations 
from  Crete.  Stone  vessels  have  been  found  in  Crete  of  forms 
characteristic  of  the  IVth  (pyramid-building)  Dynasty,  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  was  a  vigorous  trade  between 
Crete  and  Egypt  in  the  time  of  the  Xllth  Dynasty.  This  con- 
tinued until  about  1,000  B.C.  It  is  clear  that  this  island  civiliza- 
tion arising  upon  the  soil  of  Crete  is  at  least  as  old  as  the 
Egyptian,  and  that  it  was  already  launched  upon  the  sea  as 
early  as  4,000  B.C. 

The  great  days  of  Crete  were  not  so  early  as  this.  It  was 
only  about  2,500  B.C.  that  the  island  appears  to  have  been 
unified  under  one  ruler.  Then  began  an  age  of  peace  and  pros- 
perity unexampled  in  the  history  of  the  ancient  world.  Secure 
from  invasion,  living  in  a  delightful  climate,  trading  with  every 
civilized  community  in  the  world,  the  Cretans  were  free  to  de- 
velop all  the  arts  and  amenities  of  life.  This  Cnossos  was  not 
so  much  a  town  as  the  vast  palace  of  the  king  and  his  people. 
It  was  not  even  fortified.  The  kings,  it  would  seem,  were  called 
Minos  always,  as  the  kings  of  Egypt  were  all  called  Pharaoh ; 
the  king  of  Cnossos  figures  in  the  early  legends  of  the  Greeks 
as  King  Minos,  who  lived  in  the  Labyrinth  and  kept  there  a 
horrible  monster,  half  man,  half  bull,  the  Minotaur,  to  feed 
which  he  levied  a  tribute  of  youths  and  maidens  from  the 
Athenians.  Those  stories  are  a  part  of  Greek  literature,  and 
have  always  been  known,  but  it  is  only  in  the  last  few  decades 
that  the  excavations  at  Cnossos  have  revealed  how  close  these 
legends  were  to  the  reality.  The  Cretan  labyrinth  was  a  build- 
ing as  stately,  complex,  and  luxurious  as  any  in  the  ancient 


160 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


world.  Among  other  details  we  find  water-pipes,  bathrooms, 
and  the  like  conveniences,  such  as  have  hitherto  been  regarded 
as  the  latest  refinements  of  modern  life.  The  pottery,  the  textile 
manufactures,  the  sculpture  and  painting  of  these  people,  their 
gem  and  ivory  work,  their  metal  and  inlaid  work,  is  as  ad- 
mirable as  any  that  mankind  has  produced.  They  were  much 
given  to  festivals  and  shows,  and,  in  particular,  they  were 
addicted  to  bull-fights  and  gymnastic  entertainments.  Their 
female  costume  became  astonishingly  "modern"  in  style;  their 
women  wore  corsets  and  flounced  dresses.  They  had  a  system 
of  writing  which  has  not  yet  been  deciphered. 

It  is  the  custom  nowadays  to  make  a  sort  of  wonder  of  these 
achievements  of  the  Cretans,  as  though  they  were  a  people 
of  incredible  artistic  ability  living  in  the  dawn  of  civilization. 
But  their  great  time  was  long  past  that  dawn ;  as  late  as  2,000 
B.C.  It  took  them  many  centuries  to  reach  their  best  in  art 
and  skill,  and  their  art  and  luxury  are  by  no  means  so  great 
a  wonder  if  we  reflect  that  for  3,000  years  they  were  immune 
from  invasion,  that  for  a  thousand  years  they  were  at  peace. 
Century  after  century  their  artizans  could  perfect  their  skill, 
and  their  men  and  women  refine  upon  refinement.  Wherever 
men  of  almost  any  race  have  been  comparatively  safe  in  this 
fashion  for  such  a  length  of  time,  they  have  developed  much 
artistic  beauty.  Given  the  opportunity,  all  races  are  artistic. 
Greek  legend  has  it  that  it  was  in  Crete  that  Dsedalus  at- 
tempted to  make  the  first  flying  machine.  Daedalus  (  =  cunning 
artificer)  was  a  sort  of  personified  summary  of  mechanical 


SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TRADING  PEOPLES 


161 


skill.  It  is  curious  to  speculate  what  germ  of  fact  lies  behind 
him  and  those  waxen  wrings  that,  according  to  the  legend,  melted 
and  plunged  his  son  Icarus  in  the  sea. 

There  came  at  last  a  change  in  the  condition  of  the  lives  of 
these  Cretans,  for  other  peoples,  the  Greeks  and  the  Phosnicians, 
were  also  coming  out  with  powerful  fleets  upon  the  seas.     We 
do  not  know  what  led  to  the  disaster  nor  who  inflicted  it;  but 
somewhen  about  1,400  B.C.  Cnossos  was  sacked  and  burnt,  and 
though  the  Cretan  life 
struggled      on      there 
rather  lamely  for  an- 
other   four    centuries, 
there   came   at  last  a 
final  blow  about  1,000 
B.C.  (that  is  to  say,  in 
the    days   of   the   As- 
syrian   ascendancy   in 
the  East).   The  palace 
at    Cnossos    was    de- 
stroyed, and  never  re- 
built nor  reinhabited. 
Possibly  this  was  done 
by  the  ships  of  those 
new-comers    into    the 
Mediterranean,     the 
barbaric     Greeks,      a 
group  of  Aryan-speak- 
ing   tribes    from    the  Jauousz  figure  from.  GIOSSOS.....  ~fr 

north,  who  may  have  votary  oTt^  Sn&*  God***...... 

wiped  out  Cnossos  as  they  wiped  out  the  city  of  Troy.  The 
legend  of  Theseus  tells  of  such  a  raid.  He  entered  the  Laby- 
rinth (which  may  have  been  the  Cnossos  Palace)  by  the  aid  of 
Ariadne,  the  daughter  of  Minos,  and  slew  the  Minotaur. 

The  Iliad  makes  it  clear  that  destruction  came  upon  Troy 
because  the  Trojans  stole  Greek  women.  Modern  writers,  with 
modern  ideas  in  their  heads,  have  tried  to  make  out  that  the 
Greeks  assailed  Troy  in  order  to  secure  a  trade  route  or  some 
such  fine-spun  commercial  advantage.  If  so,  the  authors  of 
the  Iliad  hid  the  motives  of  their  characters  very  skilfully. 
It  would  be  about  as  reasonable  to  say  that  the  Homeric  Greeks 
went  to  war  with  the  Trojans  in  order  to  be  well  ahead  with 


«T.FI  H.  "from  photos,  by 
Britfs 


162  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

a  station  on  the  Berlin  to  Bagdad  railway.  The  Homeric 
Greeks  were  a  healthy  barbaric  Aryan  people,  with  very  poor 
ideas  about  trade  and  "trade  routes" ;  they  went  to  war  with 
the  Trojans  because  they  were  thoroughly  annoyed  about  this 
stealing  of  women.  It  is  fairly  clear  from  the  Minos  legend 
and  from  the  evidence  of  the  Cnossos  remains,  that  the  Cretans 
kidnapped  or  stole  youths  and  maidens  to  be  slaves,  bull-fighters, 
athletes,  and  perhaps  sacrifices.  They  traded  fairly  with  the 
Egyptians,  but  it  may  be  they  did  not  realize  the  gathering 
strength  of  the  Greek  barbarians ;  they  "traded5'*  violently  with 
them,  and  so  brought  sword  and  flame  upon  themselves. 

Another  great  sea  people  were  the  Phoenicians.  They  were 
great  seamen  because  they  were  great  traders.  Their  colony 
of  Carthage  (founded  before  800  B.  c.  by  Tyre)  became  at  last 
greater  than  any  of  the  older  Phoenician  cities,  but  already 
before  1,500  B.C.  both  Sidon  and  Tyre  had  settlements  upon 
the  African  coast.  Carthage  was  comparatively  inaccessible 
to  the  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  hosts,  and,  profiting  greatly 
by  the  long  siege  of  Tyre  by  Nebuchadnezzar  II,  became  the 
greatest  maritime  power  the  world  had  hitherto  seen.  She 
claimed  the  Western  Mediterranean  as  her  own,  and  seized 
every  ship  she  could  catch  west  of  Sardinia.  Roman  writers 
accuse  her  of  great  cruelties.  She  fought  the  Greeks  for  Sicily, 
and  later  (in  the  second  century  B.C.)  she  fought  the  Romans. 
Alexander  the  Great  formed  plans  for  her  conquest;  but  he 
died,  as  we  shall  tell  later,  before  he  could  carry  them  out. 


§  3 

At  her  zenith  Carthage  probably  had  the  hitherto  unheard-of 
population  of  a  million.  This  population  was  largely  indus- 
trial, and  her  woven  goods  were  universally  famous.  As  well 
as  a  coasting  trade,  she  had  a  considerable  land  trade  with 
Central  Africa,1  and  she  sold  negro  slaves,  ivory,  metals, 
precious  stones  and  the  like,  to  all  the  Mediterranean  people ;  she 
worked  Spanish  copper  mines,  and  her  ships  went  out  into 

1  There  were  no  domesticated  camels  in  Africa  until  after  the  Persian 
conquest  of  Egypt.  This  must  have  greatly  restricted  the  desert  routes. 
(See  Bunbury,  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  note  to  Chap.  VIII.)  But 
the  Sahara  desert  of  3,000  or  2,000  years  ago  was  less  parched  and 
sterile  than  it  is  to-day.  From  rock  engravings  we  may  deduce  the  theory 
that  the  desert  was  crossed  from  oasis  to  oasis  by  riding  oxen  and  by 


SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TRADING  PEOPLES     163 

the  Atlantic  and  coasted  along  Portugal  and  France  northward 
as  far  as  the  Cassiterides  (the  Scilly  Isles,  or  Cornwall,  in 
England)  to  get  tin.  About  520  B.C.  a  certain  Hanno  made  a 
voyage  that  is  still  one  of  the  most  notable  in  the  world.  This 
Hanno,  if  we  may  trust  the  Periplus  of  Hanno,  the  Greek  trans- 
lation of  his  account  which  still  survives,  followed  the  African 
coast  southward  from  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  as  far  as  the 
confines  of  Liberia.  He  had  sixty  big  ships,  and  his  main 
task  was  to  found  or  reinforce  certain  Carthaginian  stations 
upon  the  Morocco  coast.  Then  he  pushed  southward.  He 
founded  a  settlement  in  the  Rio  de  Oro  (on  Kerne  or  Herne 
Island),  and  sailed,  on  past  the  Senegal  River.  The  voyagers 
passed  on  for  seven  days  beyond  the  Gambia,  and  landed  at 
last  upon  some  island.  This  they  left  in  a  panic,  because,  al- 
though the  day  was  silent  with  the  silence  of  the  tropical  for- 
ests, at  night  they  heard  the  sound  of  flutes,  drums,  and  gongs, 
and  the  sky  was  red  with  the  blaze  of  the  bush  fires.  The 
coast  country  for  the  rest  of  the  voyage  was  one  blaze  of  fire, 
from  the  burning  of  the  bush.  Streams  of  fire  ran  down  the 
hills  into  the  sea,  and  at  length  a  blaze  arose  so  loftily  that  it 
touched  the  skies.  Three  days  further  brought  them  to  an 
island  containing  a  lake  (  ?Sherbro  Island).  In  this  lake  was 
another  island  (  ?Macaulay  Island),  and  on  this  were  wild, 
hairy  men  and  women,  "whom  the  interpreters  called  gorilla." 
The  Carthaginians,  having  caught  some  of  the  females  of  these 
"gorillas" — they  were  probably  chimpanzees — turned  back  and 
eventually  deposited  the  skins  of  their  captives — who  had  proved 
impossibly  violent  guests  to  entertain  on  board  ship — in  the 
Temple  of  Juno. 

A  still  more  wonderful  Phoenician  sea  voyage,  long  doubted, 
but  now  supported  by  some  archasological  evidence,  is  related 
by  Herodotus,  who  declares  that  the  Pharaoh  Necho  of  the 
XXVIth  Dynasty  commissioned  some  Phoenicians  to  attempt 
the  circumnavigation  of  Africa,  and  that  starting  from  the 
Gulf  of  Suez  southward,  they  did  finally  come  back  through 

ox-carts:  perhaps,  also,  on  horses  and  asses.  The  camel  as  a  beast  of 
transport  was  seemingly  not  introduced  into  North  Africa  till  the  Arab 
invasions  of  the  seventh  century  A.D.  The  fossil  remains  of  camels  are 
found  in  Algeria,  and  wild  camels  may  have  lingered  in  the  wastes  of  the 
Sahara  and  Somaliland  till  the  domesticated  camel  was  introduced.  The 
Nubian  wild  ass  also  seems  to  have  extended  its  range  to  the  Sahara. — 
H.  H.  J. 


164  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  Mediterranean  to  the  Nile  delta.  They  took  nearly  three 
years  to  complete  their  voyage.  Each  year  they  landed,  and 
sowed  and  harvested  a  crop  of  wheat  before  going  on. 


The  great  trading  cities  of  the  Phoenicians  are  the  most  strik- 
ing of  the  early  manifestations  of  the  peculiar  and  character- 
istic gift  of  the  Semitic  peoples  to  mankind,  trade  and  exchange.1 
While  the  Semitic  Phoenician  peoples  were  spreading  them- 
selves upon  the  seas,  another  kindred  Semitic  people,  the 
Arameans,  whose  occupation  of  Damascus  we  have  already 
noted,  were  developing  the  caravan  routes  of  the  Arabian  and 
Persian  deserts,  and  becoming  the  chief  trading  people  of 
Western  Asia.  The  Semitic  peoples,  earlier  civilized  than  the 
Aryan,  have  always  shown,  and  still  show  to-day,  a  far  greater 
sense  of  quality  and  quantity  in  marketable  goods  than  the 
latter;  it  is  to  their  need  of  account-keeping  that  the  develop- 
ment of  alphabetical  writing  is  to  be  ascribed,  and  it  is  to  them 
that  most  of  the  great  advances  in  computation  are  due.  Our 
modern  numerals  are  Arabic;  our  arithmetic  and  algebra  are 
essentially  Semitic  sciences. 

The  Semitic  peoples,  we  may  point  out  here,  are  to  this 
day  counting  peoples  strong  in  their  sense  of  equivalents  and 
reparation.  The  moral  teaching  of  the  Hebrews  was  saturated 
by  such  ideas.  "With  what  measure  ye  mete,  the  same  shall 
be  meted  unto  you."  Other  races  and  peoples  have  imagined 
diverse  and  fitful  and  marvellous  gods,  but  it  was  the  trad- 
ing Semites  who  first  began  to  think  of  God  as  a  Righteous 
Dealer,  whose  promises  were  kept,  who  failed  not  the  humblest 
creditor,  and  called  to  account  every  spurious  act. 

The  trade  that  was  going  on  in  the  ancient  world  before  the 
sixth  or  seventh  century  B.C.  was  almost  entirely  a  barter 
trade.  There  was  little  or  no  credit  or  coined  money.  The 
ordinary  standard  of  value  with  the  early  Aryans  was  cattle, 
as  it  still  is  with  the  Zulus  and  Kaffirs  to-day.  In  the  Iliad, 
the  respective  values  of  two  shields  are  stated  in  head  of  cattle, 
and  the  Roman  word  for  moneys,  pecunia,  is  derived  from 

1  There  was  Sumerian  trade  organized  round  the  temples  before  the 
Semites  got  into  Babylonia.  See  Hall  and  King,  Archceologioal  Discoveries 
in  Western  Asia. — E.  B. 


SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TRADING  PEOPLES     165 

pecus,  cattle.  Cattle  as  money  had  this  advantage;  it  did  not 
need  to  be  carried  from  one  owner  to  another,  and  if  it  needed 
attention  and  food,  at  any  rate  it  bred.  But  it  was  incon- 
venient for  ship  or  caravan  transit.  Many  other  substances 
have  at  various  times  been  found  convenient  as  a  standard; 
tobacco  was  once  legal  tender  in  the  colonial  days  in  North 
America,  and  in  West  Africa  fines  are  paid  and  bargains  made 
in  bottles  of  trade  gin.  The  early  Asiatic  trade  included 
metals;  and  weighed  lumps  of  metal,  since  they  were  in  gen- 
eral demand  and  were  convenient  for  hoarding  and  storage, 
costing  nothing  for  fodder  and  needing  small  houseroom,  soon 
asserted  their  superiority  over  cattle  and  sheep.  Iron,  which 
seems  to  have  been  first  reduced  from  its  ores  by  the  Hittites, 
was,  to  begin  with,  a  rare  and  much-desired  substance.1  It  is 
stated  by  Aristotle  to  have  supplied  the  first  currency.  In 
the  collection  of  letters  found  at  Tel-el- Amarna,  addressed  to 
and  from  Amenophis  III  (already  mentioned)  and  his  succes- 
sor Amenophis  IV,  one  from  a  Hittite  king  promises  iron  as 
an  extremely  valuable  gift.  Gold,  then  as  now,  was  the  most 
precious,  and  therefore  most  portable,  security.  In  early  Egypt 
silver  was  almost  as  rare  as  gold  until  after  the  XVIIIth 
Dynasty.  Later  the  general  standard  of  value  in  the  Eastern 
world  became  silver,  measured  by  weight. 

To  begin  with,  metals  were  handed  about  in  ingots  and 
weighed  at  each  transaction.  Then  they  were  stamped  to 
indicate  their  fineness  and  guarantee  their  purity.  The  first 
recorded  coins  were  minted  about  600  B.C.  in  Lydia,  a  gold- 
producing  country  in  the  west  of  Asia  Minor.  The  first-known 
gold  coins  were  minted  in  Lydia  by  Cro3sus,  whose  name  has 
become  a  proverb  for  wealth;  he  was  conquered,  as  we  shall 
tell  later,  by  that  same  Cyrus  the  Persian  who  took  Babylon  in 
539  B.C.  But  very  probably  coined  money  had  been  used  in 
Babylonia  before  that  time.  The  "sealed  shekel,"  a  stamped 
piece  of  silver,  came  very  near  to  being  a  coin.  The  promise 
to  pay  so  much  silver  or  gold  on  "leather"  (=  parchment)  with 
the  seal  of  some  established  firm  is  probably  as  old  or  older 
than  coinage.  The  Carthaginians  used  such  "leather  money." 
We  know  very  little  of  the  way  in  which  small  traffic  was  con- 
ducted. Common  people,  who  in  those  ancient  times  were  in 

1Iron  bars  of  fixed  weight  were  used  for  coin  in  Britain.  Csesar,  De 
Bello  Gallico.—G.  Wh. 


166  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

dependent  positions,  seem  to  have  had  no  money  at  all;  they 
did  their  business  by  barter.  Early  Egyptian  paintings  show 
this  going  on.1 

§  5 

When  one  realizes  the  absence  of  small  money  or  of  any 
conveniently  portable  means  of  exchange  in  the  pre- Alexandrian 
world,  one  perceives  how  impossible  was  private  travel  in  those 
days.2  The  first  "inns" — no  doubt  a  sort  of  caravanserai — are 
commonly  said  to  have  come  into  existence  in  Lydia  in  the  third 
or  fourth  century  B.C.  That,  however,  is  too  late  a  date.  They 
are  certainly  older  than  that.  There  is  good  evidence  of  them 
at  least  as  early  as  the  sixth  century.  ^Eschylus  twice  mentions 
inns.  His  word  is  "all-receiver,"  or  "all-receiving  house."  3 
Private  travellers  must  have  been  fairly  common  in  the  Greek 
world,  including  its  colonies,  by  this  time.  But  such  private 
travel  was  a  comparatively  new  thing  then.  The  early  histo- 
rians Hecataeus  and  Herodotus  travelled  widely.  "I  suspect," 
says  Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  "that  this  sort  of  travel  'for 
Historic'  or  'for  discovery'  was  rather  a  Greek  invention.  Solon 
is  supposed  to  have  practised  it;  and  even  Lycurgus."  .  .  . 
The  earlier  travellers  were  traders  travelling  in  a  caravan  or  in 
a  shipload,  and  carrying  their  goods  and  their  minas  and 
shekels  of  metal  or  gems  or  bales  of  fine  stuff  with  them,  or 
government  officials  travelling  with  letters  of  introduction  and 
a  proper  retinue.  Possibly  there  were  a  few  mendicants,  and, 
in  some  restricted  regions,  religious  pilgrims. 

That  earlier  world  before  600  B.C.  was  one  in  which  a  lonely 
"stranger"  was  a  rare  and  suspected  and  endangered  being. 
He  might  suffer  horrible  cruelties,  for  there  was  little  law  to 
protect  such  as  he.  Few  individuals  strayed  therefore.  One 

irThe  earliest  coinage  of  the  west  coast  of  Asia  Minor  was  in  electrum, 
a  mixture  of  gold  and  silver,  and  there  is  an  interesting  controversy  as  to 
whether  the  first  issues  were  stamped  by  cities,  temples,  or  private  bank- 
ers.—P.  G. 

'Small  change  was  in  existence  before  the  time  of  Alexander.  The 
Athenians  had  a  range  of  exceedingly  small  silver  coins  running  almost 
down  to  the  size  of  a  pinhead  which  were  generally  carried  in  the  mouth; 
a  character  in  Aristophanes  was  suddenly  assaulted,  and  swallowed  his 
change  in  consequence. — P.  G. 

'There  is  an  inn-keeper  in  Aristophanes,  but  it  may  be  inferred  from 
the  circumstance  that  she  is  represented  as  letting  lodgings  in  hell,  that 
the  early  inn  left  much  to  be  desired.— P.  G. 


SEA  PEOPLES  AND  TRADING  PEOPLES     167 

lived  and  died  attached  and  tied  to  some  patriarchal  tribe, 
if  one  was  a  nomad,  or  to  some  great  household  if  one  was 
civilized  or  to  one  of  the  big  temple  establishments  which  we 
will  presently  discuss.  Or  one  was  a  herded  slave.  One  knew 
nothing,  except  for  a  few  monstrous  legends,  of  the  rest  of  the 
world  in  which  one  lived.  We  know  more  to-day,  indeed,  of 
the  world  of  600  B.C.  than  any  single  living  being  knew 
at  that  time.  We  map  it  out,  see  it  as  a  whole  in  relation  to 
past  and  future.  We  begin  to  learn  precisely  what  was  going 
on  at  the  same  time  in  Egypt  and  Spain  and  Media  and  India 
and  China.  We  can  share  in  imagination,  not  only  the  won- 
der of  Hanno's  sailors,  but  of  the  men  who  lit  the  warning 
beacons  on  the  shore.  We  know  that  those  "mountains  flam- 
ing to  the  sky"  were  only  the  customary  burning  of  the  dry 
grass  at  that  season  of  the  year.  Year  by  year,  more  and  more 
rapidly,  our  common  knowledge  increases.  In  the  years  to 
come  men  will  understand  still  more  of  those  lives  in  the  past, 
until  peihaps  they  will  understand  them  altogether. 


XVI 
WHITING 


1.  Picture-Writing.       §  2.  Syllable-Writing.       §  3.  Alpha- 
bet-Writing.     §  4.  T/ze  Place  of  Writing  in  Human  Life. 


IN  the  four  preceding  chapters  (XII  to  XV)  we  have 
sketched  in  broad  outline  the  development  of  the  chief 
human  communities  from  the  primitive  beginnings  of  the 
heliolith,ic  culture  to  the  great  historical  kingdoms  and  empires 
in  the  sixth  century  B.C.  We  must  now  study  a  little  more  closely 
the  general  process  of  social  change,  the  growth  of  human  ideas, 
and  the  elaboration  of  human  relationships  that  was  going  on 
during  these  ages  between  10,000  B.C.  and  500  B.C.  What  we 
have  done  so  far  is  to  draw  the  map  and  name  the  chief  kings 
and  empires,  to  define  the  relations  in  time  and  space  of 
Babylonia,  Assyria,  Egypt,  Phoenicia,  Cnossos,  and  the  like; 
we  come  now  to  the  real  business  of  history,  which  is  to  get  down 
below  these  outer  forms  to  the  thoughts  and'  lives  of  individual 
men. 

By  far  the  most  important  thing  that  was  going  on  during 
those  fifty  or  sixty  centuries  of  social  development  was  the 
invention  of  writing  and  its  gradual  progress  to  importance  in 
human  affairs.  It  was  a  new  instrument  for  the  human  mind, 
an  enormous  enlargement  of  its  range  of  action,  a  new  means 
of  continuity.  We  have  seen  how  in  later  Palaeolithic  and  early 
Neolithic  times  the  elaboration  of  articulate  speech  gave  men 
a  mental  handhold  for  consecutive  thought,  and  a  vast  en- 
largement of  their  powers  of  co-operation.  For  a  time  this  new 
acquirement  seems  te  have  overshadowed  their  earlier  achieve- 
ment of  drawing,  and  possibly  it  checked  the  use  of  gesture. 
But  drawing  presently  reappeared  again,  for  record,  for  signs, 
for  the  joy  of  drawing.  Before  real  writing  came  picture- 
writing,  such  as  is  still  practised  by  the  Amerindians,  the  Bush- 

168 


WRITING  169 

men,  and  savage  and  barbaric  people  in  all  parts  of  the  world. 
It  is  essentially  a  drawing  of  things  and  acts,  helped  out  by 
heraldic  indications  of  proper  names,  and  by  strokes  and  dots 
to  represent  days  and  distances  and  such-like  quantitative  ideas. 

Quite  kindred  to  such  picture-writing  is  the  pictograph  that 
one  finds  still  in  use  to-day  in  international  railway  time-tables 
upon  the  continent  of  Europe,  where  a  little  black  sign  of  a 
cup  indicates  a  stand-up  buffet  for  light  refreshments ;  a  crossed 
knife  and  fork,  a  restaurant;  a  little  steamboat,  a  transfer  to 
a  steamboat;  and  a  postilion's  horn,  a  diligence.  Similar  signs 
are  used  in  the  well-known  Michelin  guides  for  automobilists 
in  Europe,  to  show  a  post  office  (envelope)  or  a  telephone  (tele- 
phone receiver).  The  quality  of  hotels  is  shown  by  an  inn 
with  one,  two,  three,  or  four  gables,  and  so  forth.  Similarly, 
the  roads  of  Europe  are  marked  with  wayside  signs  represent- 
ing a  gate,  to  indicate  a  level  crossing  ahead,  a  sinuous  bend 
for  a  dangerous  curve,  and  the  like.  From  such  pictographic 
signs  to  the  first  elements  of  Chinese  writing  is  not  a  very  long 
stretch. 

In  Chinese  writing  there  are  still  traceable  a  number  of  picto- 
graphs.  Most  are  now  difficult  to  recognize.  A  mouth  was 
originally  written  as  a  mouth-shaped  hole,  and  is  now,  for 
convenience  of  brushwork,  squared ;  a  child,  originally  a  rec- 
ognizable little  mannikin,  is  now  a  hasty  wriggle  and  a  cross; 
the  sun,  originally  a  large  circle  with  a  dot  in  the  centre,  has 
been  converted,  for  the  sake  of  convenience  of  combination,  into 
a  crossed  oblong,  which  is  easier  to  make  with  a  brush.  By 
combining  these  pictographs,  a  second  order  of  ideas  is  ex- 
pressed. For  example,  the  pictograph  for  mouth  combined 
with  pictograph  for  vapour  expressed  "words."  1 

From  such  combinations  one  passes  to  what  are  called  ideo- 
grams: the  sign  for  "words"  and  the  sign  for  "tongue"  combine 
to  make  "speech" ;  the  sign  for  "roof"  and  the  sign  for  "pig" 
make  "home" — for  in  the  early  domestic  economy  of  China  the 
pig  was  as  important  as  it  used  to  be  in  Ireland.  But,  as  we 
have  already  noted  earlier,  the  Chinese  language  consists  of  a 
comparatively  few  elementary  monosyllabic  sounds,  which  are 
all  used  in  a  great  variety  of  meanings,  and  the  Chinese  soon 
discovered  that  a  number  of  these  pictographs  and  ideographs 
could  be  used  also  to  express  other  ideas,  not  so  conveniently 
'See  the  Encyclopaedia  Brit.,  Article  China,  p.  218. 


170  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

pictured,  but  having  the  same  sound.  Characters  so  used  are 
called  phonograms.  For  example,  the  sound  fang  meant  not 
only  "boat,"  but  aa  place,"  "spinning,"  "fragrant,"  "inquire," 
and  several  other  meanings  according  to  the  context.  But  while 
a  boat  is  easy  to  draw,  most  of  the  other  meanings  are  undraw- 
able.  How  can  one  draw  "fragrant"  or  "inquire"  ?  The 
Chinese,  therefore,  took  the  same  sign  for  all  these  meanings 
of  "fang,"  but  added  to  each  of  them  another  distinctive  sign, 
the  determinative,  to  show  what  sort  of  fang  was  intended.  A 
"place"  was  indicated  by  the  same  sign  as  for  "boat"  (fang} 
and  the  determinative  sign  for  "earth" ;  "spinning"  by  the  sign 
for  fang  and  the  sign  for  "silk" ;  "inquire"  by  the  sign  for  fang, 
and  the  sign  for  "words,"  and  so  on. 

One  may  perhaps  make  this  development  of  pictographs,  ideo- 
grams, and  phonograms  a  little  clearer  by  taking  an  analogous 
case  in  English.  Suppose  we  were  making  up  a  sort  of  picture- 
writing  in  English,  then  it  would  be  very  natural  to  use  a  square 
with  a  slanting  line  to  suggest  a  lid,  for  the  word  and  thing 
box.  That  would  be  a  pictograph.  But  now  suppose  we  had  a 
round  sign  for  money,  and  suppose  we  put  this  sign  inside  the 
box  sign,  that  would  do  for  "cash-box"  or  "treasury."  That 
would  be  an  ideogram.  But  the  word  "box"  is  used  for  other 
things  than  boxes.  There  is  the  box  shrub  which  gives  us  box- 
wood. It  would  be  hard  to  draw  a  recognizable  box-tree  dis- 
tinct from  other  trees,  but  it  is  quite  easy  to  put  our  sign  "box," 
and  add  our  sign  for  shrub  as  a  determinative  to  determine  that 
it  is  that  sort  of  box  and  not  a  common  box  that  we  want  to 
express.  And  then  there  is  "box,"  the  verb,  meaning  to  fight 
with  fists.  Here,  again,  we  need  a  determinative;  we  might 
add  the  two  crossed  swords,  a  sign  which  is  used  very  often 
upon  maps  to  denote  a  battle.  A  box  at  a  theatre  needs  yet  an- 
other determinative,  and  so  we  go  on,  through  a  long  series  of 
phonograms. 

Now  it  is  manifest  that  here  in  the  Chinese  writing  is  a  very 
peculiar  and  complex  system  of  sign-writing.  A  very  great 
number  of  characters  have  to  be  learnt  and  the  mind  habituated 
to  their  use.  The  power  it  possesses  to  carry  ideas  and  discus- 
sion is  still  ungauged  by  western  standards,  but  we  may  doubt 
whether  with  this  instrument  it  will  ever  be  possible  to  establish 
such  a  wide,  common  mentality  as  the  simpler  and  swifter 
alphabets  of  the  western  civilizations  permit.  In  China  it 


WRITING 


171 


created  a  special  reading-class,  the  mandarins,  who  were  also 
the  ruling  and  official  class.  Their  necessary  concentration 
upon  words  and  classical  forms,  rather  than  upon  ideas  and 
realities,  seems,  in 
spite  of  her  com- 
parative peaceful- 
ness  and  the  very 
high  individual  in- 
tellectual quality 
of  her  people,  to 
have  greatly  ham- 
pered the  social 
and  economic  de- 
velopment  of 
China.  Probably 
it  is  the  complex- 
ity of  her  speech 
and  writing,  more 
than  any  other 
imaginable  cause, 
that  has  made 
China  to-day  po- 
litically, socially, 
and  individually  a 


Specimens  oC  Tkmericari  Indian, 


vast  pool  of  back- 
ward people  rather 
than  the  foremost 
power  in  the  whole 
world.1 

§  2 

But  while  the 
Chinese  mind  thus 
made  for  itself  an 
instrument  which 


No.  1,  painted  on  a  rock  on  the  shore  of  Lake 
Superior,  records  an  expedition  across  the  lake,  in 
which  five  canoes  took  part.  The  upright  strokes 
in  each  indicate  the  number  of  the  crew,  and  the 
bird  represents  a  chief,  "The  Kingfisher."  The 
three  circles  (suns)  under  the  arch  (of  heaven) 
indicate  that  the  voyage  lasted  three  days,  and  the 
tortoise,  a  symbol  of  land,  denotes  a  safe  arrival. 
No.  2  is  a  petition  sent  to  the  United  States  Con- 
gress by  a  group  of  Indian  tribes,  asking  for  fish- 
ing rights  in  certain  small  lakes.  The  tribes  are 
represented  by  their  totems,  martens,  bear,  man- 
fish,  and  catfish,  led  by  the  crane.  Lines  running 
from  the  heart  and  eye  of  each  animal  to  the  heart 
and  eye  of  the  crane  denote  that  they  are  all  of 
one  mind;  and  a  line  runs  from  the  eye  of  the 
crane  to  the  lakes,  shown  in  the  crude  little  "map" 
in  the  lower  left-hand  corner. 


1  The  writer's  friend,  Mr.  L.  Y.  Chen,  thinks  that  this  is  only  partially 
true.  He  thinks  that  the  emperors  insisted  upon  a  minute  and  rigorous 
study  of  the  set  classics  in  order  to  check  intellectual  innovation.  This 
was  especially  the  case  with  the  Ming  emperors,  the  first  of  whom,  when 
reorganizing  the  examination  system  on  a  narrower  basis,  said  definitely, 
"This  will  bring  all  the  intellectuals  of  the  world  into  my  trap."  The 
Five  Classics  and  the  Four  Books  have  imprisoned  the  mind  of  China. 


172  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

is  probably  too  elaborate  in  structure,  too  laborious  in  use,  and 
too  inflexible  in  its  form  to  meet  the  modern  need  for  simple, 
swift,  exact,  and  lucid  communications,  the  growing  civiliza- 
tions of  the  west  were  working  out  the  problem  of  a 
written  record  upon  rather  different  and,  on  the  whole,  more 
advantageous  lines.  They  did  not  seek  to  improve  their  scrip*- 
to  make  it  swift  and  easy,  but  circumstances  conspired  to  make 
it  so.  The  Sumerian  picture  writing,  which  had  to  be  done 
upon  clay  and  with  little  styles,  which  made  curved  marks 
with  difficulty  and  inaccurately,  rapidly  degenerated  by  a  con- 
ventionalized dabbing  down  of  wedged-shaped  marks  (cunei- 
form =  wedge-shaped)  into  almost  unrecognizable  hints  of  the 
shapes  intended.  It  helped  the  Sumerians  greatly  to  learn  to 
write,  that  they  had  to  draw  so  badly.  They  got  very  soon 
to  the  Chinese  pictographs,  ideographs,  and  phonograms,  and 
beyond  them. 

Most  people  know  a  sort  of  puzzle  called  a  rebus.  It  is  a  way 
of  representing  words  by  pictures,  not  of  the  things  the  words 
represent,  but  by  the  pictures  of  other  things  having  a  similar 
sound.  For  example,  two  gates  and  a  head  is  a  rebus  for  Gates- 
head;  a  little  streamlet  (beck),  a  crowned  monarch,  and  a  ham, 
Beckingham.  The  Sumerian  language  was  a  language  well 
adapted  to  this  sort  of  representation.  It  was  apparently  a 
language  of  often  quite  vast  polysyllables,  made  up  of  very  dis- 
tinct inalterable  syllables;  and  many  of  the  syllables  taken 
separately  were  the  names  of  concrete  things.  So  that  this 
cuneiform  writing  developed  very  readily  into  a  syllabic  way 
of  writing,  in  which  each  sign  conveys  a  syllable  just  as  each 
act  in  a  charade  conveys  a  syllable.  When  presently  the  Semites 
conquered  Sumeria,  they  adapted  the  syllabic  system  to  their 
own  speech,  and  so  this  writing  became  entirely  a  sign-for-a- 
sound  writing.  It  was  so  used  by  the  Assyrians  and  by  the 
Chaldeans,  But  it  was  not  a  letter-writing,  it  was  a  syllable- 
writing.  This  cuneiform  script  prevailed  for  long  ages  over 
Assyria,  Babylonia,  and  the  Near  East  generally;  there  are 
vestiges  of  it  in  some  of  the  letters  of  our  alphabet  to-day. 

§  3 

But,  meanwhile,  in  Egypt  and  upon  the  Mediterranean  coast 
yet  another  system  of  writing  grew  up.  Its  beginnings  are 


WRITING  178 

probably  to  be  found  in  the  priestly  picture- writing  (hiero- 
glyphics) of  the  Egyptians,  which  also  in  the  usual  way  became 
partly  a  sound-sign  system.  As  we  see  it  on  the  Egyptian 
monuments,  the  hieroglyphic  writing  consists  of  decorative  but 
stiff  and  elaborate  forms,  but  for  such  purpose  as  letter-writing 
and  the  keeping  of  recipes  and  the  like,  the  Egyptian  priests 
used  a  much  simplified  and  flowing  form  of  these  characters, 
the  hieratic  script.  Side  by  side  with  this  hieratic  script  rose 
another,  probably  also  derivative  from  the  hieroglyphs,  a  script 
now  lost  to  use,  which  was  taken  over  by  various  non-Egyptian 
peoples  in  the  Mediterranean,  the  Phoenicians,  Libyans, 
Lydians,  Cretans,  and  Celt-Iberians,  and  used  for  business  pur- 
poses. Possibly  a  few  letters  were  borrowed  from  the  later 
cuneiform.  In  the  hands  of  these  foreigners  this  writing  was, 
so  to  speak,  cut  off  from  its  roots;  it  lost  all  but  a  few  traces 
of  its  early  pictorial  character.  It  ceased  to  be  pictographic 
or  ideographic ;  it  became  simply  a  pure  sound-sign  system,  an 
alphabet. 

There  were  a  number  of  such  alphabets  in  the  Mediterranean 
differing  widely  from  each  other.  It  may  be  noted  that  the 
Phoenician  alphabet  (and  perhaps  others)  omitted  vowels. 
Possibly  they  pronounced  their  consonants  very  hard  and  had 
rather  indeterminate  vowels,  as  is  said  to  be  still  the  case  with 
tribes  of  South  Arabia.  Quite  probably,  too,  the  Phoenicians 
used  their  alphabet  at  first  not  so  much  for  writing  as  for  single 
initial  letters  in  their  business  accounts  and  tallies.  One  of 
these  Mediterranean  alphabets  reached  the  Greeks,  long  after 
the  time  of  the  Iliad,  who  presently  set  to  work  to  make  it 
express  the  clear  and  beautiful  sounds  of  their  own  highly 
developed  Aryan  speech.  It  consisted  at  first  of  consonants, 
and  the  Greeks  added  the  vowels.  They  began  to  write  for 
record,  to  help  and  fix  their  bardic  tradition.  .  .  . 

§  4 

So  it  was  by  a  series  of  very  natural  steps  that  writing  grew 
out  of  the  life  of  man.  At  first  and  for  long  ages  it  was  the 
interest  and  the  secret  of  only  a  few  people  in  a  special  class, 
a  mere  accessory  to  the  record  of  pictures.  But  there  were  cer- 
tain very  manifest  advantages,  quite  apart  from  the  increased 
expressiveness  of  mood  and  qualification,  to  be  gained  by  making 


174  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

writing  a  little  less  plain  than  straightforward  pictures,  and  in 
conventionalizing  and  codifying  it.  One  of  these  was  that  so 
messages  might  be  sent  understandable  by  the  sender  and  re- 
ceiver, but  not  plain  to  the  uninitiated.  Another  was  that  so 
one  might  put  down  various  matters  and  help  one's  memory  and 
the  memory  of  one's  friends,  without  giving  away  too  much 
to  the  common  herd.  Among  some  of  the  earliest  Egyptian 
writings,  for  example,  are  medical  recipes  and  magic  formula. 
Accounts,  letters,  recipes,  name  lists,  itineraries;  these  were 
the  earliest  of  written  documents.  Then,  as  the  art  of  writing 
and  reading  spread,  came  that  odd  desire,  that  pathetic  desire 
so  common  among  human  beings,  to  astonish  some  strange  and 
remote  person  by  writing  down  something  striking,  some  secret 
one  knew,  some  strange  thought,  or  even  one's  name,  so  that 
long  after  one  had  gone  one's  way,  it  might  strike  upon  the 
sight  and  mind  of  another  reader.  Even  in  Sumeria  men 
scratched  on  walls,  and  all  that  remains  to  us  of  the  ancient 
world,  its  rocks,  its  buildings,  is  plastered  thickly  with  the 
names  and  the  boasting  of  those  foremost  among  human  adver- 
tisers, its  kings.  Perhaps  half  the  early  inscriptions  in  that 
ancient  world  are  of  this  nature,  if,  that  is,  we  group  with  the 
name-writing  and  boasting  the  epitaphs,  which  were  probably 
in  many  cases  pre-arranged  by  the  deceased. 

For  long  the  desire  for  crude  self-assertion  of  the  name- 
scrawling  sort  and  the  love  of  secret  understandings  kept  writ- 
ing within  a  narrow  scope;  but  that  other,  more  truly  social 
desire  in  men,  the  desire  to  tell,  was  also  at  work.  The  pro- 
founder  possibilities  of  writing,  the  possibilities  of  a  vast  exten- 
sion and  definition  and  settlement  of  knowledge  and  tradition, 
only  grew  apparent  after  long  ages.  But  it  will  be  interesting 
at  this  point  and  in  this  connection  to  recapitulate  certain  ele- 
mental facts  about  life,  upon  which  we  laid  stress  in  our  earlier 
chapters,  because  they  illuminate  not  only  the  huge  value  of 
writing  in  the  whole  field  of  man's  history,  but  also  the  role 
it  is  likely  to  play  in  his  future. 

1.  Life  had  at  first,  it  must  be  remembered,  only  a  discon- 
tinuous repetition  of  consciousness,  as  the  old  died  and  the 
young  were  born. 

Such  a  creature  as  a  reptile  has  in  its  brain  a  capacity  for 
experience,  but  when  the  individual  dies,  its  experience  dies 
with  it.  Most  of  its  motives  are  purely  instinctive,  and  all 


WRITING  175 

the  mental  life  that  it  has  is  the  result  of  heredity   (birth 
inheritance) . 

2.  But  ordinary  mammals  have  added  to  pure  instinct  tradi- 
tion, a  tradition  of  .experience  imparted  hy  the  imitated  ex- 
ample of  the  mother,  and  in  the  case  of  such  mentally  developed 
animals  as  dogs,  cats,  or  apes,  by  a  sort  of  mute  precept  also. 
For  example,  the  mother  cat  chastises  her  young  for  misbe- 
haviour.    So  do  mother  apes  and  baboons. 

3.  Primitive  man  added  to  his  powers  of  transmitting  ex- 
perience, representative  art  and  speech.     Pictorial  and  sculp- 
tured record  and  verbal  tradition  began. 

Verbal  tradition  was  developed  to  its  highest  possibility  by 
the  bards.  They  did  much  to  make  language  what  it  is  to  the 
world  to-day. 

4.  With  the  invention  of  writing,  which  developed  out  of 
pictorial  record,  human  tradition  was  able  to  become  fuller  and 
much    more    exact.     Verbal    tradition,    which    had    hitherto 
changed  from  age  to  age,  began  to  be  fixed.    Men  separated  by 
hundreds  of  miles  could  now  communicate  their  thoughts.     An 
increasing  number  of  human  beings  began  to  share  a  common 
written  knowledge  and  a  common  sense  of  a  past  and  a  future. 
Human  thinking  became  a  larger  operation  in  which  hundreds 
of  minds  in  different  places  and  in  different  ages  could  react 
upon  one  another;  it  became  a  process  constantly  more  con- 
tinuous and  sustained.  .  .  . 

5.  For  hundreds  of  generations  the  full  power  of  writing 
was  not  revealed  to  the  world,  because  for  a  long  time  the  idea 
of  multiplying  writings  by  taking  prints  of  a  first  copy  did  not 
become  effective.     The  only  way  of  multiplying  writings  was 
by  copying  one  copy  at  a  time,  and  this  made  books  costly  and 
rare.    Moreover,  the  tendency  to  keep  things  secret,  to  make  a 
cult  and  mystery  of  them,  and  so  to  gain  an  advantage  over  the 
generality  of  men,  has  always  been  very  strong  in  men's  minds. 
It  is  only  nowadays  that  the  great  masses  of  mankind  are  learn- 
ing to  read,  and  reaching  out  towards  the  treasures  of  knowledge 
and  thought  already  stored  in  books. 

Nevertheless,  from  the  first  writings  onward  a  new  sort  of 
tradition,  an  enduring  and  immortal  tradition,  began  in  the 
minds  of  men.  Life,  through  mankind,  grew  thereafter  more 
and  more  distinctly  conscious  of  itself  and  its  world.  It  is  a 
thin  streak  of  intellectual  growth  we  trace  in  history,  at  first  in 


176  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

a  world  of  tumultuous  ignorance  and  forgetfulness ;  it  is  like  a 
mere  line  of  light  coming  through  the  chink  of  an  opening  door 
into  a  darkened  room;  but  slowly  it  widens,  it  grows.  At  last 
came  a  time  in  the  history  of  Europe  when. the  door,  at  the  push 
of  the  printer,  began  to  open  more  rapidly.  Knowledge  flared 
up,  and  as  it  flared  it  ceased  to  be  the  privilege  of  a  favoured 
minority.  For  us  now  that  door  swings  wider,  and  the  light 
behind  grows  brighter.  Misty  it  is  still,  glowing  through  clouds 
of  dust  and  reek. 

The  door  is  not  half  open;  the  light  is  but  a  light  new  lit. 
Our  world  to-day  is  only  in  the  beginning  of  knowledge. 


XVII 
GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS 

§  1.  The  Priest  Comes  into  History.  §  2.  Priests  and  the 
Stars.  §  3.  Priests  and  the  Dawn  of  Learning.  §  4.  King 
against  Priest.  §  5.  How  Bel-Marduk  Struggled  against  the 
Kings.  §  6.  The  God^Kings  of  Egypt.  §  7.  Shi  Hwang-ti 
Destroys  the  Boolcs. 

§  i. 

WHEN  we  direct  our  attention  to  these  new  accumula- 
tions of  human  beings  that  were  beginning  in  Egypt 
and  Mesopotamia,  we  find  that  one  of  the  most  con- 
spicuous and  constant  objects  in  all  these  cities  is  a  temple  or 
a  group  of  temples.  In  some  cases  there  arises  beside  it  in 
these  regions  a  royal  palace,  but  as  often  the  temple  towers  over 
the  palace.  This  presence  of  the  temple  is  equally  true  of  the 
Phoenician  cities  and  of  the  Greek  and  Roman  as  they  arise. 
The  palace  of  Cnossos,  with  its  signs  of  comfort  and  pleasure- 
seeking,  and  the  kindred  cities  of  the  ^Egean  peoples,  include 
religious  shrines,  but  in  Crete  there  are  also  temples  standing 
apart  from  the  palatial  city-households.  All  over  the  ancient 
civilized  world  we  find  them;  wherever  primitive  civilization 
set  its  foot  in  Africa,  Europe,  or  western  Asia,  a  temple  arose, 
and  where  the  civilization  is  most  ancient,  in  Egypt  and  in 
Sumer,  there  the  temple  is  most  in  evidence.  When  Hanno 
reached  what  he  thought  was  the  most  westerly  point  of  Africa, 
he  set  up  a  temple  to  Hercules.  The  beginnings  of  civilization 
and  the  appearance  of  temples  is  simultaneous  in  history.  The 
two  things  belong  together.  The  beginning  of  cities  is  the 
temple  stage  of  history. 

In  all  these  temples  there  was  a  shrine;  dominating  the 
shrine  there  was  commonly  a  great  figure  usually  of  some 
monstrous  half-animal  form,  before  which  stood  an  altar  for 
sacrifices.  In  the  Greek  and  Roman  temples  however  the  image 
was  generally  that  of  a  divinity  in  human  form.  This  figure 

177 


178  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

was  either  regarded  as  the  god  or  as  the  image  or  symbol  of  the 
god,  for  whose  worship  the  temple  existed.  And  connected 
with  the  temple  there  were  a  number,  and  often  a  considerable 
number,  of  priests  or  priestesses,  and  temple  servants,  generally 
wearing  a  distinctive  costume  and  forming  an  important  part 
of  the  city  population.  They  belong  to  no  household;  they 
made  up  a  new  kind  of  household  of  their  own.  They  were 
a  caste  and  a  class  apart,  attracting  intelligent  recruits  from 
the  general  population. 

The  primary  duty  of  this  priesthood  was  concerned  with  the 
worship  of  and  the  sacrifices  to  the  god  of  the  temple.  And 
these  things  were  done,  not  at  any  time,  but  at  particular  times 
and  seasons.  There  had  come  into  the  life  of  man  with  his 
herding  and  agriculture  a  sense  of  a  difference  between  the 
parts  of  the  year  and  of  a  difference  between  day  and  day.  Men 
were  beginning  to  work — and  to  need  days  of  rest.  The  temple, 
by  its  festivals,  kept  count.  The  temple  in  the  ancient  city  was 
like  the  clock  and  calendar  upon  a  writing-desk. 

But  it  was  a  centre  of  other  functions.  It  was  in  the  early 
temples  that  the  records  and  tallies  of  events  were  kept  and 
that  writing  began.  And  there  was  knowledge  there.  The 
people  went  to  the  temple  not  only  en  masse  for  festivals,  but 
individually  for  help.  The  early  priests  were  also  doctors  and 
magicians.  In  the  earliest  temples  we  already  find  those  little 
offerings  for  some  private  and  particular  end,  which  are  still 
made  in  the  chapels  of  Catholic  churches  to-day,  ex  votos,  little 
models  of  hearts  relieved  and  limbs  restored,  acknowledgment 
of  prayers  answered  and  accepted  vows. 

It  is  clear  that  here  we  have  that  comparatively  unimportant 
element  in  the  life  of  the  early  nomad,  the  medicine-man,  the 
shrine-keeper,  and  the  memorist,  developed,  with  the  develop- 
ment of  the  community  and  as  a  part  of  the  development  of  the 
community  from  barbarism  to  civilized  settlement,  into  some- 
thing of  very  much  greater  importance.  And  it  is  equally  evi- 
dent that  those  primitive  fears  of  (and  hopes  of  help  from) 
strange  beings,  the  desire  to  propitiate  unknown  forces,  the 
primitive  desire  for  cleansing  and  the  primitive  craving  for 
power  and  knowledge  have  all  contributed  to  crystallize  out  this 
new  social  fact  of  the  temple. 

The  temple  was  accumulated  by  complex  necessities,  it  grew 
from  many  roots  and  needs,  and  the  god  or  goddess  that  domi- 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS          179 


180  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

nated  the  temple  was  the  creation  of  many  imaginations  and 
made  up  of  all  sorts  of  impulses,  ideas,  and  half  ideas.  Here 
there  was  a  god  in  which  one  sort  of  ideas  predominated,  and 
there  another.  It  is  necessary  to  lay  some  stress  upon  this 
confusion  and  variety  of  origin  in  gods,  because  there  is  a  very 
abundant  literature  now  in  existence  upon  religious  origins, 
in  which  a  number  of  writers  insist,  some  on  this  leading  idea 
and  some  on  that — we  have  noted  several  in  our  chapter  on 
"Early  Thought" — as  though  it  were  the  only  idea.  Professor 
Max  Miiller  in  his  time,  for  example,  harped  perpetually  on 
the  idea  of  sun  stories  and  sun  worship.  He  would  have  had 
us  think  that  early  man  never  had  lusts  or  fears,  cravings  for 
power,  nightmares  or  fantasies,  but  that  he  meditated  per- 
petually on  the  beneficent  source  of  light  and  life  in  the  sky. 
Now  dawn  and  sunset  are  very  moving  facts  in  the  daily  life, 
but  they  are  only  two  among  many.  Early  men,  three  or  four 
hundred  generations  ago,  had  brains  very  like  our  own.  The 
fancies  of  our  childhood  and  youth  are  perhaps  the  best  clue 
we  have  to  the  ground-stuff  of  early  religion,  and  anyone  who 
can  recall  those  early  mental  experiences  will  understand  very 
easily  the  vagueness,  the  monstrosity,  and  the  incoherent  variety 
of  the  first  gods.  There  were  sun  gods,  no  doubt,  early  in  the 
history  of  temples,  but  there  were  also  hippopotamus  gods  and 
hawk  gods ;  there  were  cow  deities,  there  were  monstrous  male 
and  female  gods,  there  were  gods  of  terror  and  gods  of  an  ador- 
able quaintness,  there  were  gods  who  were  nothing  but  lumps 
of  meteoric  stone  that  had  fallen  amazingly  out  of  the  sky,  and 
gods  who  were  mere  natural  stones  that  had  chanced  to  have 
a  queer  and  impressive  shape.  Some  gods,  like  Marduk  of 
Babylon  and  the  Baal  (=  the  Lord)  of  the  Phoenicians, 
Canaanit.es,  and  the  like,  were  quite  probably  at  bottom  just 
legendary  wonder  beings,  such  as  little  boys  will  invent  for 
themselves  to-day.  The  settled  peoples,  it  is  said,  as  soon  as 
they  thought  of  a  god,  invented  a  wife  for  him;  most  of  the 
Egyptian  and  Babylonian  gods  were  married.  But  the  gods 
of  the  nomadic  Semites  had  not  this  marrying  disposition. 
Children  were  less  eagerly  sought  by  the  inhabitants  of  the  food- 
grudging  steppes. 

Even  more  natural  than  to  provide  a  wife  for  a  god  is  to 
give  him  a  house  to  live  in  to  which  offerings  can  be  brought. 
Of  this  house  the  knowing  man,  the  magician,  would  naturally 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS         181 

become  the  custodian.  A  certain  seclusion,  a  certain  aloofness, 
would  add  greatly  to  the  prestige  of  the  god.  The  steps  by 
which  the  early  temple  and  the  early  priesthood  developed  so 
soon  as  an  agricultural  population  settled  and  increased  are  all 
quite  natural  and  understandable,  up  to  the  stage  of  the  long 
temple  with  the  image,  shrine  and  altar  at  one  end  and  the 
long  nave  in  which  the  worshippers  stood.  And  this  temple, 
because  it  had  records  and  secrets,  because  it  was  a  centre  of 
power,  advice,  and  instruction,  because  it  sought  and  attracted 
imaginative  and  clever  people  for  its  service,  naturally  became 
a  kind  of  brain  in  the  growing  community.  The  attitude  of 
the  common  people  who  tilled  the  fields  and  herded  the  beasts 
towards  the  temple  would  remain  simple  and  credulous.  There, 
rarely  seen  and  so  imaginatively  enhanced,  lived  the  god  whost? 
approval  gave  prosperity,  whose  anger  meant  misfortune ;  he 
could  be  propitiated  by  little  presents  and  the  help  of  his 
servants  could  be  obtained.  He  was  wonderful,  and  of  such 
power  and  knowledge  that  it  did  not  do  to  be  disrespectful  to 
him  even  in  one's  thoughts.  Within  the  priesthood,  however,  a 
certain  amount  of  thinking  went  on  at  a  rather  higher  level 
than  that. 


§  2 

We  may  note  here  a  very  interesting  fact  about  the  chief 
temples  of  Egypt  and,  so  far  as  we  know — because  the  ruins  are 
not  so  distinct — of  Babylonia,  and  that  is  that  they  were 
"oriented" — that  is  to  say,  that  the  same  sort  of  temple  was 
built  so  that  the  shrine  and  entrance  always  faced  in  the  same 
direction.  In  Babylonian  temples  this  was  most  often  due 
east,  facing  the  sunrise  on  March  21st  and  September  21st, 
the  equinoxes;  and  it  is  to  be  noted  that  it  was  at  the  spring 
equinox  that  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris  came  down  in  flood. 
The  Pyramids  of  Gizeh  are  also  oriented  east  and  west,  and 
the  Sphinx  faces  due  east,  but  very  many  of  the  Egyptian 
temples  to  the  south  of  the  delta  of  the  Nile  do  not  point  due 
east,  but  to  the  point  where  the  sun  rises  at  the  longest  day — 
and  in  Egypt  the  inundation  comes  close  to  that  date.  Others, 
however,  pointed  nearly  northward,  and  others  again  pointed 
to  the  rising  of  the  star  Sirius  or  to*  the  rising-point  of  other 
conspicuous  stars.  The  fact  of  orientation  links  up  with  the 


182 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS          183 

fact  that  there  early  arose  a  close  association  between  various 
gods  and  the  sun  and  various  fixed  stars.  Whatever  the  mass 
of  people  outside  were  thinking,  the  priests  of  the  temples  were 
beginning  to  link  the  movements  of  those  heavenly  bodies  with 
the  power  in  the  shrine.  They  were  thinking  about  the  gods 
they  served  and  thinking  new  meanings  into  them.  They  were 
brooding  upon  the  mystery  of  the  stars.  It  was  very  natural 
for  them  to  suppose  that  these  shining  bodies,  so  irregularly 
distributed  and  circling  so  solemnly  and  silently,  must,  be 
charged  with  portents  to  mankind. 

Among  other  things,  this  orientation  of  the  temples  served 
to  fix  and  help  the  great  annual  festival  of  the  New  Year.  On 
one  morning  in  the  year,  and  one  morning  alone,  in  a  temple 
oriented  to  the  rising-place  of  the  sun  at  Midsummer  Day,  the 
sun's  first  rays  would  smite  down  through  the  gloom  of  the 
temple  and  the  long  alley  of  the  temple  pillars,  and  light  up 
the  god  above  the  altar  ^and  irradiate  him  with  glory.  The 
narrow,  darkened  structure  of  the  ancient  temples  seems  to 
be  deliberately  planned  for  such  an  effect.  No  doubt  the  people 
were  gathered  in  the  darkness  before  the  dawn ;  in  the  darkness 
there  was  chanting  and  perhaps  the  offering  of  sacrifices;  the 
god  alone  stood  mute  and  invisible.  Prayers  and  invocations 
would  be  made.  Then  upon  the  eyes  of  the  worshippers, 
sensitized  by  the  darkness,  as  the  sun  rose  behind  them,  the 
god  would  suddenly  shine. 

So,  at  least,  one  explanation  of  orientation  is  found  by  such 
students  of  orientation  as  Sir  Norman  Lockyer.1  Not  only  is 
orientation  apparent  in  most  of  the  temples  of  Egypt,  Assyria, 
Babylonia,  and  the  east,  it,  is  found  in  the  Greek  temples; 
Stonehenge  is  oriented  to  the  midsummer  sunrise,  and  so  are 
most  of  the  megalithic  circles  of  Europe ;  the  Altar  of  Heaven 
in  Peking  is  oriented  to  midwinter.  In  the  days  of  the  Chinese 
Empire,  up  to  a  few  years  ago  one  of  the  most  important  of 
all  the  duties  of  the  Emperor  of  China  was  to  sacrifice  and  pray 
in  this  temple  upon  midwinter's  day  for  a  propitious  year. 

The  Egyptian  priests  had  mapped  out  the  stars  into  the 
constellations,  and  divided  up  the  zodiac  into  twelve  signs  by 
3,000  B.C.  .  .  . 

*In  his  Daivn  of  Astronomy. 


184  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

§  3 

This  clear  evidence  of  astronomical  inquiry  and  of  a  develop- 
ment of  astronomical  ideas  is  the  most  obvious,  hut  only  the 
most  obvious  evidence  of  the  very  considerable  intellectual 
activities  that  went  on  within  the  temple  precincts  in  ancient 
times.  There  is  a  curious  disposition  among  many  modern 
writers  to  deprecate  priesthoods  and  to  speak  of  priests  as  though 
they  had  always  been  impostors  and  tricksters,  preying  upon  the 
simplicity  of  mankind.  But,  indeed,  they  were  for  long  the 
only  writing  class,  the  only  reading  public,  the  only  learned 
and  the  only  thinkers ;  they  were  all  the  professional  classes  of 
the  time.  You  could  have  no  intellectual  life  at  all,  you  could 
not  get  access  to  literature  or  any  knowledge  except  through 
the  priesthood.  The  temples  were  not  only  observatories  and 
libraries  and  clinics,  they  were  museums  and  treasure-houses. 
The  original  Periplus  of  Hanno  hung  in  one  temple  in  Car- 
thage, skins  of  his  "gorillas"  were  hung  and  treasured  in  an- 
other. Whatever  there  was  of  abicTing  worth  in  the  life  of 
the  community  sheltered  there.  Herodotus,  the  early  Greek 
historian  (485-425  B.C.),  collected  most  of  his  material  from 
the  priests  of  the  countries  in  which  he  travelled,  and  it  is 
evident  they  met  him  generously  and  put  their  very  considerable 
resources  completely  at  his  disposal.  Outside  the  temples  the 
world  was  still  a  world  of  blankly  illiterate  and  unspeculative 
human  beings,  living  from  day  to  day  entirely  for  themselves. 
Moreover,  there  is  little  evidence  that  the  commonalty  felt 
cheated  by  the  priests,  or  had  anything  but  trust  and  affection 
for  the  early  priesthoods.  Even  the  great  conquerors  of  later 
times  were  anxious  to  keep  themselves  upon  the  right  side  of 
the  priests  of  the  nations  and  cities  whose  obedience  they  de- 
sired, because  of  the  immense  popular  influence  of  these  priests. 

No  doubt  there  were  great  differences  between  temple  and 
temple  and  cult  and  cult  in  the  spirit  and  quality  of  the  priest- 
hood. Some  probably  were  cruel,  some  vicious  and  greedy, 
many  dull  and  doctrinaire,  stupid  with  tradition,  but  it  has  to 
be  kept  in  mind  that  there  were  distinct  limits  to  the  degeneracy 
or  inefficiency  of  a  priesthood.  It  had  to  keep  its  grip  upon 
the  general  mind.  It  could  not  go  beyond  what  people  would 
stand — either  towards  the  darkness  or  towards  the  light.  ^  Its 
authority  rested,  in  the  end,  on  the  persuasion  that  its  activities 
were  propitious. 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS         185 

§4 

The  earliest  civilized  governments  were  essentially  priestly 
governments.  It  was  not  kings  and  captains  who  first  set  men 
to  the  plough  and  a  settled  life.  It  was  the  ideas  of  the  gods 
and  plenty,  working  with  the  acquiescence  of  common  men. 
The  early  rulers  of  Sumer  we  know  were  all  priests,  kings 
only  because  they  were  chief  priests.  And  priestly  government 
had  its  own  weaknesses  as  well  as  its  peculiar  deep-rooted 
strength.  The  power  of  a  priesthood  is  a  power  over  their  own 
people  alone.  It  is  a  subjugation  through  mysterious  fears  and 
hopes.  The  priesthood  can  gather  its  people  together  for  war, 
but  its  traditionalism  and  all  its  methods  unfit  it  for  military 
control.  Against  the  enemy  without,  a  priest-led  people  is  feeble. 

Moreover,  a  priest  is  a  man  vowed,  trained,  and  consecrated, 
a  man  belonging  to  a  special  corps,  and  necessarily  with  an 
intense  esprit  de  corps.  He  has  given  up  his  life  to  his  temple 
and  his  god.  This  is  a  very  excellent  thing  for  the  internal 
vigour  of  his  own  priesthood,  his  own  temple.  He  lives  or  dies 
for  the  honour  of  his  particular  god.  But  in  the  next  town  or 
village  is  another  temple  with  another  god.  It  is  his  constant 
preoccupation  to  keep  his  people  from  that  god.  Religious  cults 
and  priesthoods  are  sectarian  by  nature;  they  will  convert,  they 
will  overcome,  but  they  will  never  coalesce.  Our  first  percep- 
tions of  events  in  Sumer,  in  the  dim  uncertain  light  before 
history  began,  is  of  priests  and  gods  in  conflict;  until  the 
Sumerians  were  conquered  by  the  Semites  they  were  never 
united;  and  the  same  incurable  conflict  of  priesthoods  scars  all 
the  temple  ruins  of  Egypt.  It  was  impossible  that  it  could 
have  been  otherwise,  having  regard  to  the  elements  out  of  which 
religion  arose. 

It  was  out  of  those  two  main  weaknesses  of  all  priesthoods, 
namely,  the  incapacity  for  efficient  military  leadership  and  their 
inevitable  jealousy  of  all  other  religious  cults,  that  the  power 
of  secular  kingship  arose.  The  foreign  enemy  either  prevailed 
and  set  up  a  king  over  the  people,  or  the  priesthoods  who  would 
not  give  way  to  each  other  set  up  a  common  fighting  captain, 
who  retained  more  or  less  power  in  peace  time.  This  secular 
king  developed  a  group  of  officials  about  him  and  began,  in 
relation  to  military  organization,  to  take  a  share  in  the  priestly 
administration  of  the  people's  affairs.  So,  growing  out  of 
priestcraft  and  beside  the  priest,  the  king,  the  protagonist  of 


186 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


the  priest,  appears  upon  the  stage  of  human  history,  and  a 
very  large  amount  of  the  subsequent  experiences  of  mankind 
is  only  to  be  understood  as  an  elaboration,  complication,  and 


'An  R&sifrian  King  &  Ids  Chief  Minister 

distortion  of  the  struggle,  unconscious  or  deliberate,  between 
these  two  systems  of  human  control,  the  temple  and  the  palace. 
And  it  was  in  the  original  centres  of  civilization  that  this 
antagonism  was  most  completely  developed.  The  barbaric 
Aryan  peoples,  who  became  ultimately  the  masters  of  all  the 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS         187 

ancient  civilizations  of  the  Orient  and  of  the  western  world, 
never  passed  through  a  phase  of  temple  rule  on  their  way  to 
civilization;  they  came  to  civilization  late;  they  found  that 
drama  already  half-played.  They  took  over  the  ideas  of  both 
temple  and  kingship,  when  those  ideas  were  already  elaborately 
developed,  from  the  more  civilized  Hamitic  or  Semitic  people 
they  conquered. 

The  greater  importance  of  the  gods  and  the  priests  in  the 
earlier  history  of  the  Mesopotamian  civilization  is  very  appar- 
ent, but  gradually  the  palace  won  its  way  until  it  was  at  last 
in  a  position  to  struggle  definitely  for  the  supreme  power.  At 
first,  in  the  story,  the  palace  is  ignorant  and  friendless  in  the 
face  of  the  temple ;  the  priests  alone  read,  the  priests  alone  know 
the  people  are  afraid  of  them.  But  in  the  dissensions  of  the 
various  cults  comes  the  opportunity  of  the  palace.  From  other 
cities,  from  among  captives,  from  defeated  or  suppressed  re- 
ligious cults,  the  palace  gets  men  who  also  can  read  and  who 
can  do  magic  things.1  The  court  also  becomes  a  centre  of 
writing  and  record;  the  king  thinks  for  himself  and  becomes 
politic.  Traders  and  foreigners  drift  to  the  court,  and  if  the 
king  has  not  the  full  records  and  the  finished  scholarship  of  the 
priests,  he  has  a  wider  and  fresher  first-hand  knowledge  of 
many  things.  The  priest  comes  into  the  temple  when  he  is 
very  young;  he  passes  many  years  as  a  neophyte;  the  path  of 
learning  the  clumsy  letters  of  primitive  times  is  slow  and  toil- 
some; he  becomes  erudite  and  prejudiced  rather  than  a  man  of 
the  world.  Some  of  the  more  active-minded  young  priests  may 
even  cast  envious  eyes  at  the  king's  service.  There  are  many 
complications  and  variations  in  this  ages-long  drama  of  the 
struggle  going  on  beneath  the  outward  conflicts  of  priest  and 
king,  between  the  made  man  and  the  born  man,  between  learn- 
ing and  originality,  between  established  knowledge  and  settled 
usage  on  the  one  hand,  and  creative  will  and  imagination  on 
the  other.  It  is  not  always,  as  we  shall  find  later,  the  priest 
who  is  the  conservative  and  unimaginative  antagonist.  Some- 
times a  king  struggles  against  narrow  and  obstructive  priest- 
hoods; sometimes  priesthoods  uphold  the  standards  of  civiliza- 
tion against  savage,  egotistical,  or  reactionary  kings. 

1  Cp.  Moses  and  the  Egyptian  Magicians. 


188  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

One  or  two  outstanding  facts  and  incidents  of  the  early  stages 
of  this  fundamental  struggle  in  political  affairs  are  all  that  we 
can  note  here  between  4,000  B.C.  and  the  days  of  Alexander. 

§  5 

In  the  early  days  of  Sumeria  and  Akkadia  the  city-kings 
were  priests  and  medicine-men  rather  than  kings,  and  it  was 
only  when  foreign  conquerors  sought  to  establish  their  hold  in 
relation  to  existing  institutions  that  the  distinction  of  priest  and 
king  became  definite.  But  the  god  of  the  priests  remained  as 
the  real  overlord  of  the  land  and  of  priest  and  king  alike.  He 
was  the  universal  landlord;  the  wealth  and  authority  of  his 
temples  and  establishments  outshone  those  of  the  king.  Espe- 
cially was  this  the  case  within  the  city  walls.  Hammurabi,  the 
founder  of  the  first  Babylonian  empire,  is  one  of  the  earlier 
monarchs  whom  we  find  taking  a  firm  grip  upon  the  affairs  of 
the  community.  He  does  it  with  the  utmost  politeness  to  the 
gods.  In  an  inscription  recording  his  irrigation  work  in 
Sumeria  and  Akkadia,  he  begins:  "When  Anu  and  Bel  en- 
trusted me  with  the  rule  of  Sumer  and  Akkad ."  We 

possess  a  code  of  laws  made  by  this  same  Hammurabi — it  is 
the  earliest  known  code  of  law — and  at  the  head  of  this  code 
we  see  the  figure  of  Hammurabi  receiving  the  law  from  its 
nominal  promulgator,  the  god  Shamash. 

An  act  of  great  political  importance  in  the  conquest  of  any 
city  was  the  carrying  off  of  its  god  to  become  a  subordinate  in 
the  temple  of  its  conqueror.  This  was  far  more  important  than 
the  subjugation  of  king  by  king.  Merodach,  the  Babylonian 
Jupiter,  was  carried  off  by  the  Elamites,  and  Babylon 
did  not  feel  independent  until  its  return.  But  sometimes  a 
conqueror  was  afraid  of  the  god  he  had  conquered.  In  the  col- 
lection of  letters  addressed  to  Amenophis  III  and  IV  at  Tel- 
Amarna  in  Egypt,  to  which  allusion  has  already  been  made, 
is  one  from  a  certain  king,  Tushratta,  King  of  Mitanni,  who 
has  conquered  Assyria  and  taken  the  statue  of  the  goddess 
Ishtar.  Apparently  he  has  sent  this  statue  into  Egypt,  partly 
to  acknowledge  the  overlordship  of  Amenophis,  but  partly  be- 
cause he  fears  her  anger.  (Winckler.)  In  the  Bible  is  related 
(Sam.  i.  v.  1)  how  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  of  the  God  of  the 
Hebrews  was  carried  off  by  the  Philistines,  as  a  token  of  con- 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS         189 

quest,  into  the  temple  of  the  fish  god,  Dagon,  at  Ashdod,  and 
how  Dagon  fell  down  and  was  broken,  and  how  the  people  of 
Ashdod  were  smitten  with  disease.  In  the  latter  story  par» 
ticularly,  the  gods  and  priests  fill  the  scene;  there  is  no  king  in 
evidence  at  all. 

Right  through  the  history  of  the  Babylonian  and  Assyrian 
empires  no  monarch  seems  to  have  felt  his  tenure  of  power 
secure  in  Babylon  until  he  had  "taken  the  hand  of  Bel" — 
that  is  to  say,  that  he  had  been  adopted  by  the  priesthood  of 
"Bel"  as  the  god's  son  and  representative.  As  our  knowledge 
of  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  history  grows  clearer,  it  becomes 
plainer  that  the  politics  of  that  world,  the  revolutions,  usurpa- 
tions, changes  of  dynasty,  intrigues  with  foreign  powers,  turned 
largely  upon  issues  between  the  great  wealthy  priesthoods  and 
the  growing  but  still  inadequate  power  of  the  monarchy.  The 
king  relied  on  his  army,  and  this  was  usually  a  mercenary  army 
of  foreigners,  speedily  mutinous  if  there  was  no  pay  or  plunder, 
and  easily  bribed.  We  have  already  noted  the  name  of  Sen- 
nacherib, the  son  of  Sargon  II,  among  the  monarchs  of  the 
Assyrian  empire.  Sennacherib  was  involved  in  a  violent  quar- 
rel with  the  priesthood  of  Babylon ;  he  never  "took  the  hand  of 
Bel" ;  and  finally  struck  at  that  power  by  destroying  altogether 
the  holy  part  of  the  city  of  Babylon  (691  B.C.)  and  removing 
the  statue  of  Bel-Marduk  to  Assyria.  He  was  assassinated  by 
one  of  his  sons,  and  his  successor,  Esar-haddon  (his  son,  but 
not  the  son  who  was  his  assassin),  found  it  expedient  to  restore 
Bal-Marduk  and  rebuild  his  temple,  and  make  his  peace  with 
the  god. 

Assurbanipal  (Greek,  Sardanapalus),  the  son  of  this  Esar- 
haddon,  is  a  particularly  interesting  figure  from  this  point  of 
view  of  the  relationship  of  priesthood  and  king.  His  father's 
reconciliation  with  the  priests  of  Bel-Marduk  went  so  far  that 
Sardanapalus  was  given  a  Babylonian  instead  of  a  military 
Assyrian  education.  He  became  a  great  collector  of  the -clay 
documents  of  the  past,  and  his  library,  which  has  been  un- 
earthed, is  now  the  most  precious  source  of  historical  material 
in  the  world.  But  for  all  his  learning  he  kept  his  grip  on  the 
Assyrian  army ;  he  made  a  temporary  conquest  of  Egypt,  sup- 
pressed a  rebellion  in  Babylon,  and  carried  out  a  number  of 
successful  expeditions.  As  we  have  already  told  in  Chapter 
XIV,  he  was  almost  the  last  of  the  Assvrian  monarchs.  The 


190 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Aryan  tribes,  who  knew  more  of  war  than  of  priestcraft,  and 
particularly  the  Scythians,  the  Medes  and  Persians,  had  long 
been  pressing  upon  Assyria  from  the  north  and  north-east. 
The  Medes  and  Persians  formed  an  alliance  with  the  nomadic 
Semitic  Chaldeans  of  the  south  for  the  joint  undoing  of  Assyria. 
Nineveh,  the  Assyrian  capital,  fell  to  these  Aryans  in  606  B.C. 
Sixty-seven  years  after  the  taking  of  Nineveh  by  the  Aryans, 
which  left  Babylonia  to  the  Semitic  Chaldeans,  the  last  mon- 
arch of  the  Chal- 
dean Empire  (the 
Second  Babylonian 
Empire) ,  Naboni- 
dus,  the  father  of 
Belshazzar,  was 
overthrown  by  Cy- 
rus, the  Persian. 
This  Nabonidus, 
again,  was  a  highly 
educated  monarch, 
who  brought  far  too 
much  intelligence 
and  imagination 
and  not  enough  of 
the  short  range  wis- 
dom of  this  world  to 
affairs  of  state.  He 
conducted  antiqua- 
rian researches,  and 
to  his  researches  it 
is  that  we  owe  the  date  of  3,750  B.C.,  assigned  to  Sargon  I 
and  still  accepted  by  many  authorities.  He  was  proud  of  this 
determination,  and  left  inscriptions  to  record  it.  It  is  clear  he 
was  a  religious  innovator ;  he  built  and  rearranged  temples  and 
attempted  to  centralize  religion  in  Babylon  by  bringing  a  num- 
ber of  local  gods  to  the  temple  of  Bel-Mar duk.  No  doubt  he 
realized  the  weakness  and  disunion  of  his  empire  due  to  these 
conflicting  cults,  and  had  some  conception  of  unification  in 
his  mind. 

Events  were  marching  too  rapidly  for  any  such  development. 
His  innovation  had  manifestly  raised  the  suspicion  and  hos- 
tility of  the  priesthood  of  Bel.  They  sided  with  the  Persians. 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS         191 

•''The  soldiers  of  Cyrus  entered  Babylon  without  fighting." 
Nabonidus  was  taken  prisoner,  and  Persian  sentinels  were  set 
at  the  gates  of  the  temple  of  Bel,  "where  the  services  continued 
without  intermission." 

Cyrus  did,  in  fact,  set  up  the  Persian  Empire  in  Babylon 
with  the  blessing  of  Bel-Marduk.  He  gratified  the  conservative 
instincts  of  the  priests  by  packing  off  the  local  gods  back  to 
their  ancestral  temples.  He  also  restored  the  Jews  to  Jerusa- 
lem.1 These  were  merely  matters  of  immediate  policy  to  him. 
But  in  bringing  in  the  irreligious  Aryans,  the  ancient  priest- 
hood was  paying  too  highly  for  the  continuation  of  its  temple 
services.  It  would  have  been  wiser  to  have  dealt  with  the  inno- 
vations of  Nabonidus,  that  earnest  heretic,  to  have  listened 
to  his  ideas,  and  to  have  met  the  needs  of  a  changing  world. 
Cyrus  entered  Babylon  539  B.C.;  by  521  B.C.  Babylon  was  in 
insurrection  again,  and  in  520  B.C.  another  Persian  monarch, 
Darius,  was  pulling  down  her  walls.  Within  two  hundred 
years  the  life  had  altogether  gone  out  of  those  venerable  rituals 
of  Bel-Marduk,  and  the  temple  of  Bel-Marduk  was  being  used 
by  builders  as  a  quarry. 

§  6 

The  story  of  priest  and  king  in  Egypt  is  similar  to,  but  by 
no  means  parallel  with,  that  of  Babylonia.  The  kings  of 
Sumeria  and  Assyria  were  priests  who  had  become  kings ;  they 
were  secularized  priests.  The  Pharaoh  of  Egypt  does  not  ap- 
pear to  have  followed  precisely  that  line.  Already  in  the  very 
oldest  records  the  Pharaoh  has  a  power,  and  importance  ex- 
ceeding that  of  any  priest.  He  is,  in  fact,  a  god,  and  more 
than  either  priest  or  king.  We  do  not  know  how  he  got  to 
that  position.  No  monarch  of  Sumeria  or  Babylonia  or  Assyria 
could  have  induced  his  people  to  do  for  him  what  the  great 
pyramid-building  Pharaohs  of  the  IVth  Dynasty  made  their 
people  do  in  those  vast  erections.  The  earlier  Pharaohs  were 
not  improbably  regarded  as  incarnations  of  the  dominant  god. 
The  falcon  god  Horus  sits  behind  the  head  of  the  great  statue  of 
Chephren.  So  late  a  monarch  as  Rameses  III  (XlXth 
Dynasty)  is  represented  upon  his  sarcophagus  (now  at  Cam- 

lSee  the  last  two  verses  of  the  Second  Book  of  Chronicles,  and  Ezra, 
ih.  i. 


192 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


bridge)  bearing  the  distinctive  symbols  of  the  three  great  gods 
of  the  Egyptian  system.  He  carries  the  two  sceptres  of  Osiris, 
the  god  of  Day  and  Resurrection ;  upon  his  head  are  the  horns 
of  the  cow  goddess  Hathor,  and  also  the  sun  ball  and  feathers 

of  Ammon  Ha.  He 
is  not  merely 
wearing  the  sym- 
bols of  these  gods 
as  a  devout  Baby- 
lonian might  wear 
the  symbols  of  Bei- 
M  a  r  d  u  k ;  he  is 
these  three  gods  in 
one. 

We  find  also  a 
number  of  sculp- 
tures and  paintings 
to  enforce  the  idea 
that  the  Pharaohs 
were  the  actual 
sons  of  gods.  The 
divine  fathering 
and  birth  of  Ame- 
nophis  III,  for  in- 
stance(ofthe 
XVIIIth  Dynas- 
ty), is  displayed 
i  n  extraordinary 
detail  in  a  series 
of  sculptures  at 
Luxor.  Moreover, 
it  was  held  that 


~RelieF  cm,  -die.  cover  oC  -die, 


Inscription  (round  the  edges  of  cover)  as  far  as 
decipherable  :  — 
"Osiri 


siris,  King  of  Upper  and  Lower  Egypt,  lord 
of  the  two  countries  .  .  .  son  of  the  Sun,  beloved 
of  the  gods,  lord  of  diadems,  Rameses,  prince  of 
Heliopolis,  triumphant!  Thou  art  in  the  condi- 
tion of  a  god,  thou  ahalt  arise  as  Usr,  there  is  no 
enemy  to  thee,  I  give  to  thee  triumph  among 
them.  .  .  ."  BUDGE,  Catalogue,  Egyptian  Collec- 
tion, Fitzicilliam  Museum,  Cambridge. 


the  Pharaohs,  be- 
ing of  so  divine  a 
strain,  could  not 
marry  common 

clay,  and  consequently  they  were  accustomed  to  marry  blood 

relations  within  the  degrees  of  consanguinity  now  prohibited, 

even  marrying  their  sisters. 

The  struggle  between  palace  and  temple  came  into  Egyptian 

history,  therefore,  at  a  different  angle  from  that  at  which  it  came 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS         193 

into  Babylonia.  Nevertheless,  it  came  in.  Professor  Maspero 
(in  his  New  Light  on  Ancient  Egypt)  gives  a  very  interesting 
account  of  the  struggle  of  Amenophis  IV  with  the  priesthoods, 
and  particularly  with  priests  of  the  great  god,  Ammon  Ha,  Lord 
of  Karnak.  The  mother  of  Amenophis  IV  was  not  of  the  race 
of  Pharaoh;  it  would  seem  that  his  father,  Amenophis  III, 
made  a  love  match  with  a  subject,  a  beautiful  Syrian  named 
Tii,  and  Professor  Maspero  finds  in  the  possible  opposition  to 
and  annoyance  of  this  queen  by  the  priests  of  Ammon  Ra  the 
beginnings  of  the  quarrel.  She  may,  he  thinks,  have  inspired 
her  son  with  a  fanatical  hatred  of  Ammon  Ra.  But.  Amenophis 
IV  may  have  had  a  wider  view.  Like  the  Babylonian  Nabo- 
nidus,  who  lived  a  thousand  years  later,  he  may  have  had  in 
mind  the  problem  of  moral  unity  in  his  empire.  We  have  al- 
ready noted  that  Amenophis  III  ruled  from  Ethiopia  to  the 
Euphrates,  and  that  the  store  of  letters  to  himself  and  his 
son  found  at  Tel-Amarna  show  a  very  wide  range  of  interest  and 
influence.  At  any  rate,  Amenophis  IV  set  himself  to  close  all 
the  Egyptian  and  Syrian  temples,  to  put  an  end  to  all  sectarian 
worship  throughout  his  dominions,  and  to  establish  everywhere 
the  worship  of  one  god,  Aton,  the  solar  disk.  He  left  his  capital, 
Thebes,  which  was  even  more  the  city  of  Ammon  Ra  than  later 
Babylon  was  the  city  of  Bel-Marduk,  and  set  up  his  capital 
at  Tel-Amarna ;  he  altered  his  name  from  "Amenophis,"  which 
consecrated  him  to  Ammon  (Amen)  to  "Akhnaton,"  the  Sun's 
Glory;  and  he  held  his  own  against  all  the  priesthoods  of  his 
empire  for  eighteen  years  and  died  a  Pharaoh. 

Opinions  upon  Amenophis  IV,  or  Akhnaton,  differ  very 
widely.  There  are  those  who  regard  him  as  the  creature  of  his 
mother's  hatred  of  Ammon  and  the  uxorious  spouse  of  a  beauti- 
ful wife.  Certainly  he  loved  his  wife  very  passionately;  he 
showed  her  great  honour — Egypt  honoured  women,  and  was 
ruled  at  different  times  by  several  queens — and  he  was  sculp- 
tured in  one  instance  with  his  wife  seated  upon  his  knees,  and 
in  another  in  the  act  of  kissing  her  in  a  chariot;  but  men  who 
live  under  the  sway  of  their  womenkind  do  not  sustain  great 
empires  in  the  face  of  the  bitter  hostility  of  the  most  influential 
organized  bodies  in  their  realm.  Others  write  of  him  as  a 
"gloomy  fanatic."  Matrimonial  bliss  is  rare  in  the  cases  of 
gloomy  fanatics.  It  is  much  more  reasonable  to  regard  him 
as  the  Pharaoh  who  refused  to  be  a  god.  It  is  not  simply  his 


194 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


religious  policy  and  his  frank  display  of  natural  affection  that 
seem  to  mark  a  strong  and  very  original  personality.  His 
aesthetic  ideas  were  his  own.  He  refused  to  have  his  portrait 
conventionalized  into  the  customary  smooth  beauty  of  the 
Pharaoh  god,  and  his  face  looks  out  at  us  across  an  interval  of 

thirty-four  centu- 
ries, a  man  amidst 
ranks  of  divine  in- 
sipidities. 

A  reign  of  eigh- 
teen years  was  not 
long  enough  for 
the  revolution  he 
contemplated,  and 
his  son-in-law  who 
succeeded  him 
went  back  to 
Thebes  and  made 
his  peace  with 
Ammon  Ra. 

To  the  very  end 
of  the  story  the  di- 
vinity of  kings 
haunted  the  Egyp- 
tian mind,  and  in- 
fected the  thoughts 
of  intellectually 
healthier  races. 
When  Alexander 
the  Great  reached 
Babylon,  the  pres- 
tige of  Bel-Marduk 
was  already  far  gone  in  decay,  but  in  Egypt,  Ammon  Ra  was 
still  god  enough  to  make  a  snob  of  the  conquering  Grecian. 
The  priests  of  Ammon  Ra,  about  the  time  of  the  XVIIIth  or 
XlXth  Dynasty  (circa  1,400  B.C.),  had  set  up  in  an  oasis  of 
the  desert  a  temple  and  oracle.  Here  was  an  image  of  the  god 
which  could  speak,  move  its  head,  and  accept  or  reject  scrolls 
of  inquiry.  This  oracle  was  still  flourishing  in  332  B.C.  The 
young  master  of  the  world,  it  is  related,  made  a  special  journey 
to  visit  it ;  he  came  into  the  sanctuary,  and  the  image  advanced 


[based on,-€he  cast  at  Cairo,  &  the  reliefs  ui  the 
Berlin  Museum.  J 


GODS  AND  STARS,  PRIESTS  AND  KINGS         195 

out  of  the  darkness  at  the  hack  to  meet  him.  There  was  an 
impressive  exchange  of  salutations.  Some  such  formula  as  this 
must  have  been  used  (says  Professor  Maspero)  :  "Come,  son 
of  my  loins,  who  loves  me  so  that  I  give  thee  the  royalty  of 
Ra  and  the  royalty  of  Horus!  I  give  thee  valiance,  I  give 
thee  to  hold  all  countries  and  all  religions  under  thy  feet ;  I  give 
thee  to  strike  all  the  peoples  united  together  with  thy  arm!" 
So  it  was  that  the  priests  of  Egypt  conquered  their  conqueror, 
and  an  Aryan  monarch  first  hecame  a  god. 

§  7 

The  struggle  of  priest  and  king  in  China  cannot  he  discussed 
here  at  any  length.  It  was  different  again,  as  in  Egypt  it  was 
different  from  Babylonia,  but  we  find  the  same  effort  on  the 
part  of  the  ruler  to  break  up  tradition  because  it  divides  up  the 
people.  The  Chinese  Emperor,  the  "Son  of  Heaven,"  was 
himself  a  high-priest,  and  his  chief  duty  was  sacrificial;  in  the 
more  disorderly  phases  of  Chinese  history  he  ceases  to  rule  and 
continues  only  to  sacrifice.  The  literary  class  was  detached 
from  the  priestly  class  at  an  early  date.  It  became  a  bureau- 
cratic body  serving  the  local  kings  and  rulers.  That  is  a  funda- 
mental difference  between  the  history  of  China  and  any  Western 
history.  While  Alexander  was  overrunning  Western  Asia, 
China,  under  the  last  priest-emperors  of  the  Chow  Dynasty,  was 
sinking  into  a  state  of  great  disorder.  Each  province  clung  to 
its  separate  nationality  and  traditions,  and  the  Huns  spread 
from  province  to  province.  The  King  of  T'sin  (who  lived  about 
eighty  years  after  Alexander  the  Great) ,  impressed  by  the  mis- 
chief tradition  was  doing  in  the  land,  resolved  to  destroy  the 
entire  Chinese  literature,  and  his  son,  Shi  Hwang-ti,  the  "first 
universal  Emperor,"  made  a  strenuous  attempt  to  seek  out  and 
destroy  all  the  existing  classics.  They  vanished  while  he  ruled, 
and  he  ruled  without  tradition,  and  welded  China  into  a  unity 
that  endured  for  some  centuries;  but  when  he  had  passed,  the 
hidden  books  crept  out  again.  China  remained  united,  though 
not  under  his  descendants,  but  after  a  civil  war  under  a  fresh 
dynasty,  the  Han  Dynasty  (206  B.C.).  The  first  Han  mon- 
arch did  not  sustain  this  campaign  of  Shi  Hwang-ti  against  the 
literati,  and  his  successor  made  his  peace  with  them  and  restored 
the  texts  of  the  classics. 


XVIII 

SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES,  AND  FREE 
INDIVIDUALS 

1.  The  Common  Man  in  Ancient  Times.  §  2.  The  Earliest 
Slaves.  §  3.  The  First  "Independent"  Persons.  §  4.  So- 
cial Classes  Three  Thousand  Years  Ago.  §  5.  Classes  Hard- 
ening into  Castes.  §  6.  Caste  in  India.  §  7.  The  System 
of  the  Mandarins.  §  8.  A  Summary  of  Five  Thousand 
Years. 


WE  have  been  sketching  in  the  last  four  chapters  the 
growth  of  civilized  states  out.  of  the  primitive  Neolithic 
agriculture  that  began  in  Mesopotamia  perhaps  15,000 
years  ago.  It  was  at  first  horticulture  rather  than  agriculture ; 
it  was  done  with  the  hoe  before  the  plough,  and  at  first  it  was 
quite  supplementary  to  the  sheep,  goat,  and  cattle  tending  that 
made  the  "living"  of  the  family  tribe.  We  have  traced  the  broad 
outlines  of  the  development  in  regions  of  exceptional  fruitful- 
ness  of  the  first  settled  village  communities  into  more  populous 
towns  and  cities,  and  the  growth  of  the  village  shrine  and  the 
village  medicine-man  into  the  city  temple  and  the  city  priest- 
hood. We  have  noted  the  beginnings  of  organized  war,  first  as 
a  flickering  between  villages,  and  then  as  a  more  disciplined 
struggle  between  the  priest-king  and  god  of  one  city  and  those 
of  another.  Our  story  has  passed  on  rapidly  from  the  first 
indications  of  conquest  and  empire  in  Sumer,  6,000  or  7,000 
B.C.,  to  the  spectacle  of  great  empires  growing  up,  with  roads 
and  armies,  with  inscriptions  and  written  documents,  with  edu- 
cated priesthoods  and  kings  and  rulers  sustained  by  a  tradition 
already  ancient.  We  have  traced  in  broad  outline  the  appear- 
ance and  conflicts  and  replacements  of  these  empires  of  the 
great  rivers.  We  have  directed  attention,  in  particular,  to  the 
evidence  of  a  development  of  still  wider  political  ideas  as  we 

196 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  197 

find  it  betrayed  by  the  actions  and  utterances  of  such  men  as 
Nabonidus  and  Amenophis  IV.  It  has  been  an  outline  of  the 
accumulations  of  human  experience  for  ten  or  fifteen  thousand 
years,  a  vast  space  of  time  in  comparison  with  all  subsequent 
history,  but  a  brief  period  when  we  measure  it  against  the  suc- 
cession of  endless  generations  that  intervenes  between  us  and  the 
first  rude  flint-using  human  creatures  of  the  Pleistocene  dawn. 
But  for  these  last  four  chapters  we  have  been  writing  almost 
entirely  not  about  mankind  generally,  but  only  about  the  men 
who  thought,  the  men  who  could  draw  and  read  and  write,  the 
men  who  were  altering  their  world.  Beneath  their  activities 
what  was  the  life  of  the  mute  multitude  ? 

The  life  of  the  common  man  was,  of  course,  affected  and 
changed  by  these  things,  just  as  the  lives  of  the  domestic  animals 
and  the  face  of  the  cultivated  country  were  changed ;  but  for  the 
most  part  it  was  a  change  suffered  and  not  a  change  in  which 
the  common  man  upon  the  land  had  any  voice  or  will.  Reading 
and  writing  were  not  yet  for  the  likes  of  him.  He  went  on 
cultivating  his  patch,  loving  his  wife  and  children,  beating  his 
dog  and  tending  his  beasts,  grumbling  at  hard  times,  fearing 
the  magic  of  the  priests  and  the  power  of  the  gods,  desiring 
little  more  except  to  be  left  alone  by  the  powers  above  him.  So 
he  was  in  10,000  B.C.  ;  so  he  was,  unchanged  in  nature  and  out- 
look, in  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great;  so  over  the  greater 
part  of  the  world  he  remains  to-day.  He  got  rather  better  tools, 
better  seeds,  better  methods,  a  slightly  sounder  house,  he  sold 
his  produce  in  a  more  organized  market  as  civilization  pro- 
gressed. A  certain  freedom  and  a  certain  equality  passed  out 
of  human  life  when  men  ceased  to  wander.  Men  paid  in  liberty 
for  safety,  shelter,  and  regular  meals.  By  imperceptible  de- 
grees the  common  man  found  the  patch  he  cultivated  was  not 
his  own ;  it  belonged  to  the  god ;  and  he  had  to  pay  a  fraction 
of  his  produce  to  the  god.  Or  the  god  had  given  it  to  the  king, 
who  exacted  his  rent  and  tax.  Or  the  king  had  given  it  to  an 
official,  who  was  the  lord  of  the  common  man.  And  sometimes 
the  god  or  the  king  or  the  noble  had  work  to  be  done,  and  then 
the  common  man  had  to  leave  his  patch  and  work  for  his  master. 

How  far  the  patch  he  cultivated  was  his  own  was  never  very 
clear  to  him.  In  ancient  Assyria  the  land  seems  to  have  been 
held  as  a  sort  of  freehold  and  the  occupier  paid  taxes ;  in  Baby- 
lonia the  land  was  the  god's,  and  he  permitted  the  cultivator  to 


198  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

work  thereon.  In  Egypt  the  temples  or  Pharaoh-the-god  or  the 
nobles  under  Pharaoh  were  the  owners  and  rent  receivers.  But 
the  cultivator  was  not  a  slave ;  he  was  a  peasant,  and  only  bound 
to  the  land  in  so  far  that  there  was  nothing  else  for  him  to  do 
but  cultivate,  and  nowhere  else  for  him  to  go.  He  lived  in  a 
'village  or  town,  and  went  out  to  his  work.  The  village,  to  begin 
with,  was  often  merely  a  big  household  of  related  people  under 
a  patriarch  headman,  the  early  town  a  group  of  householders 
under  its  elders.  There  was  no  process  of  enslavement  as 
civilization  grew,  but  the  headmen  and  leaderly  men  grew 
in  power  and  authority,  and  the  common  men  did  not  keep 
pace  with  them,  and  fell  into  a  tradition  of  dependence  and 
subordination. 

On  the  whole,  the  common  men  were  probably  well  content 
to  live  under  lord  or  king  or  god  and  obey  their  bidding.  It 
was  safer.  It  was  easier.  All  animals — and  man  is  no  excep- 
tion— begin  life  as  dependents.  Most  men  never  shake  them- 
selves loose  from  the  desire  for  leading  and  protection.1 

§  2 

The  earlier  wars  did  not  involve  remote  or  prolonged  cam- 
paigns, and  they  were  waged  by  levies  of  the  common  people. 
But  war  brought  in  a  new  source  of  possessions,  plunder,  and  a 
new  social  factor,  the  captive.  In  the  earlier,  simpler  days  of 
war,  the  captive  man  was  kept  only  to  be  tortured  or  sacrificed 
to  the  victorious  god;  the  captive  women  and  children  were 
assimilated  into  the  tribe.  But  later  many  captives  were  spared 
to  be  slaves  because  they  had  exceptional  gifts  or  peculiar  arts. 
It  would  be  the  kings  and  captains  who  would  take  these  slaves 
at  first,  and  it  would  speedily  become  apparent  to  them  that 
these  men  were  much  more  their  own  than  were  the  peasant 
cultivators  and  common  men  of  their  own  race.  The  slave  could 
be  commanded  to  do  all  sorts  of  things  for  his  master  that  the 
quasi-free  common  man  would  not  do  so  willingly  because  of 
his  attachment  to  his  own  patch  of  cultivation.  From  a  very 
early  period  the  artificer  was  often  a  household  slave,  and  the 

1  There  were  literary  expressions  of  social  discontent  in  Egypt  before 
2,000  B.C.  See  "Social  Forces  and  Religion"  in  Breasted's  Religion  and 
Thought  in  Ancient  Egypt  for  some  of  the  earliest  complaints  of  the  com- 
mon man  under  the  ancient  civilizations. 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  199 

manufacture  of  trade  goods,  pottery,  textiles,  metal  ware,  and 
go  forth,  such  as  went  on  vigorously  in  the  household  city  of  the 
Minos  of  Cnossos,  was  probably  a  slave  industry  from  the  be- 
ginning. Sayce,  in  his  Babylonians  and  Assyrians,  quotes 
Babylonian  agreements  for  the  teaching  of  trades  to  slaves,  and 
dealing  with  the  exploitation  of  slave  products.  Slaves  pro- 
duced slave  children,  enslavement  in  discharge  of  debts  added 
to  the  slave  population;  it  is  probable  that  as  the  cities  grew 
larger,  a  larger  part  of  the  new  population  consisted  of  these 
slave  artificers  and  slave  servants  in  the  large  households.  They 
were  by  no  means  abject  slaves;  in  later  Babylon  their  lives 
and  property  were  protected  by  elaborate  laws.  Nor  were 


peasants-  seized,  for  non-payment:  of  taxes' . . .  (PijratnicL  Age) 

they  all  outlanders.  Parents  might  sell  their  children  into 
slavery,  and  brothers  their  orphan  sisters.  Free  men  who  had 
no  means  of  livelihood  would  even  sell  themselves  into  slavery. 
And  slavery  was  the  fate  of  the  insolvent  debtor.  Craft  ap- 
prenticeship, again,  was  a  sort  of  fixed-term  slavery.  Out  of 
the  slave  population,  by  a  converse  process,  arose  the  freed-man 
and  freed-woman,  who  worked  for  wages  and  had  still  more 
definite  individual  rights.  Since  in  Babylon  slaves  could  them- 
selves own  property,  many  slaves  saved  up  and  bought 
themselves.  Probably  the  town  slave  was  often  better  off  and 
practically  as  free  as  the  cultivator  of  the  soil,  and  as  the  rural 
population  increased,  its  sons  and  daughters  came  to  mix  with 
and  swell  the  growing  ranks  of  artificers,  some  bound,  some 
free. 

As  the  extent  and  complexity  of  government  increased,  the 
number  of  households  multiplied.  Under  the  king's  household 
grew  up  the  households  of  his  great  ministers  and  officials,  under 


200  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  temple  grew  up  the  personal  households  of  temple  func- 
tionaries; it  is  not  difficult  to  realize  how  houses  and  patches 
of  land  would  become  more  and  more  distinctly  the  property 
of  the  occupiers,  and  more  and  more  definitely  alienated  from 
the  original  owner-god.  The  earlier  empires  in  Egypt  and 
China  both  passed  into  a  feudal  stage,  in  which  families,  origi- 
nally official,  became  for  a  time  independent  noble  families.  In 
the  later  stages  of  Babylonian  civilization  we  find  an  increasing 
propertied  class  of  people  appearing  in  the  social  structure, 
neither  slaves  nor  peasants  nor  priests  nor  officials,  but  widows 
and  descendants  of  such  people,  or  successful  traders  and  the 
like,  and  all  masierless  folk.  Traders  came  in  from  the  out- 
side. Babylon  was  full  of  Aramean  traders,  who  had  great 
establishments,  with  slaves,  f reed-men,  employees  of  all  sorts. 
Their  book-keeping  was  a  serious  undertaking.  It  involved 
storing  a  great  multitude  of  earthenware  tablets  in  huge  earthen- 
ware jars.)  Upon  this  gathering  mixture  of  more  or  less  free 
and  detached  people  would  live  other  people,  traders,  merchants, 
small  dealers,  catering  for  their  needs.  Sayce  (op.  cit.)  gives 
the  particulars  of  an  agreement  for  the  setting  up  and  stocking 
of  a  tavern  and  beerhouse,  for  example.  The  passer-by,  the  man 
who  happened  to  be  about,  had  come  into  existence. 

But  another  and  far  less  kindly  sort  of  slavery  also  arose  in 
the  old  civilization,  and  that  was  gang  slavery.  If  it  did  not 
figure  very  largely  in  the  cities,  it  was  very  much  in  evidence 
elsewhere.  The  king  was,  to  begin  with,  the  chief  entrepreneur. 
He  made  the  canals  and  organized  the  irrigation  (e.g.  Ham- 
murabi's enterprises  noted  in  the  previous  chapter).  He  ex- 
ploited mines.  He  seems  (at  Cnossos,  e.g.)  to  have  organized 
manufactures  for  export.  The  Pharaohs  of  the  1st  Dynasty 
were  already  working  the  copper  and  turquoise  mines  in  the 
peninsula  of  Sinai.  For  many  such  purposes  gangs  of  captives 
were  cheaper  and  far  more  controllable  than  levies  of  the  king's 
own  people.  From  an  early  period,  too,  captives  may  have 
tugged  the  oars  of  the  galleys,  though  Torr  (Ancient  Ships) 
notes  that  up  to  the  age  of  Pericles  (450  B.C.)  the  free  Athenians 
were  not  above  this  task.  And  the  monarch  also  found  slaves 
convenient  for  his  military  expeditions.  They  were  uprooted 
men ;  they  did  not  fret  to  go  home,  because  they  had  no  homes 
to  go  to.  The  Pharaohs  hunted  slaves  in  Nubia,  in  order  to 
have  black  troops  for  their  Syrian  expeditions.  Closely  allied 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  201 

to  such  slave  troops  were  the  mercenary  barbaric  troops  the 
monarchs  caught  into  their  service,  not  by  positive  compulsion, 
but  by  the  bribes  of  food  and  plunder  and  under  the  pressure 
of  need.  As  the  old  civilization  developed,  these  mercenary 
armies  replaced  the  national  levies  of  the  old  order  more  and 
more,  and  servile  gang  labour  became  a  more  and  more  impor- 
tant and  significant  factor  in  the  economic  system.  From  mines 
and  canal  and  wall  building,  the  servile  gang  spread  into  culti- 


ErMvl  axnomg  "boatmen,...  (Fnntv -tomb  of  Ptah-hct£p  —  — Pvjva*ni<i  Ags  )„ 


vation.  Nobles  and  temples  adopted  the  gang-slave  system  for 
their  works.  Plantation  gangs  began  to  oust  the  patch  cultiva- 
tion of  the  labourer-serf  in  the  case  of  some  staple  products.  .  .  . 


So,  in  a  few  paragraphs,  we  trace  the  development  of  the 
simple  social  structure  of  the  early  Sumerian  cities  to  the  com- 
plex city  crowds,  the  multitude  of  individuals  varying  in  race, 
tradition,  education,  and  function,  varying  in  wealth,  free- 
dom, authority,  and  usefulness,  in  the  great  cities  of  the  last 
thousand  years  B.C.  The  most  notable  thing  of  all  is  the  gradual 
increase  amidst  this  heterogeneous  multitude  of  what  we  may 
call  free  individuals,  detached  persons  who  are  neither  priests, 
nor  kings,  nor  officials,  nor  serfs,  nor  slaves,  who  are  under 
no  great  pressure  to  work,  who  have  time  to  read  and  inquire. 
They  appear  side  by  side  with  the  development  of  social  security 
and  private  property.  Coined  money  and  monetary  reckoning 
developed.  The  operations  of  the  Arameans  and  such-like 
Semitic  trading  people  led  to  the  organization  of  credit  and 
monetary  security.  In  the  earlier  days  almost  the  only  prop 
erty?  except  a  few  movables,  consisted  of  rights  in  land  and  in 


202  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

houses ;  later,  one  could  deposit  and  lend  securities,  could  go 
away  and  return  to  find  one's  property  faithfully  held  and 
secure.  Towards  the  middle  of  the  period  of  the  Persian  Em- 
pire there  lived  one  free  individual,  Herodotus,  who  has  a  great 
interest  for  us  because  he  was  among  the  first  writers  of  critical 
and  intelligent  history,  as  distinguished  from  a  mere  priestly 
or  court  chronicle.  It  is  worth  while  to  glance  here  very  briefly 
at  the  circumstances  of  his  life.  Later  on  we  shall  quote  from 
his  history. 

We  have  already  noted  the  conquest  of  Babylonia  by  the 
Aryan  Persians  under  Cyrus  in  539  B.C.  We  have  noted, 
further,  that  the  Persian  Empire  spread  into  Egypt,  where  its 
hold  was  precarious;  and  it  extended  also  over  Asia  Minor. 
Herodotus  was  born  about  484  B.C.  in  a  Greek  city  of  Asia 
Minor,  Halicarnassus,  which  was  under  the  overlcrdship  of  the 
Persians,  and  directly  under  the  rule  of  a  political  boss  or 
tyrant.  There  is  no  sign  that  he  was  obliged  either  to  work 
for  a  living  or  spend  very  much  time  in  the  administration  of 
his  property.  We  do  not  know  the  particulars  of  his  affairs, 
but  it  is  clear  that  in  this  minor  Greek  city,  under  foreign 
rule,  he  was  able  to  obtain  and  read  and  study  manuscripts 
of  nearly  everything  that  had  been  written  in  the  Greek  lan- 
guage before  his  time.  He  travelled,  so  far  as  one  can  gather, 
with  freedom  and  comfort  about  the  Greek  archipelagoes;  he 
stayed  wherever  he  wanted  to  stay,  and  he  seems  to  have  found 
comfortable  accommodation;  he  went  to  Babylon  and  to  Susa, 
the  new  capital  the  Persians  had  set  up  in  Babylonia  to  the 
east  of  the  Tigris ;  he  toured  along  the  coast  of  the  Black  Sea, 
and  accumulated  a  considerable  amount  of  knowledge  about 
the  Scythians,  the  Aryan  people  who  were  then  distributed  over 
South  Russia ;  he  went  to  the  south  of  Italy,  explored  the 
antiquities  of  Tyre,  coasted  Palestine,  landed  at  Gaza,  and  made 
a  long  stay  in  Egypt.  He  went,  about  Egypt  looking  at  temples 
and  monuments  and  gathering  information.  We  know  not  only 
from  him,  but  from  other  evidence,  that  in  those  days  the  older 
temples  and  the  pyramids  (which  were  already  nearly  three 
thousand  years  old)  were  visited  by  strings  of  tourists,  a  special 
sort  of  priests  acting  as  guides.  The  inscriptions  the  sightseers 
scribbled  upon  the  walls  remain  to  this  day,  and  many  of  them 
have  been  deciphered  and  published. 

As  his  knowledge  accumulated,  he  conceived  the  idea  of  writ- 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES 


203 


204  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ing  a  great  history  of  the  attempts  of  Persia  to  suhdue  Greece. 
But  in  order  to  introduce  that  history  he  composed  an  account 
of  the  past  of  Greece,  Persia,  Assyria,  Babylonia,  Egypt, 
Scythia,  and  of  the  geography  and  peoples  of  those  countries. 
He  then  set  himself,  it  is  said,  to  make  his  history  known  among 
his  friends  in  Halicarnassus  by  reciting  it  to  them,  but  they 
failed  to  appreciate  it;  and  he  then  betook  himself  to  Athens, 
the  most  flourishing  of  all  Greek  cities  at  that  time.  There  his 
work  was  received  with  applause.  We  find  him  in  the  centre 
of  a  brilliant  circle  of  intelligent  and  active-minded  people,  and 
the  city  authorities  voted  him  a  reward  of  ten  talents  (a  sum 
of  money  equivalent  to  £2,400)  in  recognition  of  his  literary 
achievement.  .  .  . 

But  we  will  not  complete  the  biography  of  this  most  inter- 
esting man,  nor  will  we  enter  into  any  criticism  of  his  garrulous, 
marvel-telling,  and  most  entertaining  history.  It  is  a  book  to 
which  all  intelligent  readers  come  sooner  or  later,  abounding  as 
it  does  in  illuminating  errors  and  Boswellian  charm.  We  give 
these  particulars  here  simply  to  show  that  in  the  fifth  century 
B.C.  a  new  factor  was  becoming  evident  in  human  affairs.  Read- 
ing and  writing  had  already  long  escaped  from  the  temple  pre- 
cincts and  the  ranks  of  the  court  scribes.  Record  was  no  longer 
confined  to  court  and  temple.  A  new  sort  of  people,  these  peo- 
ple of  leisure  and  independent  means,  were  asking  questions, 
exchanging  knowledge  and  views,  and  developing  ideas.  So  be- 
neath the  march  of  armies  and  the  policies  of  monarchs,  and 
above  the  common  lives  of  illiterate  and  incurious  men,  we 
note  the  beginnings  of  what  is  becoming  at  last  nowadays  a 
dominant  power  in  human  affairs,  the  free  intelligence  of 
mankind. 

Of  that  free  intelligence  we  shall  have  more  to  say  when  in 
a  subsequent  chapter  we  tell  of  the  Greeks. 

§4 

We  may  summarize  the  discussion  of  the  last  two  chapters 
here  by  making  a  list  of  the  chief  elements  in  this  complicated 
accumulation  of  human  beings  which  made  up  the  later  Baby- 
lonian and  Egyptian  civilizations  of  from  two  thousand  five 
hundred  to  three  thousand  years  ago.  These  elements  grew  up 
and  became  distinct  one  from  another  in  the  great  river  valleys 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  205 

of  the  world  in  the  course  of  five  or  six  thousand  years.  They 
developed  mental  dispositions  and  traditions  and  attitudes  of 
thought  one  to  another.  The  civilization  in  which  we  live  to- 
day is  simply  carrying  on  and  still  further  developing  and  work- 
ing out  and  rearranging  these  relationships.  This  is  the  world 
from  which  we  inherit.  It  is  only  by  the  attentive  study  of 
their  origins  that  we  can  detach  ourselves  from  the  prejudices 
and  immediate  ideas  of  the  particular  class  to  which  we  may 
belong,  and  begin  to  understand  the  social  and  political  questions 
of  our  own  time. 

(1)  First,   then,   came  the  priesthood,   the  temple  system, 
which  was  the  nucleus  and  the  guiding  intelligence  about  which 
the  primitive  civilizations  grew.    It  was  still  in  these  later  days 
a  great  power  in  the  world,  the  chief  repository  of  knowledge 
and  tradition,  an  influence  over  the  lives  of  every  one,  and  a 
binding  force  to  hold  the  community  together.     But  it  was  no 
longer  all-powerful,  because  its  nature  made  it  conservative  and 
inadaptable.    It  no  longer  monopolized  knowledge  nor  initiated 
fresh  ideas.     Learning  had  already  leaked  out  to  other  less 
pledged   and   controlled   people,   who  thought  for  themselves. 
About  the  temple  system  were  grouped  its  priests  and  priestesses, 
its  scribes,  its  physicians,  its  magicians,  its  lay  brethren,  treas- 
urers, managers,  directors,  and  the  like.     It  owned  great  prop- 
erties and  often  hoarded  huge  treasures. 

(2)  Over  against  the  priesthood,  and  originally  arising  out 
of  it,  was  the  court  system,  headed  by  a  king  or  a  "king  of 
kings,"  who  was  in  later  Assyria  and  Babylonia  a  sort  of  cap- 
tain and  lay  controller  of  affairs,  and  in  Egypt  a  god-man,  who 
had  released  himself  from  the  control  of  his  priests.     About 
the  monarch  were  accumulated  his  scribes,  counsellors,  record 
keepers,  agents,  captains,  and  guards.     Many  of  his  officials, 
particularly  his  provincial  officials,  had  great  subordinate  estab- 
lishments, and  were  constantly  tending  to  become  independent. 
The  nobility  of  the  old  river  valley  civilizations  arose  out  of 
the  court  system.     It  was,  therefore,  a  different  thing  in  its 
origins  from  the  nobility  of  the  early  Aryans,  which  was  a  re- 
publican nobility  of  elders  and  leading  men. 

(3)  At  the  base  of  the  social  pyramid  was  the  large  and  most 
necessary  class  in  the  community,  the  tillers  of  the  soil.    Their 
status  varied  from  age  to  age  and  in  different  lands ;  they  were 


206  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

free  peasants  paying  taxes,  or  serfs  of  the  god,  or  serfs  or 
tenants  of  king  or  noble,  or  of  a  private  owner,  paying  him  a 
rent;  in  most  cases  tax  or  rent  was  paid  in  produce.  In  the 
states  of  the  river  valleys  they  were  high  cultivators,  cultivating 
comparatively  small  holdings;  they  lived  together  for  safety 
in  villages,  and  had  a  common  interest  in  maintaining  their  irri- 
gation channels  and  a  sense  of  community  in  their  village  life. 
The  cultivation  of  the  soil  is  an  exacting  occupation;  the  sea- 
sons and  the  harvest  sunsets  will  not  wait  for  men ;  children  can 
be  utilized  at  an  early  age,  and  so  the  cultivator  class  is  gen- 
erally a  poorly  educated,  close-toiling  class,  superstitious  by 
reason  of  ignorance  and  the  uncertainty  of  the  seasons,  ill-in- 
formed and  easily  put  upon.  It  is  capable  at  times  of  great 
passive  resistance,  but  it  has  no  purpose  in  its  round  but  crops 
and  crops,  to  keep  out  of  debt  and  hoard  against  bad  times.  So 
it  has  remained  to  our  own  days  over  the  greater  part  of  Europe 
and  Asia. 

(4)  Differing  widely  in  origin  and  quality  from  the  tillers 
of  the  soil  was  the  artisan  class.     At  first,  this  was  probably 
in  part  a  town-slave  class,  in  part  it  consisted  of  peasants  who 
had  specialized  upon  a  craft.     But  in  developing  an  art  and 
mystery  of  its  own,  a  technique  that  had  to  be  learnt  before  it 
could  be  practised,  each  sort  of  craft  probably  developed  a  cer- 
tain independence  and  a  certain  sense  of  community  of  its  own. 
The  artisans  were  able  to  get  together  and  discuss  their  affairs 
more  readily  than  the  toilers  on  the  land,  and  they  were  able 
to  form  guilds  to  restrict  output,  maintain  rates  of  pay,  and 
protect  their  common  interest. 

(5)  As  the  power  of  the  Babylonian  rulers  spread  out  beyond 
the  original  areas  of  good  husbandry  into  grazing  regions  and 
less  fertile  districts,  a  class  of  herdsmen  came  into  existence. 
In  the  case  of  Babylonia  these  were  nomadic  Semites,  the 
Bedouin,  like  the  Bedouin  of  to-day.     They  probably  grazed 
their  flocks  over  great  areas  much  as  the  sheep  ranchers  of 
California  do.    They  were  paid  and  esteemed  much  more  highly 
than  the  husbandmen. 

(6)  The  first  merchants  in  the  world  were  shipowners  like 
the  people  of  Tyre  and  Cnossos,  or  nomads  who  carried  and 
traded  goods  as  they  wandered  between  one  area  of  primitive 
civilization   and   another.      In  the  Babylonian   and  Assyrian 
world  the  traders  were  predominantly  the  Semitic  Arameans, 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  207 

the  ancestors  of  the  modern  Syrians.  They  became  a  distinct 
factor  in  the  life  of  the  community;  they  formed  great  house- 
holds of  their  own.  Usury  developed  largely  in  the  last  thou- 
sand years  B.C.  Traders  needed  accommodation;  cultivators 
wished  to  anticipate  their  crops.  Sayce  (op.  cit.)  gives  an  ac- 
count of  the  Babylonian  banking-house  of  Egibi,  which  lasted 
through  several  generations  and  outlived  the  Chaldean  Empire. 

(7)  A  class  of  small  retailers,  one  must  suppose,  came  into 
existence   with  the   complication  of  society   during  the  later 
days  of  the  first  empires,  but  it  was  not  probably  of  any  great 
importance. 

(8)  A  growing  class  of  independent  property  owners. 

(9)  As  the  amenities  of  life  increased,  there  grew  up  in  the 
court,  temples,  and  prosperous  private  houses  a  class  of  domestic 
servants,  slaves  or  freed  slaves,  or  young  peasants  taken  into 
the  household. 

(10)  Gang  workers. — These  were  prisoners  of  war  or  debt 
slaves,  or  impressed  or  deported  men. 

(11)  Mercenary  soldiers. — These  were  also  often  captives  or 
impressed  men.     Sometimes  they  were  enlisted  from  friendly 
foreign  populations  in  which  the  military  spirit  still  prevailed. 

(12)  Seamen. 

In  modern  political  and  economic  discussions  we  are  apt  to 
talk  rather  glibly  of  "labour."  Much  has  been  made  of  the 
solidarity  of  labour  and  its  sense  of  community.  It  is  well  to 
note  that  in  these  first  civilizations,  what  we  speak  of  as 
"labour"  is  represented  by  five  distinct  classes  dissimilar  in 
origin,  traditions,  and  outlook — namely,  classes  3,  4,  5,  9,  10, 
and  the  oar-tugging  part  of  12.  The  "solidarity  of  labour"  is,  we 
shall  find  when  we  come  to  study  the  mechanical  revolution  of 
the  nineteenth  century  A.D.;  a  new  idea  and  a  new  possibility  in 
human  affairs. 

§5 

Let  us,  before  we  leave  this  discussion  of  the  social  classes 
that  were  developing  in  these  first  civilizations,  devote  a  little 
attention  to  their  fixity.  How  far  did  they  stand  aloof  from 
each  other,  and  how  far  did  they  intermingle?  So  far  as  the 
classes  we  have  counted  as  9,  10,  11,  and  12  go,  the  servants, 
the  gang  labourers  and  slaves,  the  gang  soldiers,  and  to  a  lesser 


208  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

extent  the  sailors,  or  at  any  rate  the  galley  rowers  among  the 
sailors,  they  were  largely  recruited  classes,  they  did  not  readily 
and  easily  form  homes,  they  were  not  distinctively  breeding 
classes ;  they  were  probably  replenished  generation  after  genera- 
tion by  captives,  by  the  failures  of  other  classes,  and  especially 
from  the  failures  of  the  class  of  small  retailers,  and  by  persua- 
sion and  impressment  from  among  the  cultivators.  But  so  far 
as  the  sailors  go,  we  have  to  distinguish  between  the  mere  rower 
and  the  navigating  and  shipowning  seaman  of  such  ports  as  Tyre 
and  Sidon.  The  shipowners  pass,  no  doubt,  by  insensible  grada- 
tions into  the  mercantile  class,  but  the  navigators  must  have 
made  a  peculiar  community  in  the  great  seaports,  having  homes 
there  and  handing  on  the  secrets  of  seacraft  to  their  sons.  The 
eighth  class  we  have  distinguished  was  certainly  a  precarious 
class,  continually  increased  by  the  accession  of  the  heirs  and  de- 
pendents, the  widows  and  retired  members  of  the  wealthy  and 
powerful,  and  continually  diminished  by  the  deaths  or  specula- 
tive losses  of  these  people  and  the  dispersal  of  their  properties. 
The  priests  and  .priestess,  too,  so  far  as  all  this  world  west  of 
India  went,  were  not  a  very  reproductive  class;  many  priest- 
hoods were  celibate,  and  that  class,  too,  may  also  be  counted 
as  a  recruited  class.  Nor  are  servants,  as  a  rule,  reproductive. 
They  live  in  the  households  of  other  people;  they  do  not  have 
households  and  rear  large  families  of  their  own.  This  leaves  us 
as  the  really  vital  classes  of  the  ancient  civilized  community : 

(a)  The  royal  and  aristocratic  class,  officials,  military  offi- 
cers, and  the  like; 

(6)   The  mercantile  class ; 

(c)  The  town  artisans; 

(d)  The  cultivators  of  the  soil ;  and 

(e)  The  herdsmen. 

Each  of  these  classes  reared  its  own  children  in  its  own 
fashion,  and  so  naturally  kept  itself  more  or  less  continuously 
distinct  from  the  others.  General  education  was  not  organized 
in  those  ancient  states,  education  was  mainly  a  household  mat- 
ter (as  it  is  still  in  many  parts  of  India  to-day),  and  so  it 
was  natural  and  necessary  for  the  sons  to  follow  in  the  footsteps 
of  their  father  and  to  marry  women  accustomed  to  their  own 
sort  of  household.  Except  during  times  of  great,  political  dis- 
turbance, therefore,  there  would  be  a  natural  and  continuous 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  209 

separation  of  classes ;  which  would  not,  however,  prevent  ex- 
ceptional individuals  from  intermarrying  or  passing  from  one 
class  to  another.  Poor  aristocrats  would  marry  rich  members 
of  the  mercantile  class ;  ambitious  herdsmen,  artisans,  or  sailors 
would  become  rich  merchants.  So  far  as  one  can  gather,  that 
was  the  general  state  of  affairs  in  both  Egypt  and  Babylonia. 
The  idea  was  formerly  entertained  that  in  Egypt  there  was  a 
fixity  of  classes,  but  this  appears  to  be  a  misconception  due  to 
a  misreading  of  Herodotus.  The  only  exclusive  class  in  Egypt 
which  did  not  intermarry  was,  as  in  England  to-day,  the  semi- 
divine  royal  family. 

At  various  points  in  the  social  system  there  were  probably 
developments  of  exclusiveness,  an  actual  barring  out  of  inter- 
lopers. Artisans  of  particular  crafts  possessing  secrets,  for  ex- 
ample, have  among  all  races  and  in  all  ages  tended  to  develop 
guild  organizations  restricting  the  practice  of  their  craft  and 
the  marriage  of  members  outside  their  guild.  Conquering  peo- 
ple have  also,  and  especially  when  there  were  marked  physical 
differences  of  race,  been  disposed  to  keep  themselves  aloof  from 
the  conquered  peoples,  and  have  developed  an  aristocratic  ex- 
clusiveness. Such  organizations  of  restriction  upon  free  inter- 
course have  come  and  gone  in  great  variety  in  the  history  of  all 
long-standing  civilizations.  The  natural  boundaries  of  func- 
tion were  always  there,  but  sometimes  they  have  been  drawn 
sharply  and  laid  stress  upon,  and  sometimes  they  have  been 
made  little  of.  There  has  been  a  general  tendency  among  the 
Aryan  peoples  to  distinguish  noble  (patrician)  from  common 
(plebeian)  families;  the  traces  of  it  are  evident  throughout 
the  literature  and  life  of  Europe  to-day,  and  it  has  received  a 
picturesque  enforcement  in  the  "science"  of  heraldry.  This 
tradition  is  still  active  even  in  democratic  America.  Germany, 
the  most  methodical  of  European  countries,  had  in  the  Middle 
Ages  a  very  clear  conception  of  the  fixity  of  such  distinctions. 
Below  the  princes  (who  themselves  constituted  an  exclusive  class 
which  did  not  marry  beneath  itself)  there  were  the : 

(a)  Knights,  the  military  and  official  caste,  with  heraldic 
coats-of-arms ; 

(&  and  c)  The  Biirgerstand,  the  merchants,  shipping  people, 
and  artisans;  and 

(d)   The  Bauernstand,  the  cultivating  serfs  or  peasants. 

Medieval  Germany  went  as  far  as  any  of  the  Western  heirs 


210  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  the  first  great  civilizations  towards  a  fixation  of  classes.  The 
idea  is  far  less  congenial  both  to  the  English-speaking  people 
and  to  the  French  and  Italians,  who,  by  a  sort  of  instinct, 
favour  a  free  movement  from  class  to  class.  Such  exclusive 
ideas  began  at  first  among,  and  were  promoted  chiefly  by,  the 
upper  classes,  but  it  is  a  natural  response  and  a  natural  Nemesis 
to  such  ideas  that  the  mass  of  the  excluded  should  presently 
range  themselves  in  antagonism  to  their  superiors.  It  was  in 
Germany,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  concluding  chapters  of  this  story, 
that  the  conception  of  a  natural  and  necessary  conflict,  "the 
class  war,"  between  the  miscellaneous  multitudes  of  the  dis- 
inherited ("the  class-conscious  proletariat''  of  the  Marxist)  and 
the  rulers  and  merchants  first  arose.  It  was  an  idea  more  ac- 
ceptable to  the  German  mind  than  to  the  British  or  French. 
.  .  .  But  before  we  come  to  that  conflict,  we  must  traverse  a 
long  history  of  many  centuries. 

§  6 

If  now  we  turn  eastward  from  this  main  development  of  civ- 
ilization in  the  world  between  Central  Asia  and  the  Atlantic, 
to  the  social  development  of  India  in  the  2,000  years  next  be- 
fore the  Christian  era,  we  find  certain  broad  and  very  interest- 
ing differences.  The  first  of  these  is  that  we  find  such  a  fixity 
of  classes  in  process  of  establishment  as  no  other  part  of  the 
world  can  present.  This  fixity  of  classes  is  known  to  Euro- 
peans as  the  institution  of  caste;  1  its  origins  are  still  in  com- 
plete obscurity,  but  it  was  certainly  well  rooted  in  the  Ganges 
valley  before  the  days  of  Alexander  the  Great.  It  is  a  com- 
plicated horizontal  division  of  the  social  structure  into  classes 
or  castes,  the  members  of  which  may  neither  eat  nor  intermarry 
with  persons  of  a  lower  caste  under  penalty  of  becoming  out- 
casts, and  who  may  also  "lose  caste"  for  various  ceremonial 
negligences  and  defilements.  By  losing  caste  a  man  does  not 
sink  to  a  lower  caste;  he  becomes  outcast.  The  various  sub- 
divisions of  caste  are  very  complex ;  many  are  practically  trade 
organizations.  Each  caste  has  its  local  organization  which  main- 
tains discipline,  distributes  various  charities,  looks  after  its 
own  poor,  protects  the  common  interests  of  its  members,  and 

1  From  oasta,  a  word  of  Portuguese  origin ;    the  Indian  word  is  varna, 
colour. 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  211 

examines  the  credentials  of  new-comers  from  other  districts. 
(There  is  little  to  check  the  pretensions  of  a  travelling  Hindu 
to  be  of  a  higher  caste  than  is  legitimately  his.)  Originally, 
the  four  main  castes  seem  to  have  been : 

The  Brahmins — the  priests  and  teachers ; 

The  Kshatriyas — the  warriors ; 

The  Yaisyas — herdsmen,  merchants,  moneylenders,  and  land- 
owners ; 

The  Sudras; 

And,  outside  the  castes,  the  Pariahs. 

But  these  primary  divisions  have  long  been  complicated  by 
subdivision  into  a  multitude  of  minor  castes,  all  exclusive,  each 
holding  its  members  to  one  definite  way  of  living  and  one  group 
of  associates.  In  Bengal  the  Kshatriyas  and  Vaisyas  have 
largely  disappeared.  But  this  is  too  intricate  a  question  for  us 
to  deal  with  here  in  any  detail. 

Next  to  this  extraordinary  fission  and  complication  of  the 
social  body  we  have  to  note  that  the  Brahmins,  the  priests  and 
teachers  of  the  Indian  world,  unlike  so  many  Western  priest- 
hoods, are  a  reproductive  and  exclusive  class,  taking  no  recruits 
from  any  other  social  stratum. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  original  incentive  to  this  ex- 
tensive fixation  of  class  in  India,  there  can  be  little  doubt  of 
the  role  played  by  the  Brahmins  as  the  custodians  of  tradition 
and  the  only  teachers  of  the  people  in  sustaining  it.  By  some 
it  is  supposed  that  the  first  three  of  the  four  original  castes, 
known  also  as  the  "twice  born,"  were  the  descendants  of  the 
Vedic  Aryan  conquerors  of  India,  who  established  these  hard- 
and-fast  separations  to  prevent  racial  mixing  with  the  conquered 
Sudras  and  Pariahs.  The  Sudras  are  represented  as  a  previous 
wave  of  northern  conquerors,  and  the  Pariahs  are  the  original 
Dravidian  inhabitants  of  India.  But  these  speculations  are  not 
universally  accepted,  and  it  is,  perhaps,  rather  the  case  that 
the  uniform  conditions  of  life  in  the  Ganges  valley  throughout 
long  centuries  served  to  stereotype  a  difference  of  classes  that 
have  never  had  the  same  steadfastness  of  definition  under  the 
more  various  and  variable  conditions  of  the  greater  world  to 
the  west. 

However  caste  arose,  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  its  extraordi- 
nary hold  upon  the  Indian  mind.  In  the  sixth  century  B.C. 
arose  Gautama,  the  great  teacher  of  Buddhism,  proclaiming, 


212  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

"As  the  four  streams  that  flow  into  the  Ganges  lose  their  names 
as  soon  as  they  mingle  their  waters  in  the  holy  river,  so  all  who 
believe  in  Buddha  cease  to  be  Brahmins,  Kshatriyas,  Vaisyas, 
and  Sudras."  His  teaching  prevailed  in  India  for  some  cen- 
turies; it  spread  over  China,  Tibet,  Japan,  Burmah,  Ceylon, 
Turkestan,  Manchuria ;  it  is  to-day  the  religion  of  a  large  frac- 
tion of  the  human  race,  but  it  was  finally  defeated  and  driven 
out  of  Indian  life  by  the  vitality  and  persistence  of  the  Brah- 
mins and  of  their  caste  ideas. 


In  China  we  find  a  social  system  travelling  along  yet  another, 
and  only  a  very  roughly  parallel  line  to  that  followed  by  the 
Indian  and  Western  civilizations.  The  Chinese  civilization 
even  more  than  the  Hindu  is  organized  for  peace,  and  the  war- 
rior plays  a  small  part  in  its  social  scheme.  As  in  the  Indian 
civilization,  the  leading  class  is  an  intellectual  one ;  less  priestly 
than  the  Brahmin  and  more  official.  But  unlike  the  Brahmins, 
the  mandarins,  who  are  the  literate  men  of  China,  are  not  a 
caste;  one  is  not  a  mandarin  by  birth,  but  by  education;  they 
are  drawn  by  education  and  examination  from  all  classes  of 
the  community,  and  the  son  of  a  mandarin  has  no  prescriptive 
right  to  succeed  his  father.1  As  a  consequence  of  these  differ- 
ences, while  the  Brahmins  of  India  are,  as  a  class,  ignorant 
even  of  their  own  sacred  books,  mentally  slack,  and  full  of  a 
pretentious  assurance,  the  Chinese  mandarin  has  the  energy 
that  comes  from  hard  mental  work.  But  since  his  education  so 
far  has  been  almost  entirely  a  scholarly  study  of  the  classical 
Chinese  literature,  his  influence  has  been  entirely  conservative. 
Before  the  days  of  Alexander  the  Great,  China  had  already 
formed  itself  and  set  its  feet  in  the  way  in  which  it  was  still 
walking  in  the  year  1,000  A.  D.  Invaders  and  dynasties  had  come 
and  gone,  but  the  routine  of  life  of  the  yellow  civilization  re- 
mained unchanged. 

The  traditional  Chinese  social  system  recognized  four  main 
classes  below  the  priest-emperor. 

1  In  the  time  of  Confucius  classes  were  much  more  fixed  than  later. 
Under  the  Han  dynasty  the  competitive  examination  system  was  not  yet 
established.  Scholars  were  recommended  for  appointments  by  local  dig- 
nitaries, etc.— I/,  Y.  C. 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  213 

(a)  The  literary  class,  which  was  equivalent  partly  to  the 
officials  of  the  Western  world  and  partly  to  its  teachers  and 
clerics.  In  the  time  of  Confucius  its  education  included  archery 
and  horsemanship.  Rites  and  music,  history  and  mathematics 
completed  the  "Six  Accomplishments." 

(5)   The  cultivators  of  the  land. 

(c)  The  artisans. 

(d )  The  mercantile  class. 

But  since  from  the  earliest  times  it  has  been  the  Chinese  way 
to  divide  the  landed  possessions  of  a  man  among  all  his  sons, 
there  has  never  been  in  Chinese  history  any  class  of  great  land- 
owners, renting  their  land  to  tenants,  such  as  most  other  coun- 
tries have  displayed.  The  Chinese  land  has  always  been  cut 
up  into  small  holdings,  which  are  chiefly  freeholds,  and  culti- 
vated intensively.  There  are  landlords  in  China  who  own  one 
or  a  few  farms  and  rent  them  to  tenants,  but  there  are  no 
great,  permanent  estates.  When  a  patch  of  land,  by  repeated 
division,  is  too  small  to  sustain  a  man,  it  is  sold  to  some  prosper- 
ing neighbour,  and  the  former  owner  drifts  to  one  of  the  great 
towns  of  China  to  join  the  mass  of  wage-earning  workers  there. 
In  China,  for  many  centuries,  there  have  been  these  masses  of 
town  population  with  scarcely  any  property  at  all,  men  neither 
serfs  nor  slaves,  but  held  to  their  daily  work  by  their  utter 
impecuniousness.  From  such  masses  it  is  that  the  soldiers 
needed  by  the  Chinese  Government  are  recruited,  and  also  such 
gang  labour  as  has  been  needed  for  the  making  of  canals,  the 
building  of  walls,  and  the  like  has  been  drawn.  The  war  cap- 
tive and  the  slave  class  play  a  smaller  part  in  Chinese  history 
than  in  any  more  westerly  record  of  these  ages  before  the 
Christian  era. 

One  fact,  we  may  note,  is  common  to  all  these  three  stories 
of  developing  social  structure  and  that  is  the  immense  power 
exercised  by  the  educated  class  in  the  early  stages  before  the 
crown  or  the  commonalty  began  to  read  and,  consequently,  to 
think  for  itself.  In  India,  by  reason  of  their  exclusiveness,  the 
Brahmins,  the  educated  class,  retain  their  influence  to  this  day ; 
over  the  masses  of  China,  along  entirely  different  lines  and  be- 
cause of  the  complexities  of  the  written  language,  the  man- 
darinate  has  prevailed.  The  diversity  of  race  and  tradition  in 
the  more  various  and  eventful  world  of  the  West  has  delayed, 
and  perhaps  arrested  for  ever,  any  parallel  organization  of  the 


214  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

specially  intellectual  elements  of  society  into  a  class  ascendancy. 
In  the  Western  world,  as  we  have  already  noted,  education  early 
"slopped  over/'  and  soaked  away  out  of  the  control  of  any  spe- 
cial class;  it  escaped  from  the  limitation  of  castes  and  priest- 
hoods and  traditions  into  the  general  life  of  the  community. 
Writing  and  reading  had  been  simplified  down  to  a  point  when 
it  was  no  longer  possible  to  make  a  cult  and  mystery  of  them. 
It  may  be  due  to  the  peculiar  elaboration  and  difficulty  of  the 
Chinese  characters,  rather  than  to  any  racial  difference,  that  the 
same  thing  did  not  happen  to  the  same  extent  in  China. 

§  8 

In  these  last  six  chapters  we  have  traced  in  outline  the  whole 
process  by  which,  in  the  course  of  5,000  or  6,000  years — that 
is  to  say,  in  something  between  150  and  200  generations — man- 
kind passed  from  the  stage  of  early  Neolithic  husbandry,  in 
which  the  primitive  skin-clad  family  tribe  reaped  and  stored 
in  their  rude  mud  huts  the  wild-growing  fodder  and  grain-bear- 
ing grasses  with  sickles  of  stone,  to  the  days  of  the  fourth  cen- 
tury B.C.,  when  all  round  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean  and 
up  the  Nile,  and  across  Asia  to  India,  and  again  over  the  great 
alluvial  areas  of  China,  spread  the  fields  of  human  cultivation 
and  busy  cities,  great  temples,  and  the  coming  and  going  of 
human  commerce.  Galleys  and  lateen-sailed  ships  entered  and 
left  crowded  harbours,  and  made  their  careful  way  from  head- 
land to  headland  and  from  headland  to  island,  keeping  always 
close  to  the  land.  Pho3nician  shipping  under  Egyptian  owners 
was  making  its  way  into  the  East  Indies  and  perhaps  even 
further  into  the  Pacific.  Across  the  deserts  of  Africa  and 
Arabia  and  through  Turkestan  toiled  the  caravans  with  their  re- 
mote trade;  silk  was  already  coming  from  China,  ivory  from 
Central  Africa,  and  tin  from  Britain  to  the  centres  of  this  new 
life  in  the  world.  Men  had  learnt  to  weave  fine  linen  *  and 
delicate  fabrics  of  coloured  wool;  they  could  bleach  and  dye; 
they  had  iron  as  well  as  copper,  bronze,  silver,  and  gold; Jthey 
had  made  the  most  beautiful  pottery  and  porcelain ;  there  was 
hardly  a  variety  of  precious  stone  in  the  world  that  they  had 
not  found  and  cut  and  polished;  they  could  read  and  write; 
divert  the  course  of  rivers,  pile  pyramids,  and  make  walls  a 
1  Damascus  was  already  making  Damask,  and  "Damascening"  steel. 


SERFS,  SLAVES,  SOCIAL  CLASSES  215 

thousand  miles  long.  The  fifty  or  sixty  centuries  in  which  all 
this  had  to  he  achieved  may  seem  a  long  time  in  comparison 
with  the  threescore  and  ten  years  of  a  single  human  life,  but 
it  is  utterly  inconsiderable  in  comparison  with  the  stretches  of 
geological  time.  Measuring  backward  from  these  Alexandrian 
cities  to  the  days  of  the  first  stone  implement*:,  the  rostro-carinate 
implements  of  the  Pliocene  Age,  gives  us  an  extent  of  time  fully 
a  hundred  times  as  long. 

We  have  tried  in  this  account,  and  with  the  help  of  maps 
and  figures  and  time  charts,  to  give  a  just  idea  of  the  order  and 
shape  of  these  fifty  or  sixty  centuries.  Our  business  is  with 
that  outline.  We  have  named  but  a  few  names  of  individuals ; 
though  henceforth  the  personal  names  must  increase  in  number. 
But  the  content  of  this  outline  that  we  have  drawn  here  in 
a  few  diagrams  and  charts  cannot  but  touch  the  imagination. 
If  only  we  could  look  closelier,  we  should  see  through  all  these 
sixty  centuries  a  procession  of  lives  more  and  more  akin  in  their 
fashion  to  our  own.  We  have  shown  how  the  naked  Palaeo- 
lithic savage  gave  place  to  the  Neolithic  cultivator,  a  type  of 
man  still  to  be  found  in  the  backward  places  of  the  world.  We 
have  given  an  illustration  of  Sumerian  soldiers  copied  from  a 
carved  stone  that  was  set  up  long  before  the  days  when  the 
Semitic  S argon  I  conquered  the  land.  '  Day  by  day  some  busy 
brownish  man  carved  those  figures,  and,  no  doubt,  whistled  as 
he  carved.  In  those  days  the  plain  of  the  Egyptian  delta  was 
crowded  with  gangs  of  swarthy  workmen  unloading  the  stone 
that  had  come  down  the  Nile  to  add  a  fresh  course  to  the  cur- 
rent pyramid.  One  might  paint  a  thousand  scenes  from  those 
ages:  of  some  hawker  merchant  in  Egypt  spreading  his  stock 
of  Babylonish  garments  before  the  eyes  of  some  pretty,  rich 
lady;  of  a  miscellaneous  crowd  swarming  between  the  pylons 
to  some  temple  festival  at  Thebes;  of  an  excited,  dark-eyed 
audience  of  Cretans  like  the  Spaniards  of  to-day,  watching  a 
bull-fight,  with  the  bull-fighters  in  trousers  and  tightly  girded, 
exactly  like  any  contemporary  bull-fighter ;  of  children  learning 
their  cuneiform  signs — at  Nippur  the  clay  exercise  tiles  of  a 
school  have  been  found ;  of  a  woman  with  a  sick  husband  at 
home  slipping  into  some  great  temple  in  Carthage  to  make  a 
vow  for  his  recovery.  Or  perhaps  it  is  a  wild  Greek,  skin-clad 
and  armed  with  a  bronze  axe,  standing  motionless  on  some 
Illyrian  mountain  crest,  struck  with  amazement  at  his  first 


216  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

vision  of  a  many-oared  Cretan  galley  crawling  like  a  great  in- 
sect across  the  amethystine  mirror  of  the  Adriatic  Sea.  He 
went  home  to  tell  his  folk  a  strange  story  of  a  monster,  Briareus 
with  his  hundred  arms.  Of  millions  of  such  stitches  in  each 
of  these  200  generations  is  the  fabric  of  this  history  woven.  But 
unless  they  mark  the  presence  of  a  primary  seam  or  join,  we 
cannot  pause  now  to  examine  any  of  these  stitches. 


XIX 

THE  HEBKEW  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS 

§  1.  The  Place  of  the  Israelites  in  History.  §  2.  Saul,  David, 
and  Solomon.  §  3.  The  Jews  a  People  of  Mixed  Origin. 
§  4.  The  Importance  of  the  Hebrew  Prophets. 


WE  are  now  in  a  position  to  place  in  their  proper  re- 
lationship to  this  general  outline  of  human  history  the 
Israelites,  and  the  most  remarkable  collection  of  an- 
cient documents  in  the  world,  that  collection  which  is  known  to 
all  Christian  peoples  as  the  Old  Testament.  We  find  in  these 
documents  the  most  interesting  and  valuable  lights  upon  the 
development  of  civilization,  and  the  clearest  indications  of  a 
new  spirit  that  was  coming  into  human  affairs  during  the  strug- 
gles of  Egypt  and  Assyria  for  predominance  in  the  world  of 
men. 

All  the  books  that  constitute  the  Old  Testament  were  cer- 
tainly in  existence,  and  in  very  much  their  present,  form,  at  latest 
by  the  year  100  B.C.  Most  of  them  were  probably  recognized 
as  sacred  writings  in  the  time  of  Alexander  the  Great  (330 
B.C.).  They  were  the  sacred  literature  of  a  people,  the  Jews, 
who,  except  for  a  small  remnant  of  common  people,  had  re- 
cently been  deported  to  Babylonia  from  their  own  country  in 
587  B.C.  by  Nebuchadnezzar  II,  the  Chaldean.  They  had  re- 
turned to  their  city,  Jerusalem,  and  had  rebuilt  their  temple 
there*  under  the  auspices  of  Cyrus,  that  Persian  conqueror  who, 
we  have  already  noted,  in  539  B.C.  overthrew  Nabonidus,  the 
last  of  the  Chaldean  rulers  in  Babylon.  The  Babylonian  Cap- 
tivity had  lasted  about  fifty  years,  and  many  authorities  are  of 
opinion  that  there  was  a  considerable  admixture  during  that 
period  both  of  race  and  ideas  with  the  Babylonians. 

The  position  of  the  land  of  Judea  and  of  Jerusalem,  its 

217 


218  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

capital,  is  a  peculiar  one.  The  country  is  a  band-shaped  strip 
between  the  Mediterranean  to  the  west  and  the  desert  beyond 
the  Jordan  to  the  east ;  through  it  lies  the  natural  high-road  be- 
tween the  Hittites,  Syria,  Assyria,  and  Babylonia  to  the  north 
and  Egypt  to  the  south.  It  was  a  country  predestined,  there- 
fore, to  a  stormy  history.  Across  it  Egypt,  and  whatever  power 
was  ascendant  in  the  north,  fought  for  empire ;  against  its  people 
they  fought  for  a  trade  route.  It  had  itself  neither  the  area, 
the  agricultural  possibilities,  nor  the  mineral  wealth  to  be  im- 
portant. The  story  of  its  people  that  these  scriptures  have 
preserved  runs  like  a  commentary  to  the  greater  history  of  the 
two  systems  of  civilization  to  the  north  and  south  and  of  the 
sea  peoples  to  the  west. 

These  scriptures  consist  of  a  number  of  different  elements. 
The  first  five  books,  the  Pentateuch,  were  early  regarded  with 
peculiar  respect.  They  begin  in  the  form  of  a  universal  his- 
tory with  a  double  account  of  the  Creation  of  the  world  and 
mankind,  of  the  early  life  of  the  race,  and  of  a  great  Flood 
by  which,  except  for  certain  favoured  individuals,  mankind 
was  destroyed.  This  flood  story  is  very  widely  distributed  in 
ancient  traditions ;  it  may  be  a  memory  of  that  flooding  of  the 
Mediterranean  valley  which  occurred  in  the  Neolithic  age  of 
mankind.  Excavations  have  revealed  Babylonian  versions  of 
both  the  Creation  story  and  the  Flood  story  of  prior  date  to 
the  restoration  of  the  Jews,  and  it  is  therefore  argued  by  Bibli- 
cal critics  that  these  opening  chapters  were  acquired  by  the 
Jews  during  their  captivity.  They  constitute  the  first  ten  chap- 
ters of  Genesis. 

There  follows  a  history  of  the  fathers  and  founders  of  the 
Hebrew  nation,  Abraham,  Isaac,  and  Jacob.  They  are  presented 
as  patriarchal  Bedouin  chiefs,  living  the  life  of  nomadic  shep- 
herds in  the  country  between  Babylonia  and  Egypt.  The  ex- 
isting Biblical  account  is  said  by  the  critics  to  be  made  up  out 
of  several  pre-existing  versions ;  but  whatever  its  origins,  the 
story,  as  we  have  it  to-day,  is  full  of  colour  and  vitality.  What 
is  called  Palestine  to-day  was  at  that  time  the  land  of  Canaan, 
inhabited  by  a  Semitic  people  called  the  Canaanites,  closely 
related  to  the  Phoenicians  who  founded  Tyre  and  Sidon,  and  to 
the  Amorites  who  took  Babylon  and,  under  Hammurabi,  founded 
the  first  Babylonian  Empire.  The  Canaanites  were  a  settled 
folk  in  the  days — which  were  perhaps  contemporary  with  the 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS 


of  t£*   HEBREWS 


HiiZZ.  country  snaHea. 


"Route,  from. 

to  the,  ~Red    e&,  across 


[The.  distance,  'froro,  Tyre. 
Jerusalem,  is  roughly  1OO 

—  about  wa±,  of  London, 
to  Bristol     Tram.  Tyre  to  tfie 
Red  5ea  is  aioui  me.  same, 
distance,  as  from,  London,  to 


Desert 


5   i  n  a.  i 

11  I  a. 


220  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

days  of  Hammurabi — when  Abraham's  flocks  and  herds  passed 
through  the  land.  The  God  of  Abraham,  says  the  Bible  narra- 
tive, promised  this  smiling  land  of  prosperous  cities  to  him  and 
to  his  children.  To  the  book  of  Genesis  the  reader  must  go 
to  read  how  Abraham,  being  childless,  doubted  this  promise, 
and  of  the  births  of  Ishmael  and  Isaac.  And  in  Genesis,  too, 
he  will  find  the  lives  of  Isaac  and  Jacob,  whose  name  was 
changed  to  Israel,  and  of  the  twelve  sons  of  Israel;  and 
how  in  the  days  of  a  great  famine  they  went  down  into 
Egypt.  With  that,  Genesis,  the  first  book  of  the  Pentateuch, 
ends.  The  next  book,  Exodus,  is  concerned  with  the  story  of 
Moses. 

The  story  of  the  settlement  and  slavery  of  the  children  of 
Israel  in  Egypt  is  a  difficult  one.  There  is  an  Egyptian  rec- 
ord of  a  settlement  of  certain  Semitic  peoples  in  the  land  of 
Goshen  by  the  Pharaoh  Rameses  II,  and  it  is  stated  that  they 
were  drawn  into  Egypt  by  want  of  food.  But  of  the  life  and 
career  of  Moses  there  is  nb  Egyptian  record  at  all;  there  is 
no  account  of  any  plagues  of  Egypt  or  of  any  Pharaoh  who 
was  drowned  in  the  Red  Sea. 

Very  perplexing  is  the  discovery  of  a  clay  tablet  written  by 
the  Egyptian  governors  of  a  city  in  Canaan  to  the  Pharaoh 
Amenophis  IV,  who  came  in  the  XVIIIth  Dynasty  before 
Rameses  II,  apparently  mentioning  the  Hebrews  by  name  and 
declaring  that,  they  are  overrunning  Canaan.  Manifestly,  if 
the  Hebrews  were  conquering  Canaan  in  the  time  of  the 
XVIIIth  Dynasty,  they  could  not  have  been  made  captive  and 
oppressed,  before  they  conquered  Canaan,  by  Rameses  II  of 
the  XlXth  Dynasty.  But  it  is  quite  understandable  that  the 
Exodus  story,  written  long  after  the  events  it  narrates,  may 
have  concentrated  and  simplified,  and  perhaps  personified  and 
symbolized,  what  was  really  a  long  and  complicated  history 
of  tribal  invasions.  One  Hebrew  tribe  may  have  drifted  down 
into  Egypt  and  become  enslaved,  while  the  others  were  already 
attacking  the  outlying  Canaanite  cities.  It  is  even  possible 
that  the  land  of  the  captivity  was  not  Egypt  (Hebrew,  Misraim), 
but  Misrim  in  the  north  of  Arabia,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Red  Sea.  These  questions  are  discussed  fully  and  acutely  in 
the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica  (articles  Moses  and  Exodus),  to 
which  the  curious  reader  must  be  referred.1 

1See  also  G.  B.  Gray,  A  Critical  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament. 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS          221 

Two  other  books  of  the  Pentateuch,  Deuteronomy  and  Leviti- 
cus, are  concerned  with  the  Law  and  the  priestly  rules.  The 
book  of  Numbers  takes  up  the  wanderings  of  the  Israelites  in  the 
desert  and  their  invasion  of  Canaan- 
Whatever  the  true  particulars  of  the  Hebrew  invasion  of 
Canaan  may  be,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  country  they 
invaded  had  changed  very  greatly  since  the  days  of  the  legend- 
ary promise,  made  centuries  before,  to  Abraham.  Then  it 
seems  to  have  been  largely  a  Semitic  land,  with  many  pros- 
perous trading  cities.  But  great  waves  of  strange  peoples  had 
washed  along  this  coast.  We  have  already  told  how  the  dark 
Iberian  or  Mediterranean  peoples  of  Italy  and  Greece,  the  peo- 
ples of  that  ^Egean  civilization  which  culminated  at  Cnossos, 
were  being  assailed  by  the  southward  movement  of  Aryan-speak- 
ing races,  such  as  the  Italians  and  Greeks,  and  how  Cnossos 
was  sacked  about  1,400  B.C.,  and  destroyed  altogether  about 
1,000  B.C.  It  is  now  evident  that  the  people  of  these  ^Egean 
seaports  were  crossing  the  sea  in  search  of  securer  land 
nests.  They  invaded  the  Egyptian  delta  and  the  African 
coast  to  the  west,  they  formed  alliances  with  the  Hittites  and 
other  Aryan  or  Aryanized  races.  This  happened  after  the  time 
of  Eameses  II,  in  the  time  of  Rameses  III.  Egyptian  monu- 
ments record  great  sea  fights,  and  also  a  march  of  these  peo- 
ple along  the  coast  of  Palestine  towards  Egypt.  Their  trans- 
port was  in  the  ox-carts  characteristic  of  the  Aryan  tribes,  and 
it  is  clear  that  these  Cretans  were  acting  in  alliance  with  some 
early  Aryan  invaders.  ~No  connected  narrative  of  these  conflicts 
that  went  on  between  1,300  B.C.  and  1,000  B.C.  has  yet  been 
made  out,  but  it  is  evident  from  the  Bible  narrative,  that  when 
the  Hebrews  under  Joshua  pursued  their  slow  subjugation  of 
the  promised  land,  they  came  against  a  new  people,  the  Phil- 
istines, unknown  to  Abraham,1  who  were  settling  along  the 
coast  in  a  series  of  cities  of  which  Gaza,  Gath,  Ashdod,  Ascalon, 
and  Joppa  became  the  chief,  who  were  really,  like  the  Hebrews, 
new-comers,  and  probably  chiefly  these  Cretans  from  the  sea  and 
from  the  north.  The  invasion,  therefore,  that  began  as  an  at- 
tack upon  the  Canaanites,  speedily  became  a  long  and  not  very 
successful  struggle  for  the  coveted  and  promised  land  with 
these  much  more  formidable  new-comers,  the  Philistines. 

1  This  may  seem  to  contradict  Genesis  xx.  15,  and  xxi.  and  xxvi.  various 
verses,  but  compare  with  this  the  Encyclopedia,  Biblica,  article  Philistines. 


222  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  promised  land  was  ever  completely 
in  the  grasp  of  the  Hebrews.  Following  after  the  Pentateuch 
in  the  Bible  come  the  books  of  Joshua,  Judges,  Ruth  (a  di- 
gression), Samuel  I  and  II,  and  Kings  I  and  II,  with  Chronicles 
repeating  with  variation  much  of  the  matter  of  Samuel  II  and 
Kings;  there  is  a  growing  flavour  of  reality  in  most  of  this 
latter  history,  and  in  these  books  we  find  the  Philistines 
steadfastly  in  possession  of  the  fertile  lowlands  of  the  south, 
and  the  Canaanites  and  Phoenicians  holding  out  against  the 
Israelites  in  the  north.  The  first  triumphs  of  Joshua  are  not 
repeated.  The  book  of  Judges  is  a  melancholy  catalogue  of 
failures.  The  people  lose  heart.  They  desert  the  worship  of 
their  own  god  Jehovah,  and  worship  Baal  and  Ashtaroth 
(^Bel  and  Ishtar).  They  mixed  their  race  with  the  Philistines, 
with  the  Hittites,  and  so  forth,  and  became,  as  they  have  always 
subsequently  been,  a  racially  mixed  people.  Under  a  series 
of  wise  men  and  heroes  they  wage  a  generally  unsuccessful  and 
never  very  united  warfare  against  their  enemies.  In  succession 
they  are  conquered  by  the  Moabites,  the  Canaanites,  the  Midi- 
anites,  and  the  Philistines.  The  story  of  these  conflicts,  of 
Gideon  and  of  Samson  and  the  other  heroes  who  now  and  then 
cast  a  gleam  of  hope  upon  the  distress  of  Israel,  is  told  in  the 
book  of  Judges.  In  the  first  book  of  Samuel  is  told  the  story 
of  their  great  disaster  at  Ebenezer  in  the  days  when  Eli  was 
judge. 

This  was  a  real  pitched  battle  in  which  the  Israelites  lost 
30,000  ( !)  men.  They  had  previously  suffered  'd  reverse  and 
lost  4,000  men,  and  then  they  brought  out  their  most  sacred 
symbol,  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  of  God. 

"And  when  the  ark  of  the  covenant  of  the  Lord  came  into 
the  camp,  all  Israel  shouted  with  a  great  shout,  so  that  the 
earth  rang  again.  And  when  the  Philistines  heard  the  noise 
of  the  shout,  they  said,  'What  meaneth  the  noise  of  this  great 
shout  in  the  camp  of  the  Hebrews  ?'  And  they  understood  that 
the  ark  of  the  Lord  was  come  into  the  camp.  And  the  Phil- 
istines were  afraid,  for  they  said,  'God  is  come  into  the  camp.7 
And  they  said,  'Woe  unto  us !  for  there  hath  not  been  such  a 
thing  heretofore.  Woe  unto  us!  who  shall  deliver  us  out  of 
the  hand  of  these  mighty  Gods  ?  these  are  the  Gods  that  smote 
the  Egyptians  with  all  the  plagues  in  the  wilderness.  Be 
strong,  and  quit  yourselves  like  men,  O  ye  Philistines,  that  ye 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS  223 

be  not  servants  unto  the  Hebrews,  as  they  bave  been  to  you: 
quit  yourselves  like  men,  and  fight.' 

"And  the  Philistines  fought,  and  Israel  was  smitten,  and 
they  fled  every  man  into  his  tent :  and  there  was  a  very  great 
slaughter  for  there  fell  of  Israel  thirty  thousand  footmen. 
And  the  ark  of  God  was  taken ;  and  the  two  sons  of  Eli,  Hophni 
and  Phinehas,  were  slain. 

"And  there  ran  a  man  of  Benjamin  out  of  the  army,  and 
came  to  Shiloh  the  same  day,  with  his  clothes  rent,  and  with 
earth  upon  his  head.  And  when  he  came,  lo,  Eli  sat  upon 
a  seat  by  the  wayside  watching:  for  his  heart  trembled  for  the 
ark  of  God.  And  when  the  man  came  into  the  city,  and  told 
it,  all  the  city  cried  out.  And  when  Eli  heard  the  noise  of  the 
crying,  he  said,  'What  meaneth  the  noise  of  this  tumult  ?'  And 
the  man  came  in  hastily,  and  told  Eli.  Now  Eli  was  ninety 
and  eight  years  old;  and  his  eyes  were  dim  that  he  could  not 
see.  And  the  man  said  unto  Eli,  'I  am  he  that  came  out  of 
the  army,  and  I  fled  to-day  out  of  the  army.'  And  he  said, 
'What  is  there  done,  my  son?'  And  the  messenger  answered 
and  said,  'Israel  is  fled  before  the  Philistines,  and  there  hath 
been  also  a  great  slaughter  among  the  people,  and  thy  two 
sons  also,  Hophni  and  Phinehas,  are  dead,  and  the  ark  of 
God  is  taken.7  And  it  came  to  pass,  when  he  made  mention 
of  the  ark  of  God,  that  Eli  fell  from  off  the  seat  backward, 
by  the  side  of  the  gate,  and  his  neck  brake,  and  he  died:  for 
he  was  an  old  man,  and  heavy.  And  he  had  judged  Israel 
forty  years. 

"And  his  daughter  in  law,  Phinehas'  wife,  was  with  child, 
near  to  be  delivered:  and  when  she  heard  the  tidings  that  the 
ark  of  God  was  taken,  and  that  her  father  in  law  and  her 
husband  were  dead,  she  bowed  herself  and  travailed:  for  her 
pains  came  upon  her.  And  about  the  time  of  her  death  the 
women  that  stood  by  her  said  unto  her,  Tear  not,  for  thou 
hast  borne  a  son.'  But  she  answered  not,  neither  did  she  regard 
it.  And  she  named  the  child  I-chabod,1  saying,  The  glory 
is  departed  from  Israel' :  because  the  ark  of  God  was  taken, 
and  because  of  her  father  in  law  and  her  husband."  (I.  Sam., 
chap,  iv.) 

The  successor  of  Eli  and  the  last  of  the  judges  was  Samuel, 
and  at  the  end  of  his  rule  came  an  event  in  the  history  of 

'That  is,  where  is  the  glory? 


224  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Israel  which  paralleled  and  was  suggested  by  the  experience 
of  the  greater  nations  around.  A  king  arose.  We  are  told  in 
vivid  language  the  plain  issue  between  the  more  ancient  rule 
of  priestcraft  and  the  newer  fashion  in  human  affairs.  It  is 
impossible  to  avoid  a  second  quotation. 

"Then  all  the  elders  of  Israel  gathered  themselves  together, 
and  came  to  Samuel  unto  Ramah,  and  said  unto  him:  'Be- 
hold, thou  art  old,  and  thy  sons  walk  not  in  thy  ways:  now 
make  us  a  king  to  judge  us  like  all  the  nations.' 

"But  the  thing  displeased  Samuel,  when  they  said,  'Give 
us  a  king  to  judge  us/  And  Samuel  prayed  unto  the  Lord. 
And  the  Lord  said  unto  Samuel,  'Hearken  unto  the  voice  of 
the  people  in  all  that  they  say  unto  thee:  for  they  have  not 
rejected  thee,  but  they  have  rejected  me,  that  I  should  not  reign 
over  them.  According  to  all  the  works  which  they  have  done 
since  the  day  that  I  brought  them  up  out  of  Egypt  even  unto 
this  day,  wherewith  they  have  forsaken  me,  and  serve  other 
gods,  so  do  they  also  unto  thee.  Now,  therefore,  hearken  unto 
their  voice :  howbeit  yet  protest  solemnly  unto  them,  and  shew 
them  the  manner  of  the  king  that  shall  reign  over  them.' 

"And  Samuel  told  all  the  words  of  the  Lord  unto  the  people 
that  asked  of  him  a  king.  And  he  said,  'This  will  be  the  man- 
ner of  the  king  that  shall  reign  over  you:  He  will' take  your 
sons,  and  appoint  them  for  himself,  for  his  chariots,  and  to  be  his 
horsemen ;  and  some  shall  run  before  his  chariots.  And  he  will 
appoint  him  captains  over  thousands,  and  captains  over  fifties; 
and  will  set  them  to  ear  his  ground,  and  to  reap  his  harvest, 
and  to  make  his  instruments  of  war,  and  instruments  of  his 
chariots.  And  he  will  take  your  daughters  to  be  confectioners, 
and  to  be  cooks,  and  to  be  bakers.  And  he  will  take  your  fields, 
and  your  vineyards,  and  your  oliveyards,  even  the  best  of  them, 
and  give  them  to  his  servants.  And  he  will  take  the  tenth  of 
your  seed,  and  of  your  vineyards,  and  give  to  his  officers,  and 
to  his  servants.  And  he  will  take  your  menservants,  and  your 
maidservants,  and  your  goodliest  young  men,  and  your  asses, 
and  put  them  to  his  work.  He  will  take  the  tenth  of  your 
sheep:  and  ye  shall  be  his  servants.  And  ye  shall  cry  out  in 
that  day  because  of  your  king  which  ye  shall  have  chosen  you ; 
and  the  Lord  will  not  hear  you  in  that  day.' 

"Nevertheless,  the  people  refused  to  obey  the  voice  of  Samuel ; 
and  they  said,  'Nay;  but  we  will  have  a  king  over  us;  that  we 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS          225 

also  may  be  like  all  the  nations ;  and  that  our  king  may  judge 
us,  and  go  out  before  us,  and  fight  our  battles.' '  (I.  Sam., 
chap,  viii.) 

§  2 

But  the  nature  and  position  of  their  land  was  against  the 
Hebrews,  and  their  first  king  Saul  was  no  more  successful  than 
their  judges.  The  long  intrigues  of  the  adventurer  David 
against  Saul  are  told  in  the  rest  of  the  first  book  of  Samuel, 
and  the  end  of  Saul  was  utter  defeat  upon  Mount  Gilboa.  His 
army  was  overwhelmed  by  the  Philistine  archers. 

"And  it  came  to  pass  on  the  morrow,  when  the  Philistines 
came  to  strip  the  slain,  that  they  found  Saul  and  his  three 
sons  fallen  in  Mount  Gilboa.  And  they  cut  off  his  head,  and 
stripped  off  his  armour,  and  sent  into  the  land  of  the  Philistines 
round  about,  to  publish  it  in  the  house  of  their  idols,  and 
among  the  people.  And  they  put  his  armour  in  the  house  of 
Ashtaroth;  and  they  fastened  his  body  to  the  wall  of  Beth- 
shan."  (I.  Sam.,  chap,  xxxi.) 

David  (990  B.C.  roughly)  was  more  politic  and  successful 
than  his  predecessor,  and  he  seems  to  have  placed  himself  under 
the  protection  of  Hiram,  King  of  Tyre.  This  Phoenician 
alliance  sustained  him,  and  was  the  essential  element  in  the 
greatness  of  his  son  Solomon.  His  story,  with  its  constant 
assassinations  and  executions,  reads  rather  like  the  history  of 
some  savage  chief  than  of  a  civilized  monarch.  It  is  told  with 
great  vividness  in  the  second  book  of  Samuel. 

The  first  book  of  Kings  begins  with  the  reign  of  King 
Solomon  (960  B.C.  roughly).  The  most  interesting  thing  in 
that  story,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  general  historian,  is 
the  relationship  of  Solomon  to  the  national  religion  and  the 
priesthood,  and  his  dealings  with  the  tabernacle,  the  priest 
Zadok,  and  the  prophet  Nathan. 

The  opening  of  Solomon's  reign  is  as  bloody  as  his  father's. 
The  last  recorded  speech  of  David  arranges  for  the  murder 
of  Shimei ;  his  last  recorded  word  is  "blood."  "But  his  hoar 
head  bring  thou  down  to  the  grave  with  blood,"  he  says,  point- 
ing out  that  though  old  Shimei  is  protected  by  a  vow  David 
had  made  to  the  Lord  so  long  as  David  lives,  there  is  nothing 
to  bind  Solomon  in  that  matter.  Solomon  proceeds  to  murder 
his  brother,  who  has  sought  the  throne  but  quailed  and  made 


226  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

submission.  He  then  deals  freely  with  his  brother's  party. 
The  weak  hold  of  religion  upon  the  racially  and  mentally  con- 
fused Hebrews  at  that  time  is  shown  by  the  ease  with  which 
he  replaces  the  hostile  chief  priest  by  his  own  adherent  Zadok, 
and  still  more  strikingly  by  the  murder  of  Joab  by  Benaiah, 
Solomon's  chief  ruffian,  in  the  tabernacle,  while  the  victim  is 
claiming  sanctuary  and  holding  to  the  very  horns  of  Jehovah's 
altar.  Then  Solomon  sets  to  work,  in  what  was  for  that  time 
a  thoroughly  modern  spirit,  to  recast  the  religion  of  his  people. 
He  continues  the  alliance  with  Hiram,  King  of  Sidon,  who 
uses  Solomon's  kingdom  as  a  high  road  by  which  to  reach  and 
build  shipping  upon  the  Ked  Sea,  and  a  hitherto  unheard  of 
wealth  accumulates  in  Jesusalem  as  a  result  of  this  partner 
ship.  Gang  labour  appears  in  Israel ;  Solomon  sends  relays  o± 
men  to  cut  cedarwood  in  Lebanon  under  Hiram,  and  organizes  a 
service  of  porters  through  the  land.  (There  is  much  in  all 
this  to  remind  the  reader  of  the  relations  of  some  Central 
African  chief  to  a  European  trading  concern.)  Solomon  then 
builds  a  palace  for  himself,  and  a  temple  not  nearly  as  big  for 
Jehovah.  Hitherto,  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant,  the  divine  symbol 
of  these  ancient  Hebrews,  had  abode  in  a  large  tent,  which  had 
been  shifted  from  one  high  place  to  another,  and  sacrifices  had 
been  offered  to  the  God  of  Israel  upon  a  number  of  different 
high  places,  ^ow  the  ark  is  brought  into  the  golden  splendours 
of  the  inner  chamber  of  a  temple  of  cedar-sheathed  stone,  and 
put  between  two  great  winged  figures  of  gilded  olivewood,  and 
sacrifices  are  henceforth  to  be  made  only  upon  the  altar  be^ 
fore  it. 

This  centralizing  innovation  will  remind  the  reader  of  both 
Akhnaton  and  Nabonidus.  Such  things  as  this  are  done  suc- 
cessfully only  when  the  prestige  and  tradition  and  learning 
of  the  priestly  order  has  sunken  to  a  very  low  level. 

"And  he  appointed,  according  to  the  order  of  David  his 
father,  the  courses  of  the  priests  to  their  service,  and  the 
Levites  to  their  charges,  to  praise  and  minister  before  the  priests, 
as  the  duty  of  every  day  required;  the  porters  also  by  their 
courses  at  every  gate;  for  so  had  David  the  man  of  God  com- 
manded. And  they  departed  not  from  the  commandment  of 
the  king  unto  the  priest  and  Levites  concerning  any  matter,  or 
concerning  the  treasures." 

Neither  Solomon's  establishment  of  the  worship  of  Jehovah 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS          227 

in  Jerusalem  upon  this  new  footing,  nor  his  vision  of  and  con- 
versation with  his  God  at  the  opening  of  his  reign,  stood  in 
the  way  of  his  developing  a  sort  of  theological  flirtatiousness 
in  his  declining  years.  He  married  widely,  if  only  for  reasons 
of  state  and  splendour,  and  he  entertained  his  numerous  wives 
by  sacrificing  to  their  national  deities,  to  the  Sidonian  god- 
dess Ashtaroth  (Ishtar),  to  Chemosh  (a  Moabitish  god), 
to  Moloch,  and  so  forth.  The  Bible  account  of  Solomon 
does,  in  fact,  show  us  a  king  and  a  confused  people,  both 
superstitious  and  mentally  unstable,  in  no  way  more  religious 
than  any  other  people  of  the  surrounding  world. 

A  point  of  considerable  interest  in  the  story  of  Solomon, 
because  it  marks  a  phase  in  Egyptian  affairs,  is  his  marriage 
to  a  daughter  of  Pharaoh.  This  must  have  been  one  of  the 
Pharaohs  of  the  XXIst  Dynasty.  In  the  great  days  of  Ameno- 
phis  III,  as  the  Tel-Amarna  letters  witness,  Pharaoh  could  con- 
descend to  receive  a  Babylonian  princess  into  his  harem,  but 
he  refused  absolutely  to  grant  so  divine  a  creature  as  an  Egyp- 
tian princess  in  marriage  to  the  Babylonian  monarch.  It  points 
to  the  steady  decline  of  Egyptian  prestige  that  now,  three  cen- 
turies later,  such  a  petty  monarch  as  Solomon  could  wed  on 
equal  terms  with  an  Egyptian  princess.  There  was,  however, 
a  revival  with  the  next  Egyptian  dynasty  (XXII)  ;  and  the 
Pharaoh  Shishak,  the  founder,  taking  advantage  of  the  cleavage 
between  Israel  and  Judah,  which  had  been  developing  through 
the  reigns  of  both  David  and  Solomon,  took  Jerusalem  and 
looted  the  all-too-brief  splendours  both  of  the  new  temple  and 
of  the  king's  house. 

Shishak  seems  also  to  have  subjugated  Philistia.  From  this 
time  onward  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Philistines  fade  in  im- 
portance. They  had  already  lost  their  Cretan  language  and 
adopted  that  of  the  Semites  they  had  conquered,  and  although 
their  cities  remain  more  or  less  independent,  they  merge  grad- 
ually into  the  general  Semitic  life  of  Palestine. 

There  is  evidence  that  the  original  rude  but  convincing  narra- 
tive of  Solomon's  rule,  of  his  various  murders,  of  his  associa- 
tion with  Hiram,  of  his  palace  and  temple  building,  and  the 
extravagances  that  weakened  and  finally  tore  his  kingdom  in 
twain,  has  been  subjected  to  extensive  interpolations  and  ex- 
pansions by  a  later  writer,  anxious  to  exaggerate  his  prosperity 
and  glorify  his  wisdom.  It  is  not  the  place  here  to  deal  with 


228  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HflSTORY 

the  criticism  of  Bible  origins,  but  it  is  a  matter  of  ordinary 
common  sense  rather  than  of  scholarship  to  note  the  manifest 
reality  and  veracity  of  the  main  substance  of  the  account  of 
David  and  Solomon,  an  account  explaining  sometimes  and  justi- 
fying sometimes,  but  nevertheless  relating  facts,  even  the  harsh- 
est facts,  as  only  a  contemporary  or  almost  contemporary  writer, 
convinced  that  they  cannot  be  concealed,  would  relate  them,  and 
then  to  remark  the  sudden  lapse  into  adulation  when  the  in- 
serted passages  occur.  It  is  a  striking  tribute  to  the  power  of  the 
written  assertion  over  realities  in  men's  minds  that  this  Bible 
narrative  has  imposed,  not  only  upon  the  Christian  but  upon  the 
Moslem  world,  the  belief  that  King  Solomon  was  not  only  one 
of  the  most  magnificent,  but  one  of  the  wisest  of  men.  Yet 
the  first  book  of  Kings  tells  in  detail  his  utmost  splendours,  and 
beside  the  beauty  and  wonder  of  the  buildings  and  organizations 
of  such  great  monarchs  as  Thotmes  III  or  Rameses  II  or  half 
a  dozen  other  Pharaohs,  or  of  Sargon  II  or  Sardanapalus  or 
Nebuchadnezzar  the  Great,  they  are  trivial.  His  temple  meas- 
ured internally  was  twenty  cubits  broad,  about  35  feet l — that 
is,  the  breadth  of  a  small  villa  residence — and  sixty  cubits,  say 
100  feet,  long.  And  as  for  his  wisdom  and  statecraft,  one 
need  go  no  further  than  the  Bible  to  see  that  Solomon  was  a 
mere  helper  in  the  wide-reaching  schemes  of  the  trader-king 
Hiram,  and  his  kingdom  a  pawn  between  Phoenicia  and  Egypt. 
His  importance  was  due  largely  to  the  temporary  enfeeblement 
of  Egypt,  which  encouraged  the  ambition  of  the  Phoenician 
and  made  it  necessary  to  propitiate  the  holder  of  the  key  to 
an  alternate  trade  route  to  the  East.  To  his  own  people 
Solomon  was  a  wasteful  and  oppressive  monarch,  and  already 
before  his  death  his  kingdom  was  splitting,  visibly  to  all 
men. 

With  the  reign  of  King  Solomon  the  brief  glory  of  the  He- 
brews ends;  the  northern  and  richer  section  of  his  kingdom, 
long  oppressed  by  taxation  to  sustain  his  splendours,  breaks  off 
from  Jerusalem  to  become  the  separate  kingdom  of  Israel,  and 
this  split  ruptures  that  linking  connection  between  Sidon  and 
the  Red  Sea  by  which  Solomon's  gleam  of  wealth  was  possible. 
There  is  no  more  wealth  in  Hebrew  history.  Jerusalem  re- 
mains the  capital  of  one  tribe,  the  tribe  of  Judah,  the  capital 

1  Estimates  of  the  cubit  vary.     The  greatest  is  44  inches.     This  would 
extend  the  width  to  seventy-odd  feet. 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS          229 

of  a  land  of  barren  hills,  cut  off  by  Philistia  from  the  sea  and 
surrounded  by  enemies. 

The  tale  of  wars,  of  religious  conflicts,  of  usurpations,  as- 
sassinations, and  of  fratricidal  murders  to  secure  the  throne 
goes  on  for  three  centuries.  It  is  a  tale  frankly  barbaric.  Israel 
wars  with  Judah  and  the  neighbouring  states;  forms  alliances 
first  with  one  and  then  with  the  other.  The  power  of  Aramean 
Syria  burns  like  a  baleful  star  over  the  affairs  of  the  Hebrews, 
and  then  there  rises  behind  it  the  great  and  growing  power  of 
the  last  Assyrian  empire.  For  three  centuries  the  life  of  the 
Hebrews  was  like  the  life  of  a  man  who  insists  upon  living  in 
the  middle  of  a  busy  thoroughfare,  and  is  consequently  being 
run  over  constantly  by  omnibuses  and  motor-lorries. 

"Pul"  (apparently  the  same  person  as  Tiglath  Pileser  III) 
is,  according  to  the  Bible  narrative,  the  first  Assyrian  monarch 
to  appear  upon  the  Hebrew  horizon,  and  Menahem  buys  him 
off  with  a  thousand  talents  of  silver  (738  B.C.).  But  the  power 
of  Assyria  is  heading  straight  for  the  now  aged  and  decadent 
land  of  Egypt,  and  the  line  of  attack  lies  through  Judea ;  Tiglath 
Pileser  III  returns  and  Shalmaneser  follows  in  his  steps,  the 
King  of  Israel  intrigues  for  help  with  Egypt,  that  "broken 
reed/'  and  in  721  B.C.,  as  we  have  already  noted,  his  kingdom 
is  swept  off  into  captivity  and  utterly  lost  to  history.  The  same 
fate  hung  over  Judah,  but  for  a  little  while  it  was  averted.  The 
fate  of  Sennacherib's  army  in  the  reign  of  King  Hezekiah  (701 
B.C.),  and  how  he  was  murdered  by  his  sons  (II.  Kings  xix.  37), 
we  have  already  mentioned.  The  subsequent  subjugation  of 
Egypt  by  Assyria  finds  no  mention  in  Holy  Writ,  but  it  is 
clear  that  before  the  reign  of  Sennacherib,  King  Hezekiah  had 
carried  on  a  diplomatic  correspondence  with  Babylon  (700 
B.C.),  which  was  in  revolt  against  Sargon  II  of  Assyria.  There 
followed  the  conquest  of  Egypt  by  Esarhaddon,  and  then  for  a 
time  Assyria  was  occupied  with  her  own  troubles ;  the  Scythians 
and  Medes  and  Persians  were  pressing  her  on  the  north,  and 
Babylon  was  in  insurrection.  As  we  have  already  noted,  Egypt, 
relieved  for  a  time  from  Assyrian  pressure,  entered  upon  a 
phase  of  revival,  first  under  Psammetichus  and  then  under 
ISTecho  II. 

Again  the  little  country  in  between  made  mistakes  in  its 
alliances.  But  on  neither  side  was  there  safety.  Josiah  op- 
posed Necho,  and  was  slain  at  the  battle  of  Megiddo  (608  B,C.). 


230  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  king  of  Judah  became  an  Egyptian  tributary.  Then  when 
Necho,  after  pushing  as  far  as  the  Euphrates,  fell  before 
Nebuchadnezzar  II,  Judah  fell  with  him  (604  B.C.).  Nebuchad- 
nezzar, after  a  trial  of  three  puppet  kings,  carried  off  the  greater 
part  of  the  people  into  captivity  in  Babylon  (586  B.C.),  and  the 
rest,  after  a  rising  and  a  massacre  of  Babylonian  officials,  took 
refuge  from  the  vengeance  of  Chaldea  in  Egypt. 

"And  all  the  vessels  of  the  house  of  God,  great  and  small,  and 
the  treasures  of  the  house  of  the  Lord,  and  the  treasures  of  the 
king,  and  of  his  princes ;  all  these  he  brought  to  Babylon.  And 
they  burnt  the  house  of  God  and  brake  down  the  wall  of  Jerusa- 
lem, and  burnt  all  the  palaces  thereof  with  fire,  and  destroyed 
all  the  goodly  vessels  thereof.  And  them  that  had  escaped  from 
the  sword  carried  he  away  to  Babylon ;  where  they  were  servants 
to  him  and  his  sons  until  the  reign  of  the  kingdom  of  Persia." 
(II.  Chron.  xxxvi.  18,  19,  20.) 

So  the  four  centuries  of  Hebrew  kingship  comes  to  an  end. 
From  first  to  last  it  was  a  mere  incident  in  the  larger  and  greater 
history  of  Egypt,  Syria,  Assyria,  and  Phoenicia.  But  out  of 
it  there  were  now  to  arise  moral  and  intellectual  consequences 
of  primary  importance  to  all  mankind. 

§  3 

The  Jews  who  returned,  after  an  interval  of  more  than  two 
generations,  to  Jerusalem  from  Babylonia  in  the  time  of  Cyrus 
were  a  very  different  people  from  the  warring  Baal  worshippers 
and  Jehovah  worshippers,  the  sacrificers  in  the  high  places  and 
sacrificers  at  Jerusalem  of  the  kingdoms  of  Israel  and  Judah. 
The  plain  fact  of  the  Bible  narrative  is  that  the  Jews  went  to 
Babylon  barbarians  and  came  back  civilized.  They  went  a 
confused  and  divided  multitude,  with  no  national  self-con- 
sciousness; they  came  back  with  an  intense  and  exclusive  na- 
tional spirit.  They  went  with  no  common  literature  generally 
known  to  them,  for  it  was  only  about  forty  years  before  the 
captivity  that  King  Josiah  is  said  to  have  discovered  "a  book  of 
the  law"  in  the  temple  (II.  Kings  xxii),  and,  besides  that, 
there  is  not  a  hint  in  the  record  of  any  reading  of  books ;  and 
they  returned  with  most  of  their  material  for  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. It  is  manifest  that,  relieved  of  their  bickering  and  mur- 
derous kings,  restrained  from  politics  and  in  the  intellectually 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS          231 

stimulating  atmosphere  of  that  Babylonian  world,  the  Jewish 
mind  made  a  great  step  forward  during  the  Captivity. 

It  was  an  age  of  historical  inquiry  and  learning  in  Baby- 
lonia. The  Babylonian  influences  that  had  made  Sardanapalus 
collect  a  great  library  of  ancient  writings  in  Nineveh  were  still 
at  work.  We  have  already  told  how  Nabonidus  was  so  pre- 
occupied with  antiquarian  research  as  to  neglect  the  defence  of 
his  kingdom  against  Cyrus.  Everything,  therefore,  contributed 
to  set  the  exiled  Jews  inquiring  into  their  own  history,  and  they 
found  an  inspiring  leader  in  the  prophet  Ezekiel.  From  such 
hidden  and  forgotten  records  as  they  had  with  them,  genealogies, 
contemporary  histories  of  David,  Solomon,  and  their  other  kings, 
legends  and  traditions,  they  made  out  and  amplified  their  own 
story,  and  told  it  to  Babylon  and  themselves.  The  story  of  the 
Creation  and  the  Flood,  much  of  the  story  of  Moses,  much  of 
Samson,  were  probably  incorporated  from  Babylonian  sources.1 
When  the  Jews  returned  to  Jerusalem,  only  the  Pentateuch  had 
been  put  together  into  one  book,  but  the  grouping  of  the  rest 
of  the  historical  books  was  bound  to  follow. 

The  rest  of  their  literature  remained  for  some  centuries  as 
separate  books,  to  which  a  very  variable  amount  of  respect  was 
paid.  Some  of  the  later  books  are  frankly  post-captivity  com- 
positions. Over  all  this  literature  were  thrown  certain  leading 
ideas.  There  was  an  idea,  which  even  these  books  themselves 
gainsay  in  detail,  that  all  the  people  were  pure-blooded  children 
of  Abraham;  there  was  next  an  idea  of  a  promise  made  by 
Jehovah  to  Abraham  that  he  would  exalt  the  Jewish  race  above 
all  other  races;  and,  thirdly,  there  was  the  belief  first  of  all 
that  Jehovah  was  the  greatest  and  most  powerful  of  tribal  gods, 
and  then  that  he  was  a  god  above  all  other  gods,  and  at  last 
that  he  was  the  only  true  god.  The  Jews  became  convinced 
at  last,  as  a  people,  that  they  were  the  chosen  people  of  the 
one  God  of  all  the  earth. 

And  arising  very  naturally  out  of  these  three  ideas,  was  a 
fourth,  the  idea  of  a  coming  leader,  a  saviour,  a  Messiah  who 
would  realize  the  long-postponed  promises  of  Jehovah. 

This  welding  together  of  the  Jews  into  one  tradition-cemented 
people  in  the  course  of  the  "seventy  years"  is  the  first  instance 

*But  one  version  of  the  Creation  story  and  the  Eden  story,  though 
originally  from  Babylon,  seem  to  have  been  known  to  the  Hebrews  before 
the  exile.— G.  W.  B. 


232  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

in  history  of  the  new  power  of  the  written  word  in  human 
affairs.  It  was  a  mental  consolidation  that  did  much  more  than 
unite  the  people  who  returned  to  Jerusalem.  This  idea  of  be- 
longing to  a  chosen  race  predestined  to  pre-eminence  was  a  very 
attractive  one.  It  possessed  also  those  Jews  who  remained  in 
Babylonia.  Its  literature  reached  the  Jews  now  established 
in  Egypt.  It  affected  the  mixed  people  who  had  been  placed 
in  Samaria,  the  old  capital  of  the  kings  of  Israel  when  the  ten 
tribes  were  deported  to  Media.  It  inspired  a  great  number 
of  Babylonians  and  the  like  to  claim  Abraham  as  their  father, 
and  thrust  their  company  upon  the  returning  Jews.  Am- 
monites and  Moabites  became  adherents.  The  book  of  Nehe- 
miah  is  full  of  the  distress  occasioned  by  this  invasion  of  the 
privileges  of  the  chosen.  The  Jews  were  already  a  people  dis- 
persed in  many  lands  and  cities,  when  their  minds  and  hopes 
were  unified  and  they  became  an  exclusive  people.  But  at  first 
their  exclusiveness  is  merely  to  preserve  soundness  of  doctrine 
and  worship,  warned  by  such  lamentable  lapses  as  those  of  King 
Solomon.  To  genuine  proselytes  of  whatever  race,  Judaism 
long  held  out  welcoming  arms. 

To  Pho3nicians  after  the  falls  of  Tyre  and  Carthage,  con- 
version to  Judaism  must  have  been  particularly  easy  and  at- 
tractive. Their  language  was  closely  akin  to  Hebrew.  It  is 
possible  that  the  great  majority  of  African  and  Spanish  Jews 
are  really  of  Phoanician  origin.  There  were  also  great  Arabian 
accessions.  In  South  Russia,  as  we  shall  note  later,  there  were 
even  Mongolian  Jews. 


The  historical  books  from  Genesis  to  ^Tehemiah,  upon  which 
the  idea  of  the  promise  to  the  chosen  people  had  been  imposed 
later,  were  no  doubt  the  backbone  of  Jewish  mental  unity,  but 
they  by  no  means  complete  the  Hebrew  literature  from  which 
finally  the  Bible  was  made  up.  Of  such  books  as  Job,  said  to  be 
an  imitation  of  Greek  tragedy,  the  Song  of  Solomon,  the 
Psalms,  Proverbs,  and  others,  there  is  no  time  to  write  in  this 
Outline,  but  it  is  necessary  to  deal  with  the  books  known  as 
"the  Prophets"  with  some  fullness.  For  those  books  are  almost 
the  earliest  and  certainly  the  best  evidence  of  the  appearance 
of  a  new  kind  of  leading  in  human  affairs. 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS          233 

These  prophets  are  not  a  new  class  in  the  community;  they 
are  of  the  most  various  origins — Ezekiel  was  of  the  priestly 
caste  and  of  priestly  sympathies,  and  Amos  was  a  shepherd; 
hut  they  have  this  ir.  common,  that  they  hring  into  life  a  re- 
ligious force  outside  the  sacrifices  and  formalities  of  priesthood 
and  temple.  The  earlier  prophets  seem  most  like  the  earlier 
priests,  they  are  oracular,  they  give  advice  and  foretell  events ; 
it  is  quite  possible  that  at  first,  in  the  days  when  there  were 
many  high  places  in  the  land  and  religious  ideas  were  com- 
paratively unsettled,  there  was  no  great  distinction  hetween 
priest  and  prophet.  The  prophets  danced,  it  would  seem,  some- 
what after  the  Dervish  fashion,  and  uttered  oracles.  Generally 
they  wore  a  distinctive  mantle  of  rough  goatskin.  They  kept 
up  the  nomadic  tradition  as  against  the  "new  ways"  of  the  set- 
tlement. But  after  the  building  of  the  temple  and  the  organi- 
zation of  the  priesthood  the  prophetic  type  remains  over  and 
outside  the  formal  religious  scheme.  They  were  probably  al- 
ways more  or  less  of  an  annoyance  to  the  priests.  They  became 
informal  advisers  upon  public  affairs,  denouncers  of  sin  and 
strange  practices,  "self-constituted,"  as  we  should  say,  having 
no  sanction  but  an  inner  light.  "Now  the  word  of  the  Lord 
came  unto" — so  and  so ;  that  is  the  formula. 

In  the  latter  and  most  troubled  days  of  the  kingdom  of  Judah, 
as  Egypt,  North  Arabia,  Assyria,  and  then  Babylonia  closed 
like  a  vice  upon  the  land,  these  prophets  became  very  significant 
and  powerful.  Their  appeal  was  to  anxious  and  fearful  minds, 
and  at  first  their  exhortation  was  chiefly  towards  repentance, 
the  pulling  down  of  this  or  that  high  place,  the  restoration  of 
worship  in  Jerusalem,  or  the  like.  But  through  some  of  the 
prophecies  there  runs  already  a  note  like  the  note  of  what  we 
call  nowadays  a  "social  reformer."  The  rich  are  "grinding  the 
faces  of  the  poor" ;  the  luxurious  are  consuming  the  children's 
bread;  influential  and  wealthy  people  make  friends  with  and 
imitate  the  splendours  and  vices  of  foreigners,  and  sacrifice  the 
common  people  to  these  new  fashions;  and  this  is  hateful  to 
Jehovah,  who  will  certainly  punish  the  land. 

But  with  the  broadening  of  ideas  that  came  with  the  Cap- 
tivity, the  tenor  of  prophecy  broadens  and  changes.  The  jealous 
pettiness  that  disfigures  the  earlier  tribal  ideas  of  God  gives 
place  to  a  new  idea  of  a  god  of  universal  righteousness.  It  is 
dear  that  the  increasing  influence  of  prophets  was  not  confined 


234  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  the  Jewish  people;  it  was  something  that  was  going  on  in 
those  days  all  over  the  Semitic  world.  The  breaking  down  of 
nations  and  kingdoms  to  form  the  great  and  changing  empires 
of  that  age,  the  smashing  up  of  cults  and  priesthoods,  the  mutual 
discrediting  of  temple  by  temple  in  their  rivalries  and  disputes 
— all  these  influences  were  releasing  men's  minds  to  a  freer  and 
wider  religious  outlook.  The  temples  had  accumulated  great 
stores  of  golden  vessels  and  lost  their  hold  upon  the  imaginations 
of  men.  It  is  difficult  to  estimate  whether,  amidst  these  con- 
stant wars,  life  had  become  more  uncertain  and  unhappy  than 
it  had  ever  been  before,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  men 
had  become  more  conscious  of  its  miseries  and  insecurities. 
Except  for  the  weak  and  the  women,  there  remained  little  com- 
fort or  assurance  in  the  sacrifices,  ritual,  and  formal  devotions 
of  the  temples.  Such  was  the  world  to  which  the  later  prophets 
of  Israel  began  to  talk  of  the  One  God,  and  of  a  Promise  that 
some  day  the  world  should  come  to  peace  and  unity  and  happi- 
ness. This  great  God  that  men  were  now  discovering  lived  in  a 
temple  "not  made  with  hands,  eternal  in  the  heavens."  There 
can  be  little  doubt  of  a  great  body  of  such  thought  and  utter- 
ance in  Babylonia,  Egypt,  and  throughout  the  Semitic  east. 
The  prophetic  books  of  the  Bible  can  be  but  specimens  of  the 
prophesyings  of  that  time.  .  .  . 

We  have  already  drawn  attention  to  the  gradual  escape  of 
writing  and  knowledge  from  their  original  limitation  to  the 
priesthood  and  the  temple  precincts,  from  the  shell  in  which 
they  were  first  developed  and  cherished.  We  have  taken  Herod- 
otus as  an  interesting  specimen  of  what  we  have  called  the  free 
intelligence  of  mankind.  Now  here  we  are  dealing  with  a 
similar  overflow  of  moral  ideas  into  the  general  community. 
The  Hebrew  prophets,  and  the  steady  expansion  of  their  ideas 
towards  one  God  in  all  the  world,  is  a  parallel  development  of 
the  free  conscience  of  mankind.  From  this  time  onward  there 
runs  through  human  thought,  now  weakly  and  obscurely,  now 
gathering  power,  the  idea  of  one  rule  in  the  world,  and  of  a 
promise  and  possibility  of  an  active  and  splendid  peace  and 
happiness  in  human  affairs.  From  being  a  temple  religion 
of  the  old  type,  the  Jewish  religion  becomes,  to  a  large  extent, 
a  prophetic  and  creative  religion  of  a  new  type.  Prophet  suc- 
ceeds prophet.  Later  on,  as  we  shall  tell,  there  was  born  a 
prophet  of  unprecedented  power,  Jesus,  whose  followers  founded 


THE  SCRIPTURES  AND  THE  PROPHETS          235 

the  great  universal  religion  of  Christianity.  Still  later  Mu- 
hammad, another  prophet,  appears  in  Arabia  and  founds  Islam. 
In  spite  of  very  distinctive  features  of  their  own,  these  two 
teachers  do  in  a  manner  arise  out  of  and  in  succession  to  these 
Jewish  prophets.  It  is  not  the  place  of  the  historian  to  discuss 
the  truth  and  falsity  of  religion,  but  it  is  his  business  to  record 
the  appearance  of  great  constructive  ideas.  Two  thousand  four 
hundred  years  ago,  and  six  or  seven  or  eight  thousand  years 
after  the  walls  of  the  first  Sumerian  cities  arose,  the  ideas  of 
the  moral  unity  of  mankind  and  of  a  world  peace  had  come 
into  the  world.1 

1  Fletcher  H.  Swift's  Education  in  Ancient  Israel  from  Earliest  Times  to 
A.D.  70  is  an  interesting  account  of  the  way  in  which  the  Jewish  religion, 
because  it  was  a  literature-sustained  religion,  led  to  the  first  efforts  to 
provide  elementary  education  for  all  the  children  in  the  community. 


XX 

THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  IN  PRE- 
HISTOKIC  TIMES 

1.  The  Spreading  of  the  Aryan-Speakers.     §  2.  Primitive 
•  Aryan  Life.     §  3.  Early  Aryan  Daily  Life. 


WE  have  spoken  of  the  Aryan  language  as  probably  aris- 
ing in  the  region  of  the  Danube  and  South  Russia  and 
spreading  from  that  region  of  origin.  We  say  "prob- 
ably," because  it  is  by  no  means  certainly  proved  that  that  was 
the  centre;  there  have  been  vast  discussions  upon  this  point 
and  wide  divergences  of  opinion.  We  give  the  prevalent  view. 
It  was  originally  the  language  of  a  group  of  peoples  of  the 
Nordic  race.  As  it  spread  widely,  Aryan  began  to  differentiate 
into  a  number  of  subordinate  languages.  To  the  west  and  south 
it  encountered  the  Basque  language,  which  was  then  widely 
spread  in  Spain,  and  also  possibly  various  other  Mediterranean 
languages. 

Before  the  spreading  of  the  Aryans  from-  their  lands  of 
origin  southward  and  westward,  the  Iberian  race  was  dis- 
tributed over  Great  Britain,  Ireland,  France,  Spain,  north 
Africa,  south  Italy,  and,  in  a  more  civilized  state,  Greece  and 
Asia  Minor.  It  was  closely  related  to  the  Egyptian.  To  judge 
by  its  European  vestiges  it  was  a  rather  small  human  type, 
generally  with  an  oval  face  and  a  long  head.  It  buried  its 
chiefs  and  important  people  in  megalithic  chambers  —  i.e.  made 
of  big  stones  —  covered  over  by  great  mounds  of  earth  ;  and  these 
mounds  of  earth,  being  much  longer  than  they  are  broad,  are 
spoken  of  as  the  long  barrows.  These  people  sheltered  at  times 
in  caves,  and  also  buried  some  of  their  dead  therein  ;  and  from 
the  traces  of  charred,  broken,  and  cut  human  bones,  including 
the  bones  of  children,  it  is  inferred  that  they  were  cannibals. 

236 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES 


237 


238  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

These  short  dark  Iberian  tribes  (and  the  Basques  also  if  they 
were  a  different  race)  were  thrust  back  westward,  and  con- 
quered and  enslaved  by  slowly  advancing  waves  of  the  taller 
and  fairer  Aryan-speaking  people,  coming  southward  and  west- 
ward through  Central  Europe,  who  are  spoken  of  as  the  Kelts. 
Only  the  Basque  resisted  the  conquering  Aryan  speech.  Grad- 
ually these  Keltic-speakers  made  their  way  to  the  Atlantic,  and 
all  that  now  remains  of  the  Iberians  is  mixed  into  the  Keltic 
population.  How  far  the  Keltic  invasion  affected  the  Irish 
population  is  a  matter  of  debate  at  the  present  time;  in  that 
island  the  Kelts  may  have  been  a  mere  caste  of  conquerors 
who  imposed  their  language  on  a  larger  subject  population.  It 
is  even  doubtful  if  the  north  of  England  is  more  Aryan  than 
pre-Keltic  in  blood.  There  is  a  sort  of  short  dark  Welshman, 
and  certain  types  of  Irishmen,  who  are  Iberians  by  race.  The 
modern  Portuguese  are  also  largely  of  Iberian  blood. 

The  Kelts  spoke  a  language,  Keltic,1  which  was  also  in  its 
turn  to  differentiate  into  the  language  of  Gaul,  Welsh,  Breton, 
Scotch  and  Irish  Gaelic,  and  other  tongues.  They  buried  the 
ashes  of  their  chiefs  and  important  people^  in  round  barrows. 
While  these  Nordic  Kelts  were  spreading  westward,  other 
Nordic  Aryan  peoples  were  pressing  down  upon  the  dark  white 
Mediterranean  race  in  the  Italian  and  Greek  peninsulas,  and 
developing  the  Latin  and  Greek  groups  of  tongues.  Certain 
other  Aryan  tribes  were  drifting  towards  the  Baltic  and  across 
into  Scandinavia,  speaking  varieties  of  the  Aryan  which  be- 
came ancient  Norse — the  parent  of  Swedish,  Danish,  Nor- 
wegian, and  Icelandic — Gothic,  and  Low  and  High  German. 

While  the  primitive  Aryan  speech  was  thus  spreading  and 
breaking  up  into  daughter  languages  to  the  west,  it  was  also 
spreading  and  breaking  up  to  the  east.  North  of  the  Car- 
pathians and  the  Black  Sea,  Aryan-speaking  tribes  were  in- 
creasing and  spreading  and  using  a  distinctive  dialect  called 
Slavonian,  from  which  came  Russian,  Serbian,  Polish,  Bul- 
garian, and  other  tongues ;  other  variations  of  Aryan  distributed 
over  Asia  Minor  and  Persia  were  also  being  individualized  as 
Armenian  and  Indo-Iranian,  the  parent  of  Sanscrit  and 
Persian.  In  this  book  we  have  used  the  word  Aryan  for  all 

'"The  Keltic  group  of  languages,  of  which  it  has  been  said  that  they 
combined  an  Aryan  vocabulary  with  a  Berber  (or  Iberian)  grammar." 
— Sir  Harry  Johnston. 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  239 

this  family  of  languages,  but  the  term  Indo-European  is  some- 
times used  for  the  entire  family,  and  "Aryan'7  itself  restricted 
in  a  narrower  sense  to  the  Indo-Iranian  speech.  This  Indo- 
Iranian  speech  was  destined  to  split  later  into  a  number  of 
languages,  including  Persian  and  Sanscrit,  the  latter  being  the 
language  of  certain  tribes  of  fair-complexioned  Aryan  speakers 
who  pushed  eastward  into  India  somewhen  between  3,000  and 
1,000  B.C.  and  conquered  dark  Dravidian  peoples  who  were 
then  in  possession  of  that  land. 

From  their  original  range  of  wandering,  other  Aryan 
tribes  spread  to  the  north  as  well  as  to  the  south  of  the  Black 
Sea,  and  ultimately,  as  these  seas  shrank  and  made  way 
for  them,  to  the  north  and  east  of  the  Caspian,  and  so 
began  to  come  into  conflict  with  and  mix  also  with  Mongolian 
peoples  of  the  Ural-Altaic  linguistic  group  the  horse-keeping 
people  of  the  grassy  steppes  of  Central  Asia.  From  these  Mon- 
golian races  the  Aryans  seem  to  have  acquired  the  use  of  the 
horse  for  riding  and  warfare.  There  were  three  or  four  pre- 
historic varieties  or  sub-species  of  horse  in  Europe  and  Asia, 
but  it  was  the  steppe  or  semi-desert  lands  that  first  gave  horses 
of  a  build  adapted  to  other  than  food  uses.1  All  these  peoples, 
it  must  be  understood,  shifted  their  ground  rapidly,  a  succes- 
sion of  bad  seasons  might  drive  them  many  hundreds  of  miles, 
and  it  is  only  in  a  very  rough  and  provisional  manner  that  their 
a beats"  can  now  be  indicated.  Every  summer  they  went  north, 
every  winter  they  swung  south  again.  This  annual  swing  cov- 
ered sometimes  hundreds  of  miles.  On  our  maps,  for  the  sake 
of  simplicity,  we  represent  the  shifting  of  nomadic  peoples  by 
a  straight  line;  but  really  they  moved  in  annual  swings,  as  the 
broom  of  a  servant  who  is  sweeping  out  a  passage  swishes  from 
side  to  side  as  she  advances.  Spreading  round  the  north  of  the 
Black  Sea,  and  probably  to  the  north  of  the  Caspian,  from 
the  range  of  the  original  Teutonic  tribes  of  Central  and  North- 
central  Europe  to  the  Iranian  peoples  who  became  the  Medes 
and  Persians  and  (Aryan)  Hindus,  were  the  grazing  lands 
of  a  confusion  of  tribes,  about  whom  it  is  truer  to  be  vague  than 
precise,  such  as  the  Cimmerians,  the  Sarmatians,  and  those 
Scythians  who,  together  with  the  Medes  and  Persians,  came  into 
effective  contact  with  the  Assyrian  Empire  by  1,000  B.C.  or 
earlier. 
1  Roger  Pocock's  Horses  is  a  good  and  readable  book  on  these  questions. 


240  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

East  and  south  of  the  Black  Sea,  between  the  Danube  and 
the  Medes  and  Persians,  and  to  the  north  of  the  Semitic  and 
Mediterranean  peoples  of  the  sea-coasts  and  peninsulas,  ranged 
another  series  of  equally  ill-defined  Aryan  tribes,  moving  easily 
from  place  to  place  and  intermixing  freely — to  the  great  con- 
fusion of  historians.  They  seem,  for  instance,  to  have  broken 
up  and  assimilated  the  Hittite  civilization,  which  was  probably 
pre-Aryan  in  its  origin.  These  latter  Aryans  were,  perhaps, 
not  so  far  advanced  along  the  nomadic  line  as  the  Scythians  of 
the  great  plains. 

§  2 

What  sort  of  life  did  these  prehistoric  Aryans  lead,  these 
Nordic  Aryans  who  were  the  chief  ancestors  of  most  Europeans 
and  most  white  Americans  and  European  colonists  of  to-day, 
as  well  as  of  the  Armenians,1  Persians,  and  high-caste  Hindus? 

In  answering  that  question  in  addition  to  the  dug-up  remains 
and  vestiges  upon  which  we  have  had  to  rely  in  the  case  of  the 
predecessors  of  the  Aryans,  we  have  a  new  source  of  knowledge. 
We  have  language.  By  careful  study  of  the  Aryan  languages 
it  has  been  found  possible  to  deduce  a  number  of  conclusions 
about  the  life  of  these  Aryan  peoples  5,000  or  4,000  years  ago. 
All  these  languages  have  a  common  resemblance,  as  each,  as 
we  have  already  explained,  rings  the  changes  upon  a  number 
of  common  roots.  When  we  find  the  same  root  word  running 
through  all  or  most  of  these  tongues,  it  seems  reasonable  to 
conclude  that  the  thing  that  root  word  signifies  must  have  been 
known  to  the  common  ancestors.  Of  course,  if  they  have  ex- 
actly the  same  word  in  their- languages,  this  may  not  be  the 
case;  it  may  be  the  new  name  of  a  new  thing  or  of  a  new  idea 
that  has  spread  over  the  world  quite  recently.  "Gas,"  for 
instance,  is  a  word  that  was  made  by  Van  Helmont,  a  Dutch 
chemist,  about  1625,  and  has  spread  into  most  civilized  tongues, 
and  "tobacco"  again  is  an  American-Indian  word  which  fol- 
lowed the  introduction  of  smoking  almost  everywhere.  But  if 
the  same  word  turns  up  in  a  number  of  languages,  and  if  it 
follows  the  characteristic  modifications  of  each  language,  we 
may  feel  sure  that  it  has  been  in  that  language,  and  a  part  of 
that  language,  since  the  beginning,  suffering  the  same  changes 

1  But  these  may  have  been  an  originally  Semitic  people  who  learnt  an 
Aryan  speech. 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  241 

with  the  rest  of  it.  We  know,  for  example,  that  the  words  for 
waggon  and  wheel  run  in  this  fashion  through  the  Aryan 
tongues,  and  so  we  are  able  to  conclude  that  the  primitive 
Aryans,  the  more  purely  Nordic  Aryans,  had  waggons,  though 
it  would  seem  from  the  absence  of  any  common  roots  for  spokes, 
rim,  or  axle  that  their  wheels  were  not  wheelwright's  wheels 
with  spokes,  but  made  of  the  trunks  of  trees  shaped  out  with 
an  axe  between  the  ends. 

These  primitive  waggons  were  drawn  by  oxen.  The  early 
Aryans  did  not  ride  or  drive  horses ;  they  had  very  little  to  do 
with  horses.  The  Reindeer  men  were  a  horse-people,  but  the 
Neolithic  Aryans  were  a  cow-people.  They  ate  beef,  not  horse ; 
and  after  many  ages  they  began  this  use  of  draught  cattle. 
They  reckoned  wealth  by  cows.  They  wandered,  following 
pasture,  and  "trekking"  their  goods,  as  the  South  African  Boers 
do,  in  ox-waggons,  though  of  course  their  waggons  were  much 
clumsier  than  any  to  be  found  in  the  world  to-day.  They  prob- 
ably ranged  over  very  wide  areas.  They  were  migratory,  but 
not  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word  "nomadic" ;  they  moved  in  a 
slower,  clumsier  fashion  than  did  the  later,  more  specialized 
nomadic  peoples.  They  were  forest  and  parkland  people  with- 
out horses.  They  were  developing  a  migratory  life  out  of  the 
more  settled  "forest  clearing"  life  of  the  earlier  Neolithic 
period.  Changes  of  climate  which  were  replacing  forest  by 
pasture,  and  the  accidental  burning  of  forests  by  fire,  may  have 
assisted  this  development. 

We  have  already  described  the  sort  of  home  the  primitive 
Aryan  occupied  and  his  household  life,  so  far  as  the  remains 
of  the  Swiss  pile  dwellings  enable  us  to  describe  these  things. 
Mostly  his  houses  were  of  too  flimsy  a  sort,  probably  of  wattle 
and  mud,  to  have  survived,  and  possibly  he  left  them  and 
trekked  on  for  very  slight  reasons.  The  Aryan  peoples  burnt 
their  dead,  a  custom  they  still  preserve  in  India,  but  their 
predecessors,  the  long-barrow  people,  the  Iberians,  buried  their 
dead  in  a  sitting  position.  In  some  ancient  Aryan  burial 
mounds  (round  barrows)  the  urns  containing  the. ashes  of  the 
departed  are  shaped  like  houses,  and  these  represent  rounded 
huts  with  thatched  roofs.  (See  Fig.,  page  86.) 

The  grazing  of  the  primitive  Aryan  was  far  more  important 
to  him  than  his  agriculture.  At  first  he  cultivated  with  a  rough 
wooden  hoe ;  then,  after  he  had  found  out  the  use  of  cattle  for 


242  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

draught  purposes,  he  began  real  ploughing  with  oxen,  using 
at  first  a  suitably  bent  tree  bough  as  his  plough.  His  first 
cultivation  before  that  came  about  must  have  been  rather  in 
the  form  of  garden  patches  near  the  house  buildings  than  of 
fields.  Most  of  the  land  his  tribe  occupied  was  common  land 
on  which  the  cattle  grazed  together. 

He  never  used  sto::e  for  building  house  walls  until  upon 
the  very  verge  of  history.  He  used  stone  for  hearths  (e.  g.  at 
Glastonbury),  and  sometimes  stone  sub-structures.  He  did, 
however,  make  a  sort  of  stone  house  in  the  centre  of  the  great 
mounds  in  which  he  buried  the  ashes  of  his  illustrious  dead. 
He  may  have  learnt  this  custom  from  his  Iberian  neighbours 
and  predecessors.  It  was  these  dark  whites  of  the  heliolithic 
culture,  and  not  the  primitive  Aryans,  who  were  responsible 
for  such  temples  as  Stonehenge  or  Carnac  in  Brittany. 

These  Aryans  were  congregated  not  in  cities  but  in  districts 
of  pasturage,  as  clans  and  tribal  communities.  They  formed 
loose  leagues  of  mutual  help  under  chosen  leaders,  they  had 
centres  where  they  could  come  together  with  their  cattle  in 
times  of  danger,  and  they  made  camps  with  walls  of  earth  and 
palisades,  many  of  which  are  still  to  be  traced  in  the  history- 
worn  contours  of  the  European  scenery.  The  leaders  under 
whom  men  fought  in  war  were  often  the  same  men  as  the  sacri- 
ficial purifiers  who  were  their  early  priests. 

The  knowledge  of  bronze  spread  late  in  Europe.  The  Nordic 
European  had  been  making  his  slow  advances  age  by  age  for 
7,000  or  8,000  years  before  the  metals  came.  By  that  time 
his  social  life  had  developed  so  that  there  were  men  of  various 
occupations  and  men  and  women  of  different  ranks  in  the  com- 
munity. There  were  men  who  worked  wood  and  leather,  pot- 
ters and  carvers.  The  women  span  and  wove  and  embroidered. 
There  were  chiefs  and  families  that  were  distinguished  as 
leaderly  and  noble.  The  Aryan  tribesman  varied  the  monotony 
of  his  herding  and  wandering,  he  consecrated  undertakings  and 
celebrated  triumphs,  held  funeral  assemblies,  and  distinguished 
the  traditional  seasons  of  the  year,  by  feasts.  His  meats  we 
have  already  glanced  at ;  he  was  an  eager  user  of  intoxicating 
drinks.  He  made  these  of  honey,  of  barley,  and,  as  the  Aryan- 
speaking  tribes  spread  southward,  of  the  grape.  And  he  got 
merry  and  drunken.  Whether  he  first  used  yeast  to  make  his 
bread  light  or  to  ferment  his  drink  we  do  not  know. 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  243 

At  his  feasts  there  were  individuals  with  a  gift  for  "playing 
the  fool/7  who  did  so  no  doubt  to  win  the  laughter  of  their 
friends,  but  there  was  also  another  sort  of  men,  of  great  im- 
portance in  their  time,  and  still  more  important  to  the  historian, 
certain  singers  of  songs  and  stories,  the  bards  or  rhapsodists. 
These  bards  existed  among  all  the  Aryan-speaking  peoples ;  they 
were  a  consequence  of  and  a  further  factor  in  that  development 
of  spoken  language  which  was  the  chief  of  all  the  human  ad- 
vances made  in  Neolithic  times.  They  chanted  or  recited  stories 
of  the  past,  or  stories  of  the  living  chief  and  his  people ;  they  told 
other  stories  that  they  invented;  they  memorized  jokes  and 
catches.  They  found  and  seized  upon  and  improved  the 
rhythms,  rhymes,  alliterations,  and  such-like  possibilities  latent 
in  language ;  they  probably  did  much  to  elaborate  and  fix  gram- 
matical forms.  They  were  the  first  great  artists  of  the  ear,  as 
the  later  Aurignacian  rock  painters  were  the  first  great  artists 
of  the  eye  and  hand.  No  doubt  they  used  much  gesture ;  prob- 
ably they  learnt  appropriate  gestures  when  they  learnt  their 
songs ;  but  the  order  and  sweetness  and  power  of  language  was 
their  primary  concern. 

And  they  mark  a  new  step  forward  in  the  power  and  range 
of  the  human  mind.  They  sustained  and  developed  in  men's 
minds  a  sense  of  a  greater  something  than  themselves,  the  tribe, 
and  of  a  life  that  extended  back  into  the  past.  They  not  only 
recalled  old  hatreds  and  battles,  they  recalled  old  alliances  and 
a  common  inheritance.  The  feats  of  dead  heroes  lived  again. 
The  Aryans  began  to  live  in  thought  before  they  were  born 
and  after  they  were  dead. 

Like  most  human  things,  this  bardic  tradition  grew  first 
slowly  and  then  more  rapidly.  By  the  time  bronze  was  coming 
into  Europe  there  was  not  an  Aryan  people  that  had  not  a 
profession  and  training  of  bards.  In  their  hands  language 
became  as  beautiful  as  it  is  ever  likely  to  be.  These  bards  were 
living  books,  man-histories,  guardians  and  makers  of  a  new 
and  more  powerful  tradition  in  human  life.  Every  Aryan  peo- 
ple had  its  long  poetical  records  thus  handed  down,  its  sagas 
(Teutonic),  its  epics  (Greek),  its  vedas  (Old  Sanscrit).  The 
earliest  Aryan  people  were  essentially  a  people  of  the  voice.  The 
recitation  seems  to  have  predominated  even  in  those  ceremonial 
and  dramatic  dances  and  that  "dressing-up"  which  among  most 
human  races  have  also  served  for  the  transmission  of  tradition. 


244  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

At  that  time  there  was  no  writing,  and  when  first  the  art 
of  writing  crept  into  Europe,  as  we  shall  tell  later,  it  must 
have  seemed  far  too  slow,  clumsy,  and  lifeless  a  method  of 
record  for  men  to  trouble  very  much  about  writing  down  these 
glowing  and  beautiful  treasures  of  the  memory.  Writing  was 
at  first  kept  for  accounts  and  matters  of  fact.  The  bards  and 
rhapsodists  flourished  for  long  after  the  introduction  of  writing. 
They  survived,  indeed,  in  Europe  as  the  minstrels  into  the 
Middle  Ages. 

Unhappily  their  tradition  had  not  the  fixity  of  a  written 
record.  They  amended  and  reconstructed,  they  had  their 
fashions  and  their  phases  of  negligence.  Accordingly  we  have 
now  only  the  very  much  altered  and  revised  vestiges  of  that 
spoken  literature  of  prehistoric  times.  One  of  the  most  inter- 
esting and  informing  of  these  prehistoric  compositions  of  the 
Aryans  survives  in  the  Greek  Iliad.  An  early  form  of  Iliad 
was  probably  recited  by  1,000  B.C.,  but  it  was  not  written  down 
until  perhaps  700  or  600  B.C.  Many  men  must  have  had  to  do 
with  it  as  authors  and  improvers,  but  later  Greek  tradition 
attributed  it  to  a  blind  bard  named  Homer,  to  whom  also  is 
ascribed  the  Odyssey,  a  composition  of  a  very  different  spirit 
and  outlook.  It  is  possible  that  many  of  the  Aryan  bards  were 
blind  men.  According  to  Professor  J.  L.  Myres  their  bards 
were  blinded  to  prevent  their  straying  from  the  tribe.  Mr. 
L.  Lloyd  has  seen  in  Ehodesia  the  musician  of  a  troupe  of 
native  dancers  who  had  been  blinded  by  his  chief  for  this  very 
reason.  The  Slavs  called  all  bards  sliepac,  which  was  also  their 
word  for  a  blind  man.  The  original  recited  version  of  the  Iliad 
was  older  than  that  of  the  Odyssey.  "The  Iliad  as  a  complete 
poem  is  older  than  the  Odyssey,  though  the  material  of  the 
Odyssey,  being  largely  undatable  folk-lore,  is  older  than  any  of 
the  historical  material  in  the  Iliad."  Both  epics  were  prob- 
ably written  over  and  rewritten  at  a  later  date,  in  much  the 
same  manner  that  Lord  Tennyson,  the  poet  laureate  of  Queen 
Victoria,  in  his  Idylls  of  the  King,  wrote  over  the  Morte 
d'Arthur  (which  was  itself  a  writing  over  by  Sir  Thomas 
Malory,  circ.  1450,  of  pre-existing  legends),  making  the 
speeches  and  sentiments  and  the  characters  more  in  accordance 
with  those  of  his  own  time.  But  the  events  of  the  Iliad  and  the 
Odyssey,  the  way  of  living  they  describe,  the  spirit  of  the  acts 
recorded,  belong  to  the  closing  centuries  of  the  prehistoric  age. 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  245 

These  sagas,  epics,  and  vedas  do  supply,  in  addition  to  archaeol- 
ogy and  philology,  a  third  source  of  information  about  those 
vanished  times. 

Here,  for  example,  is  th3  concluding  passage  of  the  Iliad, 
describing  very  exactly  the  making  of  a  prehistoric  barrow. 
(We  have  taken  here  Chapman's  rhymed  translation,  correct- 
ing certain  words  with  the  help  of  the  prose  version  of  Lang, 
Leaf,  and  Myers.) 

"...  Thus  oxen,  mules,  in  waggons  straight  they  put, 
Went  forth,  and  an  unmeasured  pile  of  sylvan  matter  cut; 
Nine  days  employed  in  carriage,  but  when  the  tenth  morn  shin'd 
On  wretched  mortals,  then  they  brought  the  bravest  of  his  kind 
Forth  to  be  burned.  Troy  swam  in  tears.  Upon  the  pile's  most  height 
They  laid  the  body,  and  gave  fire.     All  day  it  burn'd,  all  night. 
But  when  th'  eleventh  morn  let  on  earth  her  rosy  fingers  shine, 
The  people  flock'd  about  the  pile,  and  first  with  gleaming  wine 
Quench'd  all  the  flames.     His  brothers  then,  and  friends,  the  snowy 

bones 

Gather' d  into  an  urn  of  gold,  still  pouring  out  their  moans. 
Then  wrapt  they  in  soft  purple  veils  the  rich  urn,  digg'd  a  pit, 
Grav'd  it,  built  up  the  grave  with  stones,  and  quickly  piled  on  it 
A  barrow.    .   .   . 

.  .  .  The  barrow  heap'd  once,  all  the  town 

In  Jove-nurs'd  Priam's  Court  partook  a  sumptuous  fun'ral  feast, 
And  so  horse-taming  Hector's  rites  gave  up  his  soul  to  rest." 

There  remains  also  an  old  English  saga,  Beowulf,  made  long 
before  the  English  had  crossed  from  Germany  into  England, 
which  winds  up  with  a  similar  burial.  The  preparation  of  a 
pyre  is  first  described.  It  is  hung  round  with  shields  and  coats 
of  mail.  The  body  is  brought  and  the  pyre  fired,  and  then  for 
ten  days  the  warriors  built  a  mighty  mound  to  be  seen  afar 
by  the  traveller  on  sea  or  land.  Beowulf,  which  is  at  least  a 
thousand  years  later  than  the  Iliad,  is  also  interesting  because 
one  of  the  main  adventures  in  it  is  the  looting  of  the  treasures 
of  a  barrow  already  ancient  in  those  days. 


§  3 

The  Greek  epics  reveal  the  early  Greeks  with  no  knowledge 
of  iron,  without  writing,  and  before  any  Greek-founded  cities 
existed  in  the  land  into  which  they  had  evidently  come  quite 
recently  as  conquerors.  They  were  spreading  southward  from 


246 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


the  Aryan  region  of  origin.  They  seem  to  have  been  a  fair  peo- 
ple, new-comers  in  Greece,  new-comers  to  a  land  that  had  been 
held  hitherto  by  the  Mediterranean  or  Iberian  peoples. 

Let  us,  at  the  risk  of  a  slight  repetition,  be  perfectly  clear 
upon  one  point.  The  Iliad  does  not  give  us  the  primitive  neo- 
lithic life  of  that  Aryan  region  of  origin;  it  gives  us  that  life 
already  well  on  the  move  towards  a  new  state  of  affairs.  The 
primitive  neolithic  way  of  living,  with  its  tame  and  domesti- 
cated animals,  its  pottery  and  cooking,  and  its  transitory  patches 
of  rude  cultivation,  we  have  already  sketched.  Between  15,000 

and  6,000  B.C.  the 
neolithic  way  of  liv- 
ing had  spread  with 
the  forests  and  abun- 
dant vegetation  of  the 
Pluvial  Period,  over 
the  greater  part  of  the 
old  world,  from  the 
Niger  to  the  Hwang- 
ho  and  from  Ireland 
to  the  south  of  India. 
Now,  as  the  climate 
of  great  portions  of 
the  earth  was  swing- 
ing towards  drier  and 
more  open  conditions 
again,  the  earlier, 


Combat 


From  a  platter  ascribed  to  the  end  of  the 
seventh  century  in  the  British  Museum.  This 
is  probably  the  earliest  known  vase  bearing  a 
Greek  inscription.  Greek  writing  was  just  be- 
ginning. Note  the  Swastika. 


simpler,  neolithic  life 
was  developing  along 

two  divergent  directions.  One  was  leading  to  a  more  wander- 
ing life,  towards  at  last  a  constantly  migratory  life  between 
summer  and  winter  pasture,  which  is  called  NOMADISM;  the 
other,  in  certain  sunlit  river  valleys,  was  towards  a  water-treas- 
uring life  of  irrigation,  in  which  men  gathered  into  the  first 
towns  and  made  the  first  CIVILIZATION.  We  have  already  de- 
scribed the  first  civilizations  and  their  liability  to  recurrent 
conquests  by  nomadic  peoples.  We  have  already  noted  that  for 
many  thousands  of  years  there  has  been  an  almost  rhythmic  re- 
currence of  conquest  of  the  civilizations  by  the  nomads.  Here  we 
have  to  note  that  the  Greeks,  as  the  Iliad  presents  them,  are 
neither  simple  neolithic  nomads,  innocent  of  civilization,  nor  are 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES 


247 


they  civilized  men.  They  are  nomads  in  an  excited  state,  be- 
cause they  have  just  come  upon  civilization,  and  regard  it  as  an 
opportunity  for  war  and  loot. 

These  early  Greeks  of  the  Iliad  are  sturdy  fighters,  but  with- 
out discipline — their  battles  are  a  confusion  of  single  combats. 
They  have  horses,  but  no  cavalry;  they  use  the  horse,  which  is 
a  comparatively  recent  addition  to  Aryan  resources,  to  drag  a 
rude  fighting  chariot  into  battle.  The  horse  is  still  novel  enough 
to  be  something  of  a  terror  in  itself.  For  ordinary  draught  pur- 
poses, as  in  the  quo- 
tation from  the  Iliad 
we  have  just  made, 
oxen  were  employed. 

The  only  priests  of 
these  Aryans  are  the 
keepers  of  shrines 
and  sacred  places. 
There  are  chiefs,  who 
are  heads  of  families 
and  who  also  perform 
sacrifices,  but  there 
does  not  seem  to  be 
much  mystery  or  sac- 
ramental feeling  in 
their  religion.  When  the  Greeks  go  to  war,  these  heads  and 
elders  meet  in  council  and  appoint  a  king,  whose  powers  are 
very  loosely  defined.  There  are  no  laws,  but  only  customs; 
and  no  exact  standards  of  conduct. 

The  social  life  of  the  early  Greeks  centred  about  the  house- 
holds of  these  leading  men.  There  were  no  doubt  huts  for  herds 
and  the  like,  and  outlying  farm  buildings;  but  the  hall  of 
the  chief  was  a  comprehensive  centre,  to  which  everyone  went 
to  feast,  to  hear  the  bards,  to  take  part  in  games  and  exercises. 
The  primitive  craftsmen  were  gathered  there.  About  it  were 
cowsheds  and  stabling  and  such-like  offices.  Unimportant  peo- 
ple slept  about  anywhere  as  retainers  did  in  the  mediaeval  castles 
and  as  people  still  do  in  Indian  households.  Except  for  quite 
personal  possessions,  there  was  still  an  air  of  patriarchal  com- 
munism about  the  tribe.  The  tribe,  or  the  chief  as  the  head  of  the 
tribe,  owned  the  grazing  lands ;  forest  and  rivers  were  the  wild. 

The  Aryan  social  organization  seems,  and  indeed  all  early 


& 


(from,  an  archaic  Qre^k  vase) 


248  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

communities  seem,  to  have  been  without  the  little  separate 
households  that  make  up  the  mass  of  the  population  in  western 
Europe  or  America  to-day.  The  tribe  was  a  big  family;  the 
nation  a  group  of  tribal  families;  a  household  often  contained 
hundreds  of  people.  Human  society  began,  just  as  herds 
and  droves  begin  among  animals,  by  the  family  delaying  its 
breaking  up.  Nowadays  the  lions  in  East  Africa  are  apparently 
becoming  social  animals  in  this  way,  by  the  young  keeping  with 
the  mother  after  they  are  fully  grown,  and  hunting  in  a  group. 
Hitherto  the  lion  has  been  much  more  of  a  solitary  beast.  If 
men  and  women  do  not  cling  to  their  families  nowadays  as 
much  as  they  did,  it  is  because  the  state  and  the  community 
supply  now  safety  and  help  and  facilities  that  were  once  only 
possible  in  the  family  group. 

In  the  Hindu  community  of  to-day  these  great  households 
of  the  earlier  stages  of  human  society  are  still  to  be  found.  Mr. 
Bhupendranath  Basu  has  recently  described  a  typical  Hindu 
household.1  It  is  an  Aryan  household  refined  and  made  gentle 
by  thousands  of  years  of  civilization,  but  its  social  structure 
is  the  same  as  that  of  the  households  of  which  the  Aryan  epics 
tell. 

"The  joint  family  system,"  he  said,  "has  descended  to  us  from 
time  immemorial,  the  Aryan  patriarchal  system  of  old  still 
holding  sway  in  India.  The  structure,  though  ancient,  remains 
full  of  life.  The  joint  family  is  a  co-operative  corporation,  in 
which  men  and  women  have  a  well-defined  place.  At  the  head 
of  the  corporation  is  the  senior  member  of  the  family,  generally 
the  eldest  male  member,  but  in  his  absence  the  senior  female 
member  often  assumes  control."  (Cp.  Penelope  in  the 
Odyssey.) 

"All  able-bodied  members  must  contribute  their  labour  and 
earnings,  whether  of  personal  skill  or  agriculture  and  trade,  to 
the  common  stock ;  weaker  members,  widows,  orphans,  and  desti- 
tute relations,  all  must  be  maintained  and  supported;  sons, 
nephews,  brothers,  cousins,  all  must  be  treated  equally,  for  any 
undue  preference  is  apt  to  break  up  the  family.  We  have  no 
word  for  cousins — they  are  either  brothers  or  sisters,  and  we 
do  not  know  what  are  cousins  two  degrees  removed.  The  chil- 
dren of  a  first  cousin  are  your  nephews  and  nieces,  just  the  same 

1  Some  Aspects  of  Hindu  Life  in  India.    Paper  read  to  the  Royal  Society 
of  Arts,  Nov.  28,  1918. 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  249 

as  the  children  of  your  brothers  and  sisters.  A  man  can  no 
more  marry  a  cousin,  however  removed,  than  he  can  marry 
his  own  sister,  except  in  certain  parts  of  Madras,  where  a  man 
may  marry  his  maternal  uncle's  daughter.  The  family  affec- 
tions, the  family  ties,  are  always  very  strong,  and  therefore 
the  maintenance  of  an  equal  standard  among  so  many  members 
is  not  so  difficult  as  it  may  appear  at  first  sight.  Moreover, 
life  is  very  simple.  Until  recently  shoes  were  not  in  general 
use  at  home,  but  sandals  without  any  leather  fastenings.  I 
have  known  of  a  well-to-do  middle-class  family  of  several 
brothers  and  cousins  who  had  two  or  three  pairs  of  leather  shoes 
between  them,  these  shoes  being  only  used  when  they  had  occa- 
sion to  go  out,  and  the  same  practice  is  still  followed  in  the  case 
of  the  more  expensive  garments,  like  shawls,  which  last  for 
generations,  and  with  their  age  are  treated  with  loving  care,  as 
having  been  used  by  ancestors  of  revered  memory. 

"The  joint  family  remains  together  sometimes  for  several 
generations,  until  it  becomes  too  unwieldy,  when  it  breaks  up 
into  smaller  families,  and  you- thus  see  whole  villages  peopled 
by  members  of  the  same  clan.  I  have  said  that  the  family  is  a 
co-operative  society,  and  it  may  be  likened  to  a  small  state,  and 
is  kept  in  its  place  by  strong  discipline  based  on  love  and  obedi- 
ence. You  see  nearly  every  day  the  younger  members  coming 
to  the  head  of  the  family  and  taking  the  dust  of  his  feet  as  a 
token  of  benediction;  whenever  they  go  on  an  enterprise,  they 
take  his  leave  and  carry  his  blessing.  .  .  .  There  are  many 
bonds  which  bind  the  family  together — the  bonds  of  sympathy, 
of  common  pleasures,  of  common  sorrows ;  when  a  death  occurs, 
all  the  members  go  into  mourning;  when  there  is  a  birth  or  a 
wedding,  the  whole  family  rejoices.  Then  above  all  is  the 
family  deity,  some  image  of  Vishnu,  the  preserver;  his  place 
is  in  a  separate  room,  generally  known  as  the  room  of  God,  or 
in  well-to-do  families  in  a  temple  attached  to  the  house,  where 
the  family  performs  its  daily  worship.  There  is  a  sense  of  per- 
sonal attachment  between  this  image  of  the  deity  and  the  family, 
for  the  image  generally  comes  down  from  past  generations,  often 
miraculously  acquired  by  a  pious  ancestor  at  some  remote  time. 
.  .  .  With  the  household  gods  is  intimately  associated  the 
family  priest.  .  .  .  The  Hindu  priest  is  a  part  of  the  family 
life  of  his  flock,  between  whom  and  himself  the  tie  has  existed 
for  many  generations.  The  priest  is  not  generally  a  man  of 


250  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

much  learning;  he  knows,  however,  the  traditions  of  his  faith. 
.  .  .  He  is  not  a  very  heavy  burden,  for  he  is  satisfied  with 
little — a  few  handfuls  of  rice,  a  few  home-grown  bananas  or 
vegetables,  a  little  unrefined  sugar  made  in  the  village,  and 
sometimes  a  few  pieces  of  copper  are  all  that  is  needed.  ...  A 
picture  of  our  family  life  would  be  incomplete  without  the 
household  servants.  A  female  servant  is  known  as  the  *jhi/  or 
daughter,  in  Bengal — she  is  like  the  daughter  of  the  house; 
she  calls  the  master  and  the  mistress  father  and  mother,  and 
the  young  men  and  women  of  the  family  brothers  and  sisters. 
She  participates  in  the  life  of  the  family ;  she  goes  to  the  holy 
places  along  with  her  mistress,  for  she  could  not  go  alone,  and 
generally  she  spends  her  life  with  the  family  of  her  adoption ; 
her  children  are  looked  after  by  the  family.  The  treatment  of 
men  servants  is  very  similar.  These  servants,  men  and  women, 
are  generally  people  of  the  humbler  castes,  but  a  sense  of  per- 
sonal attachment  grows  up  between  them  and  the  members  of 
the  family,  and  as  they  get  on  in  years  they  are  affectionately 
called  by  the  younger  members  elder  brothers,  uncles,  aunts, 
etc.  ...  In  a  well-to-do  house  there  is  always  a  resident 
teacher,  who  instructs  the  children  of  the  family  as  well  as 
other  boys  of  the  village;  there  is  no  expensive  school  building, 
but  room  is  found  in  some  veranda  or  shed  in  the  courtyard  for 
the  children  and  their  teacher,  and  into  this  school  low-caste 
boys  are  freely  admitted.  These  indigenous  schools  were  not  of 
a  very  high  order,  but  they  supplied  an  agency  of  instruction 
for  the  masses  which  was  probably  not  available  in  many  other 
countries.  .  .  . 

"With  Hindu  life  is  bound  up  its  traditional  duty  of  hos- 
pitality. It  is  the  duty  of  a  householder  to  offer  a  meal  to  any 
stranger  who  may  come  before  midday  and  ask  for  one;  the 
mistress  of  the  house  does  not  sit  down  to  her  meal  until  every 
member  is  fed,  and,  as  sometimes  her  food  is  all  that  is  left, 
she  does  not  take  her  meal  until  well  after  midday  lest  a  hungry- 
stranger  should  come  and  claim  ona"  .  .  . 

We  have  been  tempted  to  quote  Mr.  Basu  at  some  length, 
because  here  we  do  get  to  something  like  a  living  understanding 
of  the  type  of  household  which  has  prevailed  in  human  com- 
munities since  Neolithic  days,  which  still  prevails  to-day  in 


THE  ARYAN-SPEAKING  PEOPLES  251 

India,  China,  and  the  Far  East,  but  which  in  the  west  is  rapidly 
giving  ground  before  a  state  and  municipal  organization  of 
education  and  a  large-scale  industrialism  within  which  an 
amount  of  individual  detachment  and  freedom  is  possible,  such 
as  these  great  households  never  knew.  .  .  . 

But  let  us  return  now  to  the  history  preserved  for  us  in  the 
Aryan  epics. 

The  Sanscrit  epics  tell  a  very  similar  story  to  that  under- 
lying the  Iliad,  the  story  of  a  fair,  beef-eating  people — only 
later  did  they  become  vegetarians — coming  down  from  Persia 
into  the  plain  of  N"orth  India  and  conquering  their  way  slowly 
towards  the  Indus.  From  the  Indus  they  spread  over  India, 
but  as  they  spread  they  acquired  much  from  the  dark  Dravidians 
they  conquered,  and  they  seem  to  have  lost  their  bardic  tradi- 
tion. The  vedas,  says  Mr.  Basu,  were  transmitted  chiefly  in 
the  households  by  the  women.  .  .  . 

The  oral  literature  of  the  Keltic  peoples  who  pressed  west- 
ward has  not  been  preserved  so  completely  as  that  of  the  Greeks 
or  Indians ;  it  was  written  down  many  centuries  later,  and  so, 
like  the  barbaric,  primitive  English  Beowulf,  has  lost  any  clear 
evidence  of  a  period  of  migration  into  the  lands  of  an  antece- 
dent people.  If  the  pre-Aryans  figure  in  it  at  all,  it  is  as  the 
fairy  folk  of  the  Irish  stories.  Ireland,  most  cut  off  of  all 
the  Keltic-speaking  communities,  retained  to  the  latest  date  its 
primitive  life ;  and  the  Tain,  the  Irish  Iliad,  describes  a  cattle- 
keeping  life  in  which  war  chariots  are  still  used,  and  war  dogs 
also,  and  the  heads  of  the  slain  are  carried  off  slung  round  the 
horses7  necks.  The  Tain  is  the  story  of  a  cattle  raid.  Here, 
too,  the  same  social  order  appears  as  in  the  Iliad;  the  chiefs  sit 
and  feast  in  great  halls,  they  build  halls  for  themselves,  there 
is  singing  and  story-telling  by  the  bards,  and  drinking  and  in- 
toxication. Priests  are  not  very  much  in  evidence,  but  there 
is  a  sort  of  medicine-man  who  deals  in  spells  and  prophecy. 


XXI 

THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS 

1.  The  Hellenic  Peoples.  §  2.  Distinctive  Features  of  Hel- 
lenic Civilization.  §  3.  Monarchy,  Aristocracy,  and  Democ- 
racy in  Greece.  §  4.  The  Kingdom  of  Lydia.  §  5.  The 
Rise  of  the  Persians  in  the  East.  §  6.  The  Story  of  Croesus. 
§  7.  Darius  Invades  Russia.  §  8.  The  Battle  of  Marathon. 
§  9.  Thermopylae  and  Salamis.  §  10.  Platcea  and  Mycale. 


THE  Greeks  appear  in  the  dim  light  before  the  dawn  of 
history  (say,  1,500  B.C.)  as  one  of  the  wandering  im- 
perfectly nomadic  Aryan  peoples  who  were  gradually 
extending  the  range  of  their  pasturage  southward  into  the  Bal- 
kan peninsula  and  coming  into  conflict  and  mixing  with  that 
preceding  /Egean  civilization  of  which  Cnossos  was  the  crown. 
In  the  Homeric  poems  these  Greek  tribes  speak  one  common 
language,  and  a  commo^  tradition  upheld  by  the  epic  poems 
keeps  them  together  in  a  loose  unity;  they  call  their  various 
tribes  by  a  common  name,  Hellenes.  They  probably  came  in 
successive  waves.  Three  main  variations  of  the  ancient  Greek 
speech  are  distinguished:  the  Ionic,  the  ^Eolic,  and  the  Doric. 
There  was  a  great  variety  of  dialects.  The  lonians  seem  to 
have  preceded  the  other  Greeks,  and  to  have  mixed  very  inti- 
mately with  the  civilized  peoples  they  overwhelmed.  Racially 
the  people  of  such  cities  as  Athens  and  Miletus  may  have  been 
less  Nordic  than  Mediterranean.  The  Doric  apparently  con- 
stituted the  last  most  powerful  and  least  civilized  wave  of  the 
migration.  These  Hellenic  tribes  conquered  and  largely  de- 
stroyed the  ^Egean  civilization  that  had  preceded  their  arrival  ; 
upon  its  ashes  they  built  up  a  civilization  of  their  own.  They 
took  to  the  sea  and  crossed  by  way  of  the  islands  to  Asia  Minor  ; 
and,  sailing  through  the  Dardanelles  and  Bosphorus,  spread 

252 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS 


253 


their  settlements  along  the  south,  and  presently  along  the  north 
borders  of  the  Black  Sea.  They  spread  also  over  the  south  of 
Italy,  which  was  called  at  last  Magna  Grsecia,  and  round  the 


northern  coast  of  the  Mediterranean.  They  founded  the  town 
of  Marseilles  on  the  site  of  an  earlier  Phoenician  colony.  They 
began  settlements  in  Sicily  in  rivalry  with  the  Carthaginians 
as  early  as  735  B.C. 

In  the  rear  of  the  Greeks  proper  came  the  kindred  Mace- 
donians and  Thracians;  on  their  left  wing,  the  Phrygians 
crossed  by  the  Bosphorus  into  Asia  Minor. 

We  find  all  this  distribution  of  the  Greeks  effected  before  the 


254 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


beginnings  of  written  history. 
By  the  seventh  century  B.C. 
— that  is  to  say,  by  the  time 
of  the  Babylonian  captivity  of 
the  Jews — the  landmarks  of 
the  ancient  world  of  the  pre- 
Hellenic  civilization  in  Eu- 
rope have  been  obliterated. 
Tiryns  and  Cnossos  are  unim- 
portant sites;  Mycenae  and 
Troy  survive  in  legend;  the 
great  cities  of  this  new  Greek 
world  are  Athens,  Sparta  (the 
capital  of  Lacedemon) , 
Corinth,  Thebes,  Samos, 
Miletus.  The  world  our 
grandfathers  called  "Ancient 
Greece"  had  arisen  on  the 
forgotten  ruins  of  a  still  more 
Ancient  Greece,  in  many 
ways  as  civilized  and  artistic, 
of  which  to-day  we  are  only 
beginning  to  learn  through 
the  labours  of  the  excavator. 
But  the  newer  Ancient 
Greece,  of  which  we  are  now 
telling,  still  lives  vividly  in 
the  imaginations  and  institu- 
tions of  men  because  it  spoke 
a  beautiful  and  most  expres- 
sive Aryan  tongue  akin  to  our 
own,  and  because  it  had  taken 
over  the  Mediterranean  alpha- 
bet and  perfected  it  by  the  ad- 
dition of  vowels,  so  that  read- 
ing and  writing  were  now 
easy  arts  to  learn  and  practise,  and  great  numbers  of 
people  could  master  them  and  make  a  record  for  later  ages.1 

bowels  were  less  necessary  for  the  expression  of  a  Semitic  language. 
In  the  early  Semitic  alphabets  only  A,  I,  and  U  were  provided  with  sym- 
bols, but  for  such  a  language  as  Greek,  in  which  many  of  the  inflectional 
endings  are  vowels,  a  variety  of  vowel  signs  was  indispensable. 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  255 

§2 

Now  this  Greek  civilization  that  we  find  growing  up  in  South 
Ttaly  and  Greece  and  Asia  Minor  in  the  seventh  century  B.C., 
is  a  civilization  differing  in  ninny  important  respects  from  the 
two  great  civilized  systems  whose  growths  we  have  already 
traced,  that  of  the  Nile  and  that  of  the  Two  Eivers  of  Mesopo- 
tamia. These  civilizations  grew  through  long  ages  where  they 
are  found ;  they  grew  slowly  about  a  temple  life  out  of  a  primi- 
tive agriculture;  priest-kings  and  god-kings  consolidated  such 
early  city  states  into  empires.  But  the  barbaric  Greek  herds- 
men raiders  came  southward  into  a  world  whose  civilization 
was  already  an  old  story.  Shipping  and  agriculture,  walled 
cities  and  writing  were  already  there.  The  Greeks  did  not 
grow  a  civilization  of  their  own;  they  wrecked  one  and  put 
another  together  upon  and  out  of  the  ruins. 

To  this  we  must  ascribe  the  fact  that  there  is  no  temple- 
state  stage,  no  stage  of  priest-kings,  in  the  Greek  record.  The 
Greeks  got  at  once  to  the  city  organization  that  in  the  east  had 
grown  round  the  temple.  They  took  over  the  association  of 
temple  and  city ;  the  idea  was  ready-made  for  them.  What  im- 
pressed them  most  about  the  city  was  probably  its  wall.  It  is 
doubtful  if  they  took  to  city  life  and  citizenship  straight  away. 
At  first  they  lived  in  open  villages  outside  the  ruins  of  the  cities 
they  had  destroyed,  but  there  stood  the  model  for  them,  a  con- 
tinual suggestion.  They  thought  first  of  a  city  as  a  safe  place 
in  a  time  of  strife,  and  of  the  temple  uncritically  as  a  proper 
feature  of  the  city.  They  came  into  this  inheritance  of  a  pre- 
vious civilization  with  the  ideas  and  traditions  of  the  wood- 
lands still  strong  in  their  minds.  The  heroic  social  system  of 
the  Iliad  took  possession  of  the  land,  and  adapted  itself  to  the 
new  conditions.  As  history  goes  on  the  Greeks  became  more 
religious  and  superstitious  as  the  faiths  of  the  conquered  welled 
up  from  below. 

We  have  already  said  that  the  social  structure  of  the  primi- 
tive Aryans  was  a  two-class  system  of  nobles  and  commoners, 
the  classes  not  very  sharply  marked  off  from  each  other,  and 
led  in  warfare  by  a  king  who  was  simply  the  head  of  one  of  the 
noble  families,  primus  inter  pares,  a  leader  among  his  equals. 
With  the  conquest  of  the  aboriginal  population  and  with  the 
building  of  towns  there  was  added  to  this  simple  social  arrange- 


256  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ment  of  two  classes  a  lower  stratum  of  farm-workers  and  skilled 
and  unskilled  workers,  who  were  for  the  most  part  slaves.  But 
all  the  Greek  communities  were  not  of  this  "conquest"  type. 
Some  were  "refugee"  cities  representing  smashed  communities, 
and  in  these  the  aboriginal  substratum  would  be  missing. 

In  many  of  the  former  cases  the  survivors  of  the  earlier  popu- 
lation formed  a  subject  class,  slaves  of  the  state  as  a  whole,  as, 
for  instance,  the  Helots  in  Sparta.  The  nobles  and  commoners 
became  landlords  and  gentlemen  farmers;  it  was  they  who 
directed  the  shipbuilding  and  engaged  in  trade.  But  some  of 
the  poorer  free  citizens  followed  mechanic  arts,  and,  as  we  have 
already  noted,  would  even  pull  an  oar  in  a  galley  for  pay. 
Such  priests  as  there  were  in  this  Greek  world  were  either  the 
guardians  of  shrines  and  temples  or  sacrificial  functionaries; 
Aristotle,  in  his  Politics,  makes  them  a  mere  subdivision  of 
his  official  class.  The  citizen  served  as  warrior  in  youth,  ruler 
in  his  maturity,  priest  in  his  old  age.  The  priestly  class,  in 
comparison  with  the  equivalent  class  in  Egypt  and  Babylonia, 
was  small  and  insignificant.  The  gods  of  the  Greeks  proper, 
the  gods  of  the  heroic  Greeks,  were,  as  we  have  already  noted, 
glorified  human  beings,  and  they  were  treated  without  very 
much  fear  or  awe;  but  beneath  these  gods  of  the  conquering 
freemen  lurked  other  gods  of  the  subjugated  peoples,  who  found 
their  furtive  followers  among  slaves  and  women.  The  original 
Aryan  gods  were  not  expected  to  work  miracles  or  control  men's 
lives.  But  Greece,  like  most  of  the  Eastern  world  in  the  thou- 
sand years  B.C.,  was  much  addicted  to  consulting  oracles  or 
soothsayers.  Delphi  was  particularly  famous  for  its  oracle. 
"When  the  Oldest  Men  in  the  tribe  could  not  tell  you  the  right 
thing  to  do,"  says  Gilbert  Murray,  ayou  went  to  the  blessed 
dead.  All  oracles  were  at  the  tombs  of  Heroes.  They  told  you 
what  was  'Themis/  what  was  the  right  thing  to  do,  or,  as  re 
ligious  people  would  put  it  now,  what  was  the  Will  of  the  God.' 

The  priests  and  priestesses  of  these  temples  were  not  united 
into  one  class,  nor  did  they  exercise  any  power  as  a  class.  It 
was  the  nobles  and  free  commoners,  two  classes  which,  in  some 
cases,  merged  into  one  common  body  of  citizens,  who  consti- 
tuted the  Greek  state.  In  many  cases,  especially  in  great  city 
states,  the  population  of  slaves  and  unenfranchised  strangers 
greatly  outnumbered  the  citizens.  But  for  them  the  state 
existed  only  by  courtesy ;  it  existed  legally  for  the  select  body 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS 


257 


of  citizens  alone.  It  might  or  might  not  tolerate  the  outsider 
and  the  slave,  but  they  had  no  legal  voice  in  their  treatment 
—any  more  than  if  it  had  been  a  despotism. 

This  is  a  social  structure  differing  widely  from  that  of  the 
Eastern  monarchies.  The  exclusive  importance  of  the  Greek 
citizen  reminds  one  a  little  of  the  exclusive  importance  of  the 
children  of  Israel  in  the  later  Jewish  state,  but  there  is  no 
equivalent  on  the  Greek  side  to  the  prophets  and  priests,  nor 
to  the  idea  of  an  overruling  Jehovah. 

Another  contrast  between  the  Greek  states  and  any  of  the 
human  communities  to  which  we  have  hitherto  given  attention 


ut  an.  'Qtheniaxi.  warship,  about  4OO  "B.C. 
of  relief  found,  on, 


is  their  continuous  and  incurable  division.  The  civilizations 
of  Egypt,  Sumeria,  China,  and  no  doubt  North  India,  all  began 
in  a  number  of  independent  city  states,  each  one  a  city  with  a 
few  miles  of  dependent  agricultural  villages  and  cultivation 
around  it,  but  out  of  this  phase  they  passed  by  a  process  of 
coalescence  into  kingdoms  and  empires.  But  to  the  very  end 
of  their  independent  history  the  Greeks  did  not  coalesce.  Com- 
monly, this  is  ascribed  to  the  geographical  conditions  under 
which  they  lived.  Greece  is  a  country  cut  up  iito  a  multitude 
of  valleys  by  mountain  masses  and  arms  of  the  sea  that  render 
intercommunication  difficult;  so  difficult  that  few  cities  were 
able  to  hold  many  of  the  others  in  subjection  for  any  length 
of  time.  Moreover,  many  Greek  cities  were  on  islands  and 
scattered  along  remote  coasts.  To  the  end  the  largest  city  states 
of  Greece  remained  smaller  than  many  English  counties;  and 


258  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

some  had  an  area  of  only  a  few  square  miles.  Athens,  one  of 
the  largest  of  the  Greek  cities,  at  the  climax  of  its  power  had 
a  population  of  perhaps  a  third  of  a  million.  Few  other  Greek 
cities  exceeded  50,000.  Of  this,  half  or  more  were  slaves  and 
strangers,  and  two-thirds  of  the  free  body  women  and  children. 

§3 

The  government  of  these  city  states  varied  very  widely  in  its 
nature.  As  they  settled  down  after  their  conquests  the  Greeks 
retained  for  a  time  the  rule  of  their  kings,  but  these  kingdoms 
drifted  back  more  and  more  to  the  rule  of  the  aristocratic  class. 
In  Sparta  (Lacedemon)  kings  were  still  distinguished  in  the 
sixth  century  B.C.  The  Lacedemonians  had  a  curious  system 
of  a  double  kingship;  two  kings,  drawn  from  different  royal 
families,  ruled  together.  But  most  of  the  Greek  city  states 
had  become  aristocratic  republics  long  before  the  sixth  century. 
There  is,  however,  a  tendency  towards  slackness  and  inefficiency 
in  most  families  that  rule  by  hereditary  right;  sooner  OF  later 
they  decline;  and  as  the  Greeks  got  out  upon  the  seas  and  set 
up  colonies  and  commerce  extended,  new  rich  families  arose  to 
jostle  the  old  and  bring  new  personalities  into  power.  These 
nouveaux  riches  became  members  of  an  expanded  ruling  class, 
a  mode  of  government  known  as  oligarchy — in  opposition  to 
aristocracy — though,  strictly,  the  term  oligarchy  ( =  govern- 
ment by  the  few)  should  of  course  include  hereditary  aristocracy 
as  a  special  case. 

In  many  cities  persons  of  exceptional  energy,  taking  advan- 
tage of  some  social  conflict  or  class  grievance,  secured  a  more 
or  less  irregular  power  in  the  state.  This  combination  of 
personality  and  opportunity  has  occurred  in  the  United  States 
of  America,  for  example,  where  men  exercising  various  kinds 
of  informal  power  are  called  bosses.  In  Greece  they  were 
called  tyrants.  But  the  tyrant  was  rather  more  than  a  boss; 
he  was  recognized  as  a  monarch,  and  claimed  the  authority 
of  a  monarch.  The  modern  boss,  on  the  other  hand,  shelters 
behind  legal  forms  which  he  has  "got  hold  of"  and  uses  for 
his  own  ends.  Tyrants  were  distinguished  from  kings,  who 
claimed  some  sort  of  right,  some  family  priority,  for  example, 
to  rule.  They  were  supported,  perhaps,  by  the  poorer  class 
with  a  grievance;  Peisistratus,  for  example,  who  was  tyrant  of 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  259 

Athens,  with  two  intervals  of  exile,  between  560  and  527  B.C., 
was  supported  by  the  poverty-struck  Athenian  hillmen.  Some- 
times, as  in  Greek  Sicily,  the  tyrant  stood  for  the  rich  against 
the  poor.  When,  later  on,  the  Persians  began  to  subjugate  the 
Greek  cities  of  Asia  Minor,  they  set  up  pro-Persian  tyrants. 

Aristotle,  the  great  philosophical  teacher,  who  was  born  under 
the  hereditary  Macedonian  monarchy,  and  who  was  for  some 
years  tutor  to  the  king's  son,  distinguishes  in  his  Politics  be- 
tween kings  who  ruled  by  an  admitted  and  inherent  right,  such 
as  the  King  of  Macedonia,  whom  he  served,  and  tyrants  who 
ruled  without  the  consent  of  the  governed.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  is  hard  to  conceive  of  a  tyrant  ruling  without  the  con- 
sent of  many,  and  the  active  participation  of  a  substantial  num- 
ber of  his  subjects ;  and  the  devotion  and  unselfishness  of  your 
"true  kings"  has  been  known  to  rouse  resentment  and  question- 
ing. Aristotle  was  also  able  to  say  that  while  the  king  ruled 
for  the  good  of  the  state,  the  tyrant  ruled  for  his  own  good. 
Upon  this  point,  as  in  his  ability  to  regard  slavery  as  a  natural 
thing  and  to  consider  women  unfit  for  freedom  and  political 
rights,  Aristotle  was  in  harmony  with  the  trend  of  events  about 
him. 

A  third  form  of  government  that  prevailed  increasingly  in 
Greece  in  the  sixth,  fifth,  and  fourth  centuries  B.C.,  was  known 
as  democracy.  As  the  modern  world  nowadays  is  constantly 
talking  of  democracy,  and  as  the  modern  idea  of  democracy  is 
something  widely  different  from  the  democracy  of  the  Greek 
city  states,  it  will  be  well  to  be  very  explicit  upon  the  meaning 
of  democracy  in  Greece.  Democracy  then  was  government  by 
the  commonalty,  the  Demos;  it  was  government  by  the  whole 
body  of  the  citizens,  by  the  many  as  distinguished  from  the  few. 
But  let  the  modern  reader  mark  that  word  "citizen."  The  slave 
was  excluded,  the  freedman  was  excluded,  the  stranger;  even 
the  Greek  born  in  the  city,  whose  father  had  come  eight  or  ten 
miles  from  the  city  beyond  the  headland,  was  excluded.  The 
earlier  democracies  (but  not  all)  demanded  a  property  qualifica- 
tion from  the  citizen,  and  property  in  those  days  was  land ;  this 
was  subsequently  relaxed,  but  the  modern  reader  will  grasp 
that  here  was  something  very  different  from  modern  democracy. 
At  the  end  of  the  fifth  century  B.C.  this  property  qualification 
had  been  abolished  in  Athens,  for  example;  but  Pericles,  a 
great  Athenian  statesman  of  whom  we  shall  have  more  to  tell 


260  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

later,  had  established  a  law  (451  B.C.)  restricting  citizenship  to 
those  who  could  establish  Athenian  descent  on  both  sides.  Thus, 
in  the  Greek  democracies  quite  as  much  as  in  the  oligarchies, 
the  citizens  formed  a  close  corporation,  ruling  sometimes,  as  in 
the  case  of  Athens  in  its  great  days,  a  big  population  of  serfs, 
slaves,  and  "outlanders."  A  modern  politician  used  to  the  idea, 
the  entirely  new  and  different  idea,  that  democracy  in  its  per- 
fected form  means  that  every  adult  man  and  woman  shall  have 
a  voice  in  the  government,  would,  if  suddenly  spirited  back  to 
the  extremist  Greek  democracy,  regard  it  as  a  kind  of  oligarchy. 
The  only  real  difference  between  a  Greek  "oligarchy"  and  a 
Greek  democracy  was  that  in  the  former  the  poorer  and  less 
important  citizens  had  no  voice  in  the  government,  and  in  the 
latter  every  citizen  had.  Aristotle,  in  his  Politics,  betrays  very 
clearly  the  practical  outcome  of  this  difference.  Taxation  set 
lightly  on  the  rich  in  the  oligarchies;  the  democracies,  on  the 
other  hand,  taxed  the  rich,  and  generally  paid  the  impecunious 
citizen  a  maintenance  allowance  and  special  fees.  In  Athens 
fees  were  paid  to  citizens  even  for  attending  the  general  as- 
sembly. But  the  generality  of  people  outside  the  happy  order 
of  citizens  worked  and  did  what  they  were  told,  and  if  one 
desired  the  protection  of  the  law,  one  sought  a  citizen  to  plead 
for  one.  For  only  the  citizen  had  any  standing  in  the  law 
courts.  The  modern  idea,  that  any  one  in  the  state  should  be 
a  citizen,  would  have  shocked  the  privileged  democrats  of 
Athens  profoundly. 

One  obvious  result  of  this  monopolization  of  the  state  by  the 
class  of  citizens  was  that  the  patriotism  of  these  privileged 
people  took  an  intense  and  narrow  form.  They  would  form 
alliances,  but  never  coalesce  with  other  city  states.  That  would 
have  obliterated  every  advantage  by  which  they  lived.  The 
narrow  geographical  limits  of  these  Greek  states  added  to  the 
intensity  of  their  feeling.  A  man's  love  for  his  country  was 
reinforced  by  his  love  for  his  native  town,  his  religion,  and  his 
home;  for  these  were  all  one.  Of  course  the  slaves  did  not 
share  in  these  feelings,  and  in  the  oligarchic  states  very  often 
the  excluded  class  got  over  its  dislike  of  foreigners  in  its  greater 
dislike  of  the  class  at  home  which  oppressed  it  But  in  the 
main,  patriotism  in  the  Greek  was  a  personal  passion  of  an 
inspiring  and  dangerous  intensity.  Like  rejected  love,  it  was 
apt  to  turn  into  something  very  like  hatred.  The  Greek  exile 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  261 

resembled  the  French  or  Russian  emigre  in  being  ready  to  treat 
his  beloved  country  pretty  roughly  in  order  to  save  her  from 
the  devils  in  human  form  who  had  taken  possession  of  her  and 
turned  him-  out. 

In  the  fifth  century  B.C.  Athens  formed  a  system  of  relation- 
ships with  a  number  of  other  Greek  city  states  which  is  often 
spoken  of  by  historians  as  the  Athenian  Empire.  But  all  the 
other  city  states  retained  their  own  governments.  One  "new 
fact"  added  by  the  Athenian  Empire  was  the  complete  and 
effective  suppression  of  piracy;  another  was  the  institution  of 
a  sort  of  international  law.  The  law  indeed  was  Athenian  law ; 
but  actions  could  now  be  brought  and  justice  administered  be- 
tween citizens  of  the  different  states  of  the  League,  which  of 
course  had  not  been  possible  before.  The  Athenian  Empire  had 
really  developed  out  of  a  league  of  mutual  defence  against 
Persia;  its  seat  had  originally  been  in  the  island  of  Delos,  and 
the  allies  had  contributed  to  a  common  treasure  at  Delos;  the 
treasure  of  Delos  was  carried  off  to  Athens  because  it  was  ex- 
posed to  a  possible  Persian  raid.  Then  one  city  after  another 
offered  a  monetary  contribution  instead  of  military  service,  with 
the  result  that  in  the  end  Athens  was  doing  almost  all  the  work 
and  receiving  almost  all  the  money.  She  was  supported  by 
one  or  two  of  the  larger  islands.  The  "League"  in  this  way 
became  gradually  an  "Empire,"  but  the  citizens  of  the  allied 
states  remained,  except  where  there  were  special  treaties  of 
intermarriage  and  the  like,  practically  foreigners  to  one  an- 
other. And  it  was  chiefly  the  poorer  citizens  of  Athens  who 
sustained  this  empire  by  their  most  vigorous  and  incessant  per- 
sonal service.  Every  citizen  was  liable  to  military  service  at 
home  or  abroad  between  the  ages  of  eighteen  and  sixty,  some- 
times on  purely  Athenian  affairs  and  sometimes  in  defence  of 
the  cities  of  the  Empire  whose  citizens  had  bought  themselves 
off.  There  was  probably  no  single  man  over  twenty-five  in  the 
Athenian  Assembly  who  had  not  served  in  several  campaigns 
in  different  parts  of  the  Mediterranean  or  Black  Sea,  and  who 
did  not  expect  to  serve  again.  Modern  imperialism  is  denounced 
by  its  opponents  as  the  exploitation  of  the  world  by  the  rich; 
Athenian  imperialism  was  the  exploitation  of  the  world  by  the 
poorer  citizens  of  Athens. 

Another  difference  from  modern  conditions,  due  to  the  small 
size  of  the  Greek  city  states,  was  that  in  a  democracy  every 


262  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

citizen  had  the  right  to  attend  and  speak  and  vote  in  the  popular 
assembly.  For  most  cities  this  meant  a  gathering  of  only  a 
few  hundred  people ;  the  greatest  had  no  more  than  some  thou- 
sands of  citizens.  Nothing  of  this  sort  is  possible  in  a  modern 
"democracy"  with,  perhaps,  several  million  voters.  The  mod- 
ern "citizen's"  voice  in  public  affairs  is  limited  to  the  right 
to  vote  for  one  or  other  of  the  party  candidates  put  before 
him.  He,  or  she,  is  then  supposed  to  have  "assented"  to  the 
resultant  government.  Aristotle,  who  would  have  enjoyed  the 
electoral  methods  of  our  modern  democracies  keenly,  points  out 
very  subtly  how  the  outlying  farmer  class  of  citizens  in  a 
democracy  can  be  virtually  disenfranchised  by  calling  the  popu- 
lar assembly  too  frequently  for  their  regular  attendance.  In 
the  later  Greek  democracies  (fifth  century)  the  appointment 
of  public  officials,  except  in  the  case  of  officers  requiring  very 
special  knowledge,  was  by  casting  lots.  This  was  supposed  to 
protect  the  general  corporation  of  privileged  citizens  from  the 
continued  predominance  of  rich,  influential,  and  conspicuously 
able  men. 

Some  democracies  (Athens  and  Miletus,  e.g.)  had  an  insti- 
tution called  the  ostracism,1  by  which  in  times  of  crisis  and 
conflict  the  decision  was  made  whether  some  citizen  should  go 
into  exile  for  ten  years.  This  may  strike  a  modern  reader  as 
an  envious  institution,  but  that  was  not  its  essential  quality. 
It  was,  says  Gilbert  Murray,  a  way  of  arriving  at  a  decision 
in  a  case  when  political  feeling  was  so  divided  as  to  threaten  a 
deadlock.  There  were  in  the  Greek  democracies  parties  and 
party  leaders,  but  no  regular  government  in  office  and  no  regu- 
lar opposition.  There  was  no  way,  therefore,  of  carrying  out 
a  policy,  although  it  might  be  the  popular  policy,  if  a  strong 
leader  or  a  strong  group  stood  out  against  it.  But  by  the 
ostracism,  the  least  popular  or  the  least  trusted  of  the  chief 
leaders  in  the  divided  community  was  made  to  retire  for  a 
period  without  loss  of  honour  or  property.  Professor  Murray 
suggests  that  a  Greek  democracy,  if  it  had  found  itself  in  such 
a  position  of  deadlock  as  the  British  Empire  did  upon  the 
question  of  Home  Rule  for  Ireland  in  1914,  would  have  prob- 
ably first  ostracized  Sir  Edward  Carson,  and  then  proceeded 
to  carry  out  the  provisions  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill. 

This  institution  of  the  ostracism  has  immortalized  one  ob- 

1  From  ostrakon,  a  tile ;  the  voter  wrote  the  name  on  a  tile  or  shell. 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  263 

scure  and  rather  illiterate  member  of  the  democracy  of  Athens. 
A  certain  Aristides  had  gained  a  great  reputation  in  the  law 
court  for  his  righteous  dealing.  He  fell  into  a  dispute  with 
Themistocles  upon  a  question  of  naval  policy ;  Aristides  was  for 
the  army,  Themistocles  was  a  "strong  navy77  man,  and  a  dead- 
lock was  threatened.  There  was  resort  to  an  ostracism  to 
decide  between  them.  Plutarch  relates  that  as  Aristides  walked 
through  the  streets  while  the  voting  was  in  progress,  he  was 
accosted  by  a  strange  citizen  from  the  agricultural  environs 
unaccustomed  to  the  art  of  writing,  and  requested  to  write  his 
own  name  on  the  proffered  potsherd. 

"But  why  ?"  he  asked.     "Has  Aristides  ever  injured  you  ?" 

"No,"  said  the  citizen.  "No.  Never  have  I  set  eyes  on 
him.  But,  oh !  I  am  so  bored  by  hearing  him  called  Aristides 
the  Just." 

Whereupon,  says  Plutarch,  without  further  parley  Aristides 
wrote  as  the  man  desired.  .  .  . 

When  one  understands  the  true  meaning  of  these  Greek  con- 
stitutions, and  in  particular  the  limitation  of  all  power,  whether 
in  the  democracies  or  the  oligarchies,  to  a  locally  privileged 
class,  one  realizes  how  impossible  was  any  effective  union  of 
the  hundreds  of  Greek  cities  scattered  about  the  Mediterranean 
region,  or  even  of  any  effective  co-operation  between  them  for 
a  common  end.  Each  city  was  in  the  hands  of  a  few  or  a  few 
hundred  men,  to  whom  its  separateness  meant  everything  that 
was  worth  having  in  life.  Only  conquest  from  the  outside  could 
unite  the  Greeks,  and  until  Greece  was  conquered  they  had  no 
political  unity.  When  at  last  they  were  conquered,  they  were 
conquered  so  completely  that  their  unity  ceased  to  be  of  any 
importance  even  to  themselves ;  it  was  a  unity  of  subjugation. 

Yet  there  was  always  a  certain  tradition  of  unity  between 
all  the  Greeks,  based  on  a  common  language  and  script,  on 
the  common  possession  of  the  heroic  epics,  and  on  the  con- 
tinuous intercourse  that  the  maritime  position  of  the  states 
made  possible.  And  in  addition,  there  were  certain  religious 
bonds  of  a  unifying  kind.  Certain  shrines,  the  shrines  of  the 
god  Apollo  in  the  island  of  Delos  and  at  Delphi,  for  example, 
were  sustained  not  by  single  states,  but  by  leagues  of  states  or 
Amphictyonies  (—  League  of  neighbours),  which  in  such  in- 
stances as  the  Delphic  amphictyony  became  very  wide-reaching 
unions.  The  league  protected  the  shrine  and  the  safety  of 


2G4  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

pilgrims,  kept  up  the  roads  leading  thereunto,  secured  peace  at 
the  time  of  special  festivals,  upheld  certain  rules  to  mitigate 
the  usages  of  war  among  its  members,  and — the  Delian  league 
especially — suppressed  piracy.  A  still  more  important  link  of 
Hellenic  union  was  the  Olympian  games  that  were  held  every 
four  years  at  Olympia.  Foot  races,  boxing,  wrestling,  javelin 
throwing,  quoit  throwing,  jumping,  and  chariot  and  horse  racing 
were  the  chief  sports,  and  a  record  of  victors  and  distinguished 
visitors  was  kept.  From  the  year  776  B.C.  onward  1  these  games 
were  held  regularly  for  over  a  thousand  years,  and  they  did 
much  to  maintain  that  sense  of  a  common  Greek  life  (pan- 
Hellenic)  transcending  the  narrow  politics  of  the  city  states. 

Such  links  of  sentiment  and  association  were  of  little  avail 
against  the  intense  "separatism"  of  the  Greek  political  institu- 
tions. From  the  History  of  Herodotus  the  student  will  be  able 
to  gather  a  sense  of  the  intensity  and  persistence  of  the  feuds 
that  kept  the  Greek  world  in  a  state  of  chronic  warfare.  In  the 
old  days  (say,  to  the  sixth  century  B.C.)  fairly  large  families 
prevailed  in  Greece,  and  something  of  the  old  Aryan  great 
household  system  (see  Chap.  XX),  with  its  strong  clan  feeling 
and  its  capacity  for  maintaining  an  enduring  feud,  still  re- 
mained. The  history  of  Athens  circles  for  many  years  about 
the  feud  of  two  great  families,  the  Alcma?onida3  and  the  Peisis- 
tratidse ;  the  latter  equally  an  aristocratic  family,  but  founding 
its  power  on  the  support  of  the  poorer  class  of  the  populace 
and  the  exploitation  of  their  grievances.  Later  on,  in  the  sixth 
and  fifth  centuries,  a  limitation  of  births  and  a  shrinkage  of 
families  to  two  or  three  members — a  process  Aristotle  notes 
without  perceiving  its  cause — led  to  the  disappearance  of  the 
old  aristocratic  clans,  and  the  later  wars  were  due  rather  to 
trade  disputes  and  grievances  caused  and  stirred  up  by  indi- 
vidual adventurers  than  to  family  vendettas. 

It  is  easy  to  understand,  in  view  of  this  intense  separatism 
of  the  Greeks,  how  readily  the  lonians  of  Asia  and  of  the 
islands  fell  first  under  the  domination  of  the  kingdom  of  Lydia, 
and  then  under  that  of  the  Persians  when  Cyrus  overthrew 
Croesus,  the  king  of  Lydia.  They  rebelled  only  to  be  recon- 
quered. Then  came  the  turn  of  European  Greece.  It  is  a 
matter  of  astonishment,  the  Greeks  themselves  were  astonished, 

1 776  B.C.  is  the  year  of  the  First  Olympiad,  a  valuable  starting-point  in 
Greek   chronology. 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  265 

to  find  that  Greece  itself  did  not  fall  under  the  dominion  of 
the  Persians,  these  barbaric  Aryan  masters  of  the  ancient  civili- 
zations of  Western  Asia.  But  before  we  tell  of  this  struggle 
we  must  give  some  attention  to  these  Asiatics  against  whom  they 
were  pitted ;  and  particularly  to  these  Medes  and  Persians  who, 
by  538  B.C.,  were  already  in  possession  of  the  ancient  civiliza- 
tions of  Assyria,  Babylonia  and  about  to  subjugate  Egypt. 

§4 

We  have  had  occasion  to  mention  the  kingdom  of  Lydia,  and 
it  may  be  well  to  give  a  short  note  here  upon  the  Lydians  before 
proceeding  with  our  story.  The  original  population  of  the 
larger  part  of  Asia  Minor  may  perhaps  have  been  akin  to  the 
original  population  of  Greece  and  Crete.  If  so,  it  was  of 
"Mediterranean"  race.  Or  it  may  have  been  another  branch  of 
those  still  more  generalized  and  fundamental  darkish  peoples 
from  whom  arose  the  Mediterranean  race  to  the  west  and  the 
Dravidians  to  the  east.  Eemains  of  the  same  sort  of  art  that 
distinguishes  Cnossos  and  Mycenae  are  to  be  found  scattered 
over  Asia  Minor.  But  just  as  the  Nordic  Greeks  poured  south- 
ward into  Greece  to  conquer  and  mix  with  the  aborigines,  so 
did  other  and  kindred  Nordic  tribes  pour  over  the  Bosphorus 
into  Asia  Minor.  Over  some  areas  these  Aryan  peoples  pre- 
vailed altogether,  and  became  the  bulk  of  the  inhabitants  and 
retained  their  Aryan  speech.  Such  were  the  Phrygians,  a  peo- 
ple whose  language  was  almost  as  close  to  that  of  the  Greeks  as 
the  Macedonian.  But  over  other  areas  the  Aryans  did  not  so 
prevail.  In  Lydia  the  original  race  and  their  language  held 
their  own.  The  Lydians  were  a  non-Aryan  people  speaking  a 
non-Aryan  speech,  of  which  at  the  present  time  only  a  few 
words  are  known.  Their  capital  city  was  Sardis. 

Their  religion  was  also  non-Aryan.  They  worshipped  a 
Great  Mother  goddess.  The  Phrygians  also,  though  retaining 
their  Greek-like  language,  became  infected  with  mysterious 
religion,  and  much  of  the  mystical  religion  and  secret  cere- 
monial that  pervaded  Athens  at  a  later  date  was  Phrygian 
(when  not  Thracian)  in  origin. 

At  first  the  Lydians  held  the  western  sea-coast  of  Asia  Minor, 
but  they  were  driven  back  from  it  by  the  establishment  of 
Ionian  Greeks  coming  by  the  sea  and  founding  cities.  Later 


266  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

on,  however,  these  Ionian  Greek  cities  were  brought  into  sub- 
jection by  the  Lydian  kings. 

The  history  of  this  country  is  not  clearly  known,  and  were 
it  known  it  would  scarcely  be  of  sufficient  importance  to  be 
related  in  this  historical  outline,  but  in  the  eighth  century  B.C. 
one  monarch,  named  Gyges,  becomes  noteworthy.  The  country 
under  his  rule  was  subjected  to  another  Aryan  invasion;  certain 
nomadic  tribes  called  the  Cimmerians  came  pouring  across  Asia 
Minor,  and  they  were  driven  back  with  difficulty  by  Gyges  and 
his  son  and  grandson.  Sardis  was  twice  taken  and  burnt  by 
these  barbarians.  And  it  is  on  record  that  Gyges  paid  tribute 
to  Sardanapalus,  which  serves  to  link  him  up  with  our  general 
ideas  of  the  history  of  Assyria,  Israel,  and  Egypt.  Later  Gyges 
rebelled  against  Assyria,  and  sent  troops  to  help  Psammetichus  I 
to  liberate  Egypt  from  its  brief  servitude  to  the  Assyrians. 

It  was  Alyattes,  the  grandson  of  Gyges,  who»made  Lydia  into 
a  considerable  power.  He  reigned  for  seven  years,  and  he  re- 
duced most  of  the-  Ionian  cities  of  Asia  Minor  to  subjection. 
The  country  became  the  centre  of  a  great  trade  between  Asia 
and  Europe;  it  had  always  been  productive  and  rich  in  gold, 
and  now  the  Lydian  monarch  was  reputed  the  richest  in  Asia. 
There  was  a  great  coming  and  going  between  the  Black  and 
Mediterranean  Seas,  and  between  the  East  and  West.  We  have 
already  noted  that  Lydia  was  reputed  to  be  the  first  country  in 
the  world  to  produce  coined  money,  and  to  provide  the  conven- 
ience of  inns  for  travellers  and  traders.  The  Lycian  dynasty 
seems  to  have  been  a  trading  dynasty  of  the  type  of  Minos  in 
Crete,  with  a  banking  and  financial  development.  ...  So  much 
we  may  note  of  Lydia  by  way  of  preface  to  the  next  section. 

§  5 

Now  while  one  series  of  Aryan-speaking  invaders  had  de- 
veloped along  the  lines  we  have  described  in  Greece,  Magna 
Grsecia,  and  around  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea,  another  series 
of  Aryan-speaking  peoples,  whose  originally  Nordic  blood  was 
perhaps  already  mixed  with  a  Mongolian  element,  were  settling 
and  spreading  to  the  north  and  east  of  the  Assyrian  and  Baby- 
lonian empires.  We  have  already  spoken  of  the  arc-like  dis- 
persion of  the  Nordic  Aryan  peoples  to  the  north  of  the  Black 
and  Caspian  Seas ;  it  was  probably  by  this  route  that  the  Aryan- 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  267 

speaking  races  gradually  came  down  into  what  is  now  the 
Persian  country,  and  spread,  on  the  one  hand,  eastward  to  India 
(  ?  2,000  to  1,000  B.C.),  and  on  the  other,  increased  and  multi- 
plied in  the  Persian  uplands  until  they  were  strong  enough  to 
assail  first  Assyria  (650  B.C.)  and  then  Babylon  (538  B.C.). 

There  is  much  that  is  not  yet  clear  about  the  changes  of 
climate  that  have  been  going  on  in  Europe  and  Asia  during  the 
last  10,000  years.  The  ice  of  the  last  glacial  age  receded  grad- 
ually, and  gave  way  to  a  long  period  of  steppe  or  prairie-like 
conditions  over  the  great  plain  of  Europe.  About  12,000  or 
10,000  years  ago,  as  it  is  reckoned  now,  this  state  of  affairs 
was  giving  place  to  forest  conditions.  We  have  already  noted 
how,  as  a  consequence  of  these  changes,  the  Solutrian  horse 
hunters  gave  place  to  Magdalenian  fishers  and  forest  deer 
hunters ;  and  these,  again,  to  the  Neolithic  herdsmen  and  agri- 
culturists. For  some  thousands  of  years  the  European  climate 
seems  to  have  been  warmer  than  it  is  to-day.  A  great  sea  spread 
from  the  coast  of  the  Balkan  peninsula  far  into  Central  Asia 
and  extended  northward  into  Central  Eussia,  and  the  shrinkage 
of  that  sea  arid  the  consequent  hardening  of  the  climate  of  South 
Russia  and  Central  Asia  was  going  on  contemporaneously  with 
the  development  of  the  first  civilizations  in  the  river  valleys. 
Many  facts  seem  to  point  to  a  more  genial  climate  in  Europe 
and  Western  Asia,  and  still  more  strongly  to  a  greater  luxuri- 
ance of  plant  and  vegetable  life,  4,000  to  3,000  years  ago,  than 
we  find  to-day.  There  were  forests  then  in  South  Russia  and 
in  the  country  which  is  now  Western  Turkestan,  where  now 
steppes  and  deserts  prevail.  On  the  other  hand,  between  1,500 
and  2,000  years  kgo,  the  Aral-Caspian  region  was  probably 
drier  and  those  seas  smaller  than  they  are  at  the  present  time. 

We  may  note  in  this  connection  that  Thotmes  III  (say,  the 
fifteenth  century  B.C.),  in  his  expedition  beyond  the  Euphrates, 
hunted  a  herd  of  120  elephants  in  that  region.  Again,  an 
^Egean  dagger  from  Mycenae,  dating  about  2,000  B.C.,  shows  a 
lion-hunt  in  progress.  The  hunters  carry  big  shields  and  spears, 
and  stand  in  rows  one  behind  the  other.  The  first  man  spears 
the  lion,  and  when  the  wounded  beast  leaps  at  him,  drops  flat 
under  the  protection  of  his  big  shield,  leaving  the  next  man  to 
repeat  his  stroke,  and  so  on,  until  the  lion  is  speared  to  death. 
This  method  of  hunting  is  practised  by  the  Masai  to-day,  and 
could  only  have  been  worked  out  by  a  people  in  a  land  where 


268  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

lions  were  abundant.  But  abundant  lions  imply  abundant  game, 
and  that  again  means  abundant  vegetation.  About  2,000  B.C. 
the  hardening  of  the  climate  in  the  central  parts  of  the  Old 
World,  to  which  we  have  already  referred,  which  put  an  end 
to  elephants  and  lions  in  Asia  Minor  and  Greece,1  was  turning 
the  faces  of  the  nomadic  Aryan  peoples  southward  towards  the 
fields  and  forests  of  the  more  settled  and  civilized  nations. 

These  Aryan  peoples  come  down  from  the  East  Caspian 
regions  into  history  about  the  time  that  Mycenae  and  Troy  and 
Cnossos  are  falling  to  the  Greeks.  It  is  difficult  to  disentangle 
the  different  tribes  and  races  that  appear  under  a  multitude  of 
names  in  the  records  and  inscriptions  that  record  their  first  ap- 
pearance, but,  fortunately,  these  distinctions  are  not  needed  in 
an  elementary  outline  such  as  this  present  history.  A  people 
called  the  Cimmerians  appear  in  the  districts  of  Lake  Urumiya 
and  Van,  and  shortly  after  Aryans  have  spread  from  Armenia 
to  Elam.  In  the  ninth  century  B.C.,  a  people  called  the  Medes, 
very  closely  related  to  the  Persians  to  the  east  of  them,  appear 
in  the  Assyrian  inscriptions.  Tiglath  Pileser  III  and  Sargon 
II,  names  already  familiar  in  this  story,  profess  to  have  made 
them  pay  tribute.  They  are  spoken  of  in  the  inscriptions  as  the 
"dangerous  Medes."  They  are  as  yet  a  tribal  people,  not  united 
under  one  king. 

About  the  ninth  century  B.C.  Elam  and  the  Elamites,  whose 
capital  was  Susa,  a  people  which  possessed  a  tradition  and 
civilization  at  least  as  old  as  the  Sumerian,  suddenly  vanish 
from  history.  We  do  not  know  what  happened.  They  seem 
to  have  been  overrun  and  the  population  absorbed  by  the  con- 
querors. Susa  is  in  the  hands  of  the  Persians. 

A  fourth  people,  related  to  these  Aryan  tribes,  who  appear 
at  this  time  in  the  narrative  of  Herodotus,  are  the  "Scythians." 
For  a  while  the  monarchs  of  Assyria  play  off  these  various 
kindred  peoples,  the  Cimmerians,  the  Medes,  the  Persians,  and 

1  It  is,  at  least,  doubtful  whether  any  change  of  climate  expelled  either 
lion  or  elephant  from  southeast  Europe  and  Asia  Minor;  the  cause  of 
their  gradual  disappearance  was — I  think — nothing  but  Man,  increasingly 
well  armed  for  the  chase.  Lions  lingered  in  the  Balkan  peninsula  till 
about  the  fourth  century  B.C.,  if  not  later.  Elephants  had  perhaps  dis- 
appeared from  western  Asia  by  the  eighth  century  B.C.  The  lion  (much 
bigger  than  the  existing  form)  stayed  on  in  southern  Germany  till  the 
Neolithic  period.  The  panther  inhabited  Greece,  southern  Italy,  and 
southern  Spain  likewise  till  the  beginning  of  the  historical  period  (say 
1,000  B.C.).— H.  H.  J. 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS 


269 


the  Scythians,  against  each  other.  Assyrian  princesses  (a 
daughter  of  Esarhaddon,  e.g.)  are  married  to  Scythian  chiefs. 
^Nebuchadnezzar  the  Great,  on  the 
other  hand,  marries  a  daugh- 
ter of  Cyaxares,  who  has  become 
king  of  all  the  Medes.  The  Aryan 
Scythians  are  for  the  Semitic 
Assyrians;  the  Aryan  Medes  for 
the  Semitic  Babylonians.  It  was 
this  Cyaxares  who  took  Nine- 
veh, the  Assyrian  capital,  in  GO  6 
B.C.,  and  so  released  Babylon  from 
the  Assyrian  yoke  to  establish, 
under  Chaldean  rule,  the  Second 
Babylonian  Empire.  The  Scyth- 
ian allies  of  Assyria  drop  out  of 
the  story  after  this.  They  go  on 
living  their  own  life  away  to  the 
north  without  much  interference 
with  the  peoples  to  the  south.  A 
glance  at  the  map  of  this 
period  shows  how,  for  two-thirds 
of  a  century,  the  Second  Baby- 
lonian Empire  lay  like  a  lamb 
within  the  embrace  of  the  Median 
lion. 

Into  the  internal  struggles  of 
the  Medes  and  Persians,  that 
ended  at  last  in  the  accession  of 
Cyrus  "the  Persian"  to  the 
throne  of  Cyaxares  in  550  B.C., 
we  will  not  enter.  In  that  year 
Cyrus  was  ruling  over  an  empire 
that  reached  from  the  boundaries 
of  Lydia  to  Persia  and  perhaps 
to  India.  Nabonidus,  the  last  of 
the  Babylonian  rulers,  was,  as  we  have  already  told,  digging  up 
old  records  and  buildicg  temples  in  Babylonia. 


0 


270 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


§  6 

But  one  monarch  in  the  world  was  alive  to  the  threat  of  the 
new  power  that  lay  in  the  hands  of  Cyrus.  This  was  Croesus, 
the  Lydian  king.  His  son  had  been  killed  in  a  very  tragic  man- 
ner, which  Herodotus  relates,  but  which  we  will  not  describe 
here.  Says  Herodotus : 

"For  two  years  then,  Croesus  remained  quiet  in  great  mourn- 
ing, because  he  was  deprived  of  his  son;  but  after  this  period 
of  time,  the  overthrowing  of  the  rule  of  the  son  of  Cyaxares 


TViaxr  ,5/umnj 
of  A* 

Second.  BABYLONIAN: 


by  Cyrus,  and  the  growing  greatness  of  the  Persians,  caused 
Croesus  to  cease  from  his  mourning,  and  led  him  to  .a  care  of 
cutting  short  the  power  of  the  Persians  if  by  any  means  he 
might,  while  yet  it  was  in  growth  and  before  they  should  have 
become  great." 

He  then  made  trial  of  the  various  oracles. 

"To  the  Lydians  who  were  to  carry  these  gifts  to  the  temples 
Croesus  gave  charge  that  they  should  ask  the  Oracles  this  que,*- 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  271 

tion:  whether  Croesus  should  inarch  against  the  Persians,  and, 
if  so,  whether  he  should  join  with  himself  any  army  of  men 
as  his  friends.  And  when  the  Lydians  had  arrived  at  the  places 
to  which  they  had  been  sent  and  had  dedicated  the  votive  offer- 
ings, they  inquired  of  the  Oracles,  and  said:  'Croesus,  king  of 
the  Lydians  and  of  other  nations,  considering  that  these  are 
the  only  true  Oracles  among  men,  presents  to  you  gifts  such 
as  your  revelations  deserve,  and  asks  you  again  now  whether 
he  shall  march  against  the  Persians,  and,  if  so,  whether  he  shall 
join  with  himself  any  army  of  men  as  allies.7  They  inquired 
thus,  and  the  answers  of  both  the  Oracles  agreed  in  one,  de- 
claring to  Croesus  that  if  he  should  march  against  the  Persians 
he  should  destroy  a  great  empire.  ...  So  when  the  answers 
were  brought  back  and  Croesus  heard  them,  he  was  delighted 
with  the  Oracles,  and  expecting  that  he  would  certainly  destroy 
the  kingdom  of  Cyrus,  he  sent  again  to  Pytho,  and  presented 
to  the  men  of  Delphi,  having  ascertained  the  number  of  them, 
two  staters  of  gold  for  each  man:  and  in  return  for  this  the 
Delphians  gave  to  Croesus  and  to  the  Lydians  precedence  in 
consulting  the  Oracle  and  freedom  from  all  payments,  and  the 
right  to  front  seats  at  the  games,  with  this  privilege  also  for 
all  time,  that  any  one  of  them  who  wished  should  be  allowed 
to  become  a  citizen  of  Delphi." 

So  Croesus  made  a  defensive  alliance  both  with  the  Lace- 
demonians and  the  Egyptians.  And  Herodotus  continues, 
"while  Croesus  was  preparing  to  march  against  the  Persians, 
one  of  the  Lydians,  who  even  before  this  time  was  thought  to 
be  a  wise  man,  but  in  consequence  of  this  opinion  got  a  very 
great  name  for  wisdom  among  the  Lydians,  advised  Croesus 
as  follows:  (O  king,  thou  art  preparing  to  march  against  men 
who  wear  breeches  of  leather,  and  the  rest  of  their  clothing  is  of 
leather  also;  and  they  eat  food  not  such  as  they  desire,  but  such 
as  they  can  obtain,  dwelling  in  a  land  which  is  rugged;  and, 
moreover,  they  make  no  use  of  wine  but  drink  water;  and  no 
figs  have  they  for  dessert,  nor  any  other  good  thing.  On  the 
one  hand,  if  thou  shalt  overcome  them,  what  wilt  thou  take 
away  from  them,  seeing  they  have  nothing?  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  thou  shalt  be  overcome,  consider  how  many  good  things 
thou  wilt  lose ;  for  once  having  tasted  our  good  things,  they  will 
cling  to  them  fast,  and  it  will  not  be  possible  to  drive  them  away. 
I?  for  my  own  part?  feel  gratitude  to  the  gods  that  they  do  not 


272  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

put  it  into  the  minds  of  the  Persians  to  march  against  the 
Lydians.'  Thus  he  spoke  not  persuading  Croesus ;  for  it  is  true 
indeed  that  the  Persians  hefore  they  subdued  the  Lydians  had 
no  luxury  nor  any  good  thing." 

Croesus  and  Cyrus  fought  an  indecisive  battle  at  Pteria,  from 
which  Croesus  retreated.  Cyrus  followed  him  up,  and  he  gave 
battle  outside  his  capital  town  of  Sardis.  The  chief  strength 
of  the  Lydians  lay  in  their  cavalry;  they  were  excellent,  if 
undisciplined,  horsemen,  and  fought  with  long  spears. 

"Cyrus,  when  he  saw  the  Lydians  being  arrayed  for  battle, 
fearing  their  horsemen,  did  on  the  suggestion  of  Harpagos,  a 
Mede,  as  follows:  All  the  camels  which  were  in  the  train  of 
his  army  carrying  provisions  and  baggage  he  gathered  together 
and  he  took  off  their  burdens  and  set  men  upon  them  provided 
with  the  equipment  of  cavalry;  and,  having  thus  furnished 
them,  forth  he  appointed  them  to  go  in  front  of  the  rest  of 
the  a-rmy  towards  the  horsemen  of  Croesus ;  and  after  the  camel- 
troop  he  ordered  the  infantry  to  follow ;  and  behind  the  infantry 
he  placed  his  whole  force  of  cavalry.  Then,  when  all  his  men 
had  been  placed  in  their  several  positions,  he  charged  them 
to  spare  none  of  the  other  Lydians,  slaying  all  who  might  come 
in  their  way,  but  Croesus  himself  they  were  not  to  slay,  not  even 
if  he  should  make  resistance  when  he  was  being  captured.  Such 
was  his  charge :  and  he  set  the  camels  opposite  the  horsemen  for 
this  reason — because  the  horse  has  a  fear  of  the  camel  and 
cannot  endure  either  to  see  his  form  or  to  scent  his  smell:  for 
this  reason  then  the  trick  had  been  devised,  in  order  that  the 
cavalry  of  Croesus  might  be  useless,  that  very  force  wherewith 
the  Lydian  king  was  expecting  most  to  shine.  And  as  they 
were  coming  together  to  the  battle,  so  soon  as  the  horses  scented 
the  camels  and  saw  them,  they  turned  away  back,  and  the  hopes 
of  Croesus  were  at  once  brought  to  nought." 

In  fourteen  days  Sardis  was  stormed  and  Croesus  taken 
prisoner.  .  .  . 

"So  the  Persians  having  taken  him  brought  him  into  the 
presence  of  Cyrus;  and  he  piled  up  a  great  pyre  and  caused 
Croesus  to  go  up  upon  it  bound  in  fetters,  and  along  with  him 
twice  seven  sons  of  Lydians,  whether  it  was  that  he  meant  to 
dedicate  this  offering  as  first-fruits  of  his  victory  to  some  god, 
or  whether  he  desired  to  fulfil  a  vow,  or  else  had  heard  that 
Croesus  was  a  god-fearing  man,  and  so  caused  him  to  go  up  on 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  273 

the  pyre  because  lie  wished  to  know  if  any  one  of  the  divine 
powers  would  save  him,  so  that  he  should  not  he  hurnt  alive. 
He,  they  say,  did  this ;  but  to  Croesus  as  he  stood  upon  the  pyre 
there  came,  although  he  was  in  such  evil  case,  a  memory  of 
the  saying  of  Solon,  how  he  had  said  with  divine  inspiration 
that  no  one  of  the  living  might  be  called  happy.  And  when 
this  thought  came  into  his  mind,  they  say  that  he  sighed  deeply 
and  groaned  aloud,  having  been  for  long  silent,  and  three  times 
he  uttered  the  name  of  Solon.  Hearing  this,  Cyrus  bade  the 
interpreters  ask  Croesus  who  was  this  person  on  whom  he  called ; 
and  they  came  near  and  asked.  And  Croesus  for  a  time,  it  is 
said,  kept  silence  when  he  was  asked  this,  but  afterwards,  being 
pressed,  he  said :  'One  whom  more  than  much  wealth  I  should 
have  desired  to  have  speech  with  all  monarchs.'  Then,  since  his 
words  were  of  doubtfiil  import,  they  asked  again  of  that  which 
he  said;  and  as  they  were  urgent  with  him  and  gave  him  no 
peace,  he  told  how  once  Solon,  an  Athenian,  had  come  and 
having  inspected  all  his  wealth  had  made  light  of  it,  with  such 
and  such  words ;  and  how  all  had  turned  out  for  him  according 
as  Solon  had  said,  not  speaking  at  all  especially  with  a  view  to 
Croesus  himself,  but  with  a  view  to  the  whole  human  race,  and 
especially  those  who  seem  to  themselves  to  be  happy  men.  And 
while  Croesus  related  these  things,  already  the  pyre  was  lighted 
and  the  edges  of  it  round  about  were  burning.  Then  they  say 
that  Cyrus,  hearing  from  the  interpreters  what  Croesus  had 
said,  changed  his  purpose  and  considered  that  he  himself  also 
was  but  a  man,  and  that  he  was  delivering  another  man,  who 
had  been  not  inferior  to  himself  in  felicity,  alive  to  the  fire; 
and,  moreover,  he  feared  the  requital,  and  reflected  that  there 
was  nothing  of  that  which  men  possessed  which  was  secure; 
therefore,  they  say,  he  ordered  them  to  extinguish  as  quickly 
as  possible  the  fire  that  was  burning,  and  to  bring  down  Croesus 
and  those  who  were  with  him  from  the  pyre;  and  they,  using 
endeavours,  were  not  able  now  to  get  the  mastery  of  the  flames. 
Then  it  is  related  by  the  Lydians  that  Croesus,  having  learned 
how  Cyrus  had  changed  his  mind,  and  seeing  that  every  one  was 
trying  to  put  out  the  fire,  but  that  they  were  no  longer  able 
to  check  it,  cried  aloud,  entreating  Apollo  that  if  any  gift  had 
ever  been  given  by  him  which  was  acceptable  to  the  god,  he 
would  come  to  his  aid  and  rescue  him  from  the  evil  which  was 
now  upon  him.  So  he  with  tears  entreated  the  god,  and  sud- 


THE  OUTLINE  OF 

denly,  they  say,  after  dear  sky  and  calm  weather  clouds  gathered 
and  a  storm  burst,  and  it  rained  with  a  very  violent  shower, 
and  the  pyre  was  extinguished. 

"Then  Cyrus,  having  perceived  that  Croesus  was  a  lover  of 
the  gods  and  a  good  man,  caused  him  to  be  brought  down  from 
the  pyre  and  asked  him  as  follows:  'Crcesus,  tell  me  who  of 
all  men  was  it  who  persuaded  thee  to  march  upon  my  land  and 
so  to  become  an  enemy  to  me  instead  of  a  friend  ?'  And  he  said : 
*O  king,  I  did  this  to  thy  felicity  and  to  my  own  misfortune, 
and  the  causer  of  this  was  the  god  of  the  Hellenes,  who  incited 
me  to  march  with  my  army.  For  no  one  is  so  senseless  as  to 
choose  of  his  own  will  war  rather  than  peace,  since  in  peace 
the  sons  bury  their  fathers,  but  in  war  the  fathers  bury  their 
sons.  But  it  was  pleasing,  I  suppose,  to  the  divine  powers  that 
these  things  should  come  to  pass  thus.' ? 

So  Croesus  became  a  councillor  of  Cyrus,  and  lived  in  Baby- 
lon. When  Lydia  was  subdued,  Cyrus  turned  his  attention  ta 
Nabonidus  in  Babylon.  He  defeated  the  Babylonian  army, 
under  Belshazzar,  outside  Babylon,  and  then  laid  siege  to  the 
town.  He  entered  the  town  (538  B.C.),  probably  as  we  have 
already  suggested,  with  the  connivance  of  the  priests  of  Bel. 

§7 

Cyrus  was  succeeded  by  his  son  Cambyses,  who  took  an  army 
into  Egypt  (525  B.C.).  There  was  a  battle  in  the  delta,  in 
which  Greek  mercenaries  fought  on  both  sides.  Herodotus 
declares  that  he  saw  the  bones  of  the  slain  still  lying  on  the 
field  fifty  or  sixty  years  later,  and  comments  on  the  comparative 
thinness  of  the  Persian  skulls.  After  this  battle  Cambyses  took 
Memphis  and  most  of  Egypt. 

In  Egypt,  we  are  told,  Cambyses  went  mad.  He  took  great 
liberties  with  the  Egyptian  temples,  and  remained  at  Memphis 
"opening  ancient  tombs  and  examining  the  dead  bodies."  He 
had  already  murdered  both  Croesus,  ex-king  of  Lydia,  and  his 
own  brother  Smerdis  before  coming  to  Egypt,  and  he  died  in 
Syria  on  the  way  back  to  Susa  of  an  accidental  wound,  leaving 
no  heirs  to  succeed  him.  He  was  presently  succeeded  by  Darius 
the  Mede  (521  B.C.),  the  son  of  Hystaspes,  one  of  the  chief 
councillors  of  Cyrus. 

The  empire  of  Darius  I  was  larger  than  any  one  of  the  pre- 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  275 

ceding  empires  whose  growth  we  have  traced.  It  included  all 
Asia  Minor  and  Syria,  that  is  to  say,  the  ancient  Lydian  and 
Hittite  empires,  all  the  old  Assyrian  and  Babylonian  empire^, 
Egypt,  the  Caucasus  and  Caspian  regions,  Media,  Persia,  and 
it  extended,  perhaps,  into  India  to  the  Indus.  The  nomadic 
Arabians  alone  of  all  the  peoples  of  what  is  nowadays  called  the 
Near  East,  did  not  pay  tribute  to  the  satraps  (provincial  gover- 
nors) of  Darius.  The  organization  of  this  great  empire  seems 
to  have  been  on  a  much  higher  level  of  efficiency  than  any  of 
its  precursors.  Great  arterial  roads  joined  province  to  prov- 
ince, and  there  was  a  system  of  royal  posts ;  *  at  stated  intervals 
post  horses, stood  always  ready  to  carry  the  government  messen- 
ger, or  the  traveller  if  he  had  a  government  permit,  on  to  the 
next  stage  of  his  journey.  Apart  from  this  imperial  right-of- 
way  and  the  payment  of  tribute,  the  local  governments  possessed 
a  very  considerable  amount  of  local  freedom.  They  were  re- 
strained from  internecine  conflict,  which  was  all  to  their  own 
good.  And  at  first  the  Greek  cities  of  the  mainland  of  Asia 
paid  the  tribute  and  shared  in  this  Persian  Peace. 

Darius  was  first  incited  to  attack  the  Greeks  in  Europe  by  a 
homesick  Greek  physician  at  his  court,  who  wanted  at  any 
cost  to  be  back  in  Greece.  Darius  had  already  made  plans  for 
an  expedition  into  Europe,  aiming  not  at  Greece,  but  to  the 
northward  of  Greece,  across  the  Bosphorus  and  Danube.  He 
wanted  to  strike  at  South  Russia,  which  he  believed  to  be  the 
home  country  of  the  Scythian  nomads  who  threatened  him  on 
his  northern  and  north-eastern  frontiers.  But  he  lent  an  at- 
tentive ear  to  the  tempter,  and  sent  agents  into  Greece. 

This  great  expedition  of  Darius  opens  out  our  view  in  this 
history.  It  lifts  a  curtain  upon  the  Balkan  country  behind 
Greece  about  which  we  have  said  nothing  hitherto;  it  carries 
us  to  and  over  the  Danube.  The  nucleus  of  his  army  marched 
from  Susa,  gathering  up  contingents  as  they  made  their  way 
to  the  Bosphorus.  Here  Greek  allies  (Ionian  Greeks  from 
Asia)  had  made  a  bridge  of  boats,  and  the  army  crossed  over 
while  the  Greek  allies  sailed  on  in  their  ships  to  the  Danube, 
and,  two  days'  sail  up  from  its  mouth,  landed  to  make  another 
floating  bridge.  Meanwhile,  Darius  and  his  host  advanced  along 
the  coast  of  what  is  now  Bulgaria,  but  which  was  then  called 

1  But  a  thousand  years  earlier  the  Hittites  seem  to  have  had  paved  high- 
roads running  across  their  country. 


276 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  277 

Thrace.     They  crossed  the  Danube,  and  prepared  to  give  battle 
to  the  Scythian  army  and  take  the  cities  of  the  Scythians. 

But  the  Scythians  had  no  cities,  and  they  evaded  a  battle, 
and  the  war  degenerated  into  a  tedious  and  hopeless  pursuit  of 
more  mobile  enemies.  Wells  were  stopped  up  and  pastures 
destroyed  by  the  nomads.  The  Scythian  horsemen  hung  upon 
the  skirts  of  the  great  army,  which  consisted  mostly  of  foot 
soldiers,  picking  off  stragglers  and  preventing  foraging;  and 
they  did  their  best  to  persuade  the  Ionian  Greeks,  who  had 
made  and  were  guarding  the  bridge  across  the  Danube,  to  break 
up  the  bridge,  and  so  ensure  the  destruction  of  Darius.  So 
long  as  Darius  continued  to  advance,  however,  the  loyalty  of 
his  Greek  allies  remained  unshaken. 

But  privation,  fatigue,  and  sickness  hindered  and  crippled 
the  Persian  army;  Darius  lost  many  stragglers  and  consumed 
his  supplies,  and  at  last  the  melancholy  conviction  dawned  upon 
him  that  a  retreat  across  the  Danube  was  necessary  to  save 
him  from  complete  exhaustion  and  defeat. 

In  order  to  get  a  start  in  his  retreat  he  sacrificed  his  sick  and 
wounded.  He  had  these  men  informed  that  he  was  about  to 
attack  the  Scythians  at  nightfall,  and  under  this  pretence  stole 
out  of  the  camp  with  the  pick  of  his  troops  and  made  off  south- 
ward, leaving  the  camp  fires  burning  and  the  usual  noises  and 
movements  of  the  camp  behind  him.  Next  day  the  men  left 
in  the  camp  realized  the  trick  their  monarch  had  played  upon 
them,  and  surrendered  themselves  to  the  mercy  of  the  Scythians ; 
but  Darius  had  got  his  start,  and  was  able  to  reach  the  bridge 
of  boats  before  his  pursuers  came  upon  him.  They  were  more 
mobile  than  his  troops,  but  they  missed  their  quarry  in  the 
darkness.  At  the  river  the  retreating  Persians  "were  brought 
to  an  extremity  of  fear,"  for  they  found  the  bridge  partially 
broken  down  and  its  northern  end  destroyed. 

At  this  point  a  voice  echoes  down  the  centuries  to  us.  We 
see  a  group  of  dismayed  Persians  standing  about  the  Great 
King  upon  the  bank  of  the  streaming  river ;  we  see  the  masses 
of  halted  troops,  hungry  and  war-worn;  a  trail  of  battered 
transport  stretches  away  towards  the  horizon,  upon  which  at 
any  time  the  advance  guards  of  the  pursuers  may  appear.  There 
is  not  much  noise  in  spite  of  the  multitude,  but  rather  an  in- 
quiring silence.  Standing  out  like  a  pier  from  the  further  side 
of  the  great  stream  are  the  remains  of  the  bridge  of  boats,  an 


278  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

enigma.  .  .  .  We  cannot  discern  whether  there  are  men  over 
there  or  not.  The  shipping  of  the  Ionian  Greeks  seems  still  to 
be  drawn  up  on  the  further  shore,  but  it  is  all  very  far  away. 

"Now  there  was  with  Darius  an  Egyptian  who  had  a  voice 
louder  than  that  of  any  other  man  on  earth,  and  this  man  Darius 
ordered  to  take  his  stand  upon  the  bank  of  the  Ister  (Danube) 
and  to  call  Histiseus  of  Miletus." 

This  worthy — a  day  is  to  come,  as  we  shall  presently  tell, 
when  his  decapitated  head  will  be  sent  to  Darius  at  Susa — 
appears  approaching  slowly  across  the  waters  in  a  boat. 

There  is  a  parley,  and  we  gather  that  it  is  "all  right." 

The  explanation  Histiseus  has  to  make  is  a  complicated  one. 
Some  Scythians  have  been  and  have  gone  again.  Scouts,  per- 
haps, these  were.  It  would  seem  there  had  been  a  discussion 
between  the  Scythians  and  the  Greeks.  The  Scythians  wanted 
the  bridge  broken  down ;  they  would  then,  they  said,  undertake 
to  finish  up  the  Persian  army  and  make  an  end  of  Darius  and 
his  empire,  and  the  Ionian  Greeks  of  Asia  could  then  free 
their  cities  again.  Miltiades,  the  Athenian,  was  for  accepting 
this  proposal.  But  Histiseus  had  been  more  subtle.  He  would 
prefer,  he  said,  to  see  the  Persians  completely  destroyed  before 
definitely  abandoning  their  cause.  Would  the  Scythians  go 
back  and  destroy  the  Persians  to  make  sure  of  them  while  the 
Greeks  on  their  part  destroyed  the  bridge?  Anyhow,  which- 
ever side  the  Greeks  took  finally,  it  was  clear  to  him  that  it 
would  be  wise  to  destroy  the  northern  end  of  the  bridge,  because 
otherwise  the  Scythians  might  rush  it.  Indeed,  even  as  they 
parleyed  the  Greeks  set  to  work  to  demolish  the  end  that  linked 
them  to  the  Scythians  as  quickly  as  possible.  In  accordance 
with  the  suggestions  of  Histiseus  the  Scythians  rode  off  in  search 
of  the  Persians,  and  so  left  the  Greeks  safe  in  either  event. 
If  Darius  escaped,  they  could  be  on  his  side;  if  he  were 
destroyed,  there  was  nothing  of  which  the  Scythians  could 
complain. 

Histiseus  did  not  put  it  quite  in  that  fashion  to  Darius.  He 
had  at  least  kept  the  shipping  and  most  of  the  bridge.  He 
represented  himself  as  the  loyal  friend  of  Persia,  and  Darius 
was  not  disposed  to  be  too  critical.  The  Ionian  ships  came 
over.  With  a  sense  of  immense  relief  the  remnant  of  the 
wasted  Persians  were  presently  looking  back  at  the  steely  flood 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  279 

of  the  Danube  streaming  wide  between  themselves  and  their 
pursuers.  .  .  . 

The  pleasure  and  interest  had  gone  out  of  the  European 
expedition  for  Darius.  He  returned  to  Susa,  leaving  an  army 
in  Thrace,  under  a  trusted  general  Megabazus.  This  Mega- 
bazus  set  himself  to  the  subjugation  of  Thrace,  and  among  other 
states  which  submitted  reluctantly  to  Darius  was  a  kingdom, 
which  thus  comes  into  our  history  for  the  first  time,  the  kingdom 
of  Macedonia,  a  country  inhabited  by  a  people  so  closely  allied 
to  the  Greeks  that  one  of  its  princes  had  already  been  allowed 
to  compete  and  take  a  prize  in  the  Olympian  games. 

Darius  was  disposed  to  reward  Histiseus  by  allowing  him 
to  build  a  city  for  himself  in  Thrace,  but  Megabazus  had  a  dif- 
ferent opinion  of  the  trustworthiness  of  Histiseus,  and  pre- 
vailed upon  the  king  to  take  him  to  Susa,  and,  under  the  title 
of  councillor,  to  keep  him  a  prisoner  there.  HistiaBus  was  at 
first  flattered  by  this  court  position,  and  then  realized  its  true 
meaning.  The  Persian  court  bored  him,  and  he  grew  homesick 
for  Miletus.  He  set  himself  to  make  mischief,  and  was  able 
to  stir  up  a  revolt  against  the  Persians  among  the  Ionian  Greeks 
on  the  mainland.  The  twistings  and  turnings  of  the  story,  which 
included  the  burning  of  Sardis  by  the  lonians  and  the  defeat 
of  a  Greek  fleet  at  the  battle  of  Lade  (495  B.C.),  are  too  com- 
plicated to  follow  here.  It  is  a  dark  and  intricate^  story  of 
treacheries,  cruelties,  and  hate,  in  which  the  death  of  the  wily 
Histiseus  shines  almost  cheerfully.  The  Persian  governor  of 
Sardis,  through  which  town  he  was  being  taken  on  his  way  back 
to  Susa  as  a  prisoner,  having  much  the  same  opinion  of  him 
as  Megabazus  had,  and  knowing  his  ability  to  humbug  Darius, 
killed  him  there  and  then,  and  sent  on  the  head  only  to  his 
master. 

Cyprus  and  the  Greek  islands  were  dragged  into  this  contest 
that  HistiaBus  had  stirred  up,  and  at  last  Athens.  Darius 
realized  the  error  he  had  made  in  turning  to  the  right  and  not 
to  the  left  when  he  had  crossed  the  Bosphorus,  and  he  now 
set  himself  to  the  conquest  of  all  Greece.  He  began  with  the 
islands.  Tyre  and  Sidon  were  subject  to  Persia,  and  ships  of 
the  Phoenician  and  of  the  Ionian  Greeks  provided  the  Persians 
with  a  fleet  by  means  of  which  one  Greek  island  after  another 
was  subjugated. 


280 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

§  8 


The  first  attack  upon  Greece  proper  was  made  in  490  B.C.  It 
was  a  sea  attack  upon  Athens,  with  a  force  long  and  carefully 
prepared  for  the  task,  thfe  fleet  being  provided  with  specially 


GREEK5  *n3  "PERSIANS* 


built  transports  for  the  conveyance  of  horses.  This  expedition 
made  a  landing  near  Marathon  in  Attica.  The  Persians  were 
guided  into  Marathon  by  a  renegade  Greek,  Hippias,  the  son 
of  Peisistratus,  who  had  been  tyrant  of  Athens.  If  Athens 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  281 

fell,  then  Hippias  was  to  be  its  tyrant,  under  the  protection 
of  the  Persians.  Meanwhile,  so  urgent  was  the  sense  of  a 
crisis  in  the  affairs  of  Hellas,  that  a  man,  a  herald  and  runner, 
went  from  Athens  to  Sparta,  forgetful  of  all  feuds,  to  say: 
"Lacedemonians,  the  Athenians  make  request  of  you  to  come  to 
their  help,  and  not  to  allow  a  city  most  anciently  established 
among  the  Hellenes  to  fall  into  slavery  by  the  means  of  Bar- 
barians ;  for  even  now  Eretria  has  been  enslaved  and  Hellas  has 
become  the  weaker  by  a  city  of  renown. "  This  man,  Pheidip- 
pides,  did  the  distance  from  Athens  to  Sparta,  nearly  a  hundred 
miles  as  the  crow  flies,  and  much  more  if  we  allow  for  the 
contours,  and  the  windings  of  the  way,  in  something  under 
eight  and  forty  hours. 

But  before  the  Spartans  could  arrive  on  the  scene  the  battle 
was  joined.  The  Athenians  charged  the  enemy.  They  fought 
— "in  a  memorable  fashion :  for  they  were  the  first  of  all  the 
Hellenes  about  whom  we  know  who  went  to  attack  the  enemy 
at  a  run,  and  they  were  the  first  also  who  endured  to  face  the 
Median  garments  and  the  men  who  wore  them,  whereas  up  to 
this  time  the  very  name  of  the  Medes  was  to  the  Hellenes  a 
terror  to  hear." 

The  Persian  wings  gave  before  this  impetuous  attack,  but 
the  centre  held.  The  Athenians,  however,  were  cool  as  well 
as  vigorous ;  they  let  the  wings  run  and  closed  in  on  the  flanks 
of  the  centre,  whereupon  the  main  body  of  the  Persians  fled 
to  their  ships.  Seven  vessels  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Athe- 
nians; the  rest  got  away,  and,  after  a  futile  attempt  to  sail 
round  to  Athens  and  seize  the  city  before  the  army  returned 
thither,  the  fleet  made  a  retreat  to  Asia.  Let  Herodotus  close 
the  story  with  a  paragraph  that  still  further  enlightens  us  upon 
the  tremendous  prestige  of  the  Medes  at  this  time : 

"Of  the  Lacedemonians  there  came  to  Athens  two  thousand 
after  the  full  moon,  making  great  haste  to  be  in  time,  so  that 
they  arrived  in  Attica  on  the  third  day  after  leaving  Sparta: 
and  though  they  had  come  too  late  for  the  battle,  yet  they  de- 
sired to  behold  the  Medes;  and  accordingly  they  went  on  to 
Marathon  and  looked  at  the  bodies  of  the  slain :  then  afterwards 
they  departed  home,  commending  the  Athenians  and  the  work 
which  they  had  done." 


282 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


§  9 

So  Greece,  unified  for  a  while  by  fear,  gained  her  first  victory 
over  Persia.  The  news  came  to  Darius  simultaneously  with 
the  news  of  a  rebellion  in 
Egypt,  and  he  died  while  still 
undecided  in  which  direction 
to  turn.  His  son  and  succes- 
sor, Xerxes,  turned  first  to 
Egypt  and  set  up  a  Persian 
satrap  there;  then  for  four 
years  he  prepared  a  second 
attack  upon  Greece.  Says 
Herodotus,  who  was,  one  must 
remember,  a  patriotic  Greek, 
approaching  now  to  the  climax 
of  his  History : 

"For  what  nation  did 
Xerxes  not  lead  out  of  Asia 
against  Hellas?  and  what 
water  was  not  exhausted, 
being  drunk  by  his  host,  ex- 
cept only  the  great  rivers? 
For  some  supplied  ships,  and 
others  were  appointed  to  serve 
in  the  land  army;  to  some  it 
was  appointed  to  furnish 
cavalry,  and  to  others  vessels 
to  carry  horses,  while  they 
served  in  the  expedition  them- 
selves also;  others  were  or- 
dered to  furnish  ships  of  war 
for  the  bridges,  and  others 
again  ships  with  provisions." 

Xerxes  passed  into  Europe, 
not  as  Darius  did  at  the  half- 
mile  crossing  of  the  Bos- 
phorus,  but  at  the  Hellespont 
(==  the  Dardanelles).  In  his  account  of  the  assembling  of  the 
great  army,  and  its  march  from  Sardis  to  the  Hellespont,  the 
poet  in  Herodotus  takes  possession  of  the  historian,  The  great 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  283 

host  passes  in  splendour  by  Troy,  and  Xerxes,  who  although  a 
Persian  and  a  Barbarian,  seems  to  have  had  the  advantages  of  a 
classical  education,  turns  aside,  says  our  historian,  to  visit  the 
citadel  of  Priam.  The  Hellespont  was  bridged  at  Abydos,  and 
upon  a  hill  was  set  a  marble  throne  from  which  Xerxes  sur- 
veyed the  whole  array  of  his  forces. 

"And  seeing  all  the  Hellespont  covered  over  with  the  ships 
and  all  the  shores  and  the  plains  of  Abydos  full  of  men,  then 
Xerxes  pronounced  himself  a  happy  man,  and  after  that  he 
fell  to  weeping.  Artabanus,  his  uncle,  therefore  perceiving 
him — the  same  who  at  first  boldly  declared  his  opinion  advising 
Xerxes  not  to  march  against  Hellas— this  man,  I  say,  having 
observed  Xerxes  wept,  asked  as  follows:  'O  king,  how  far 
different  from  one  another  are  the  things  which  thou  hast 
done  now  and  a  short  while  before  now !  for  having  pronounced 
thyself  a  happy  man,  thou  art  now  shedding  tears.'  He  said: 
'Yea,  for  after  I  had  reckoned  up,  it  came  into  my  mind  to 
feel  pity  at  the  thought  how  brief  was  the  whole  life  of  man, 
seeing  that  of  these  multitudes  not  one  will  be  alive  when  a 
hundred  years  have  gone  by.7 ' 

This  may  not  be  exact  history,  but  it  is  great  poetry.  It  is 
as  splendid  as  anything  in  The  Dynasts. 

The  Persian  fleet,  coasting  from  headland  to  headland,  ac- 
companied this  land  multitude  during  its  march  southward ;  but 
a  violent  storm  did  the  fleet  great  damage  and  400  ships  were 
lost,  including  much  corn  transport.  At  first  the  united  Hellenes 
marched  out  to  meet  the  invaders  at  the  Yale  of  Tempe  near 
Mount  Olympus,  but  afterwards  retreated  through  Thessaly, 
and  chose  at  last  to  await  the  advancing  Persians  at  a  place 
called  Thermopyla?,  where  at  that  time — 2,300  years  have 
altered  these  things  greatly — there  was  a  great  cliff  on  the  land- 
ward side  and  the  sea  to  the  east,  with  a  track  scarcely  wide 
enough  for  a  chariot  between.  The  great  advantage  to  the 
Greeks  of  this  position  at  Thermopylae  was  that  it  prevented  the 
use  of  either  cavalry  or  chariots,  and  narrowed  the  battle  front 
so  as  to  minimize  their  numerical  inequality.  And  there  the 
Persians  joined  battle  with  them  one  summer  day  in  the  year 
480  B.C. 

For  three  days  the  Greeks  held  this  great  army,  and  did 
them  much  damage  with  small  loss  to  themselves,  and  then 
on  the  third  day  a  detachment  of  Persians  appeared  upon  the 


284  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

rear  of  the  Greeks,  having  learnt  of  a  way  over  the  mountains 
from  a  peasant.  There  were  hasty  discussions  among  the  Greeks ; 
some  were  for  withdrawing,  some  for  holding  out.  The  leader 
of  the  whole  force,  Leonidas,  was  for  staying;  and  with  him 
he  would  keep,  he  said,  300  Spartans.  The  rest  of  the  Greek 
army  could,  meanwhile,  make  good  its  retreat  to  the  next  de- 
fensible pass.  The  Thespian  contingent  of  700,  however,  re- 
fused to  fall  back.  They  preferred  to  stay  and  die  with  the 
Spartans.  Also  a  contingent  of  400  Thebans  remained.  As 
Thebes  afterwards  joined  the  Persians,  there  is  a  story  that 
these  Thebans  were  detained  by  force  against  their  will,  which 
seems  on  military  as  well  as  historical  grounds  improbable. 
These  1,400  stayed,  and  were,  after  a  conflict  of  heroic  quality, 
slain  to  a  man.  Two  Spartans  happened  to  be  away,  sick  with 
ophthalmia.  When  they  heard  the  news,  one  was  too  ill  to 
move;  the  other  made  his  helot  guide  him  to  the  battle,  and 
there  struck  blindly  until  he  was  killed.  The  other,  Aristo- 
demus,  was  taken  away  with  the  retreating  troops,  and  returned 
to  Sparta,  where  he  was  not  actually  punished  for  his  conduct, 
but  was  known  as  Tresas,  "the  man  who  retreated."  It  was 
enough  to  distinguish  him  from  all  other  Spartans,  and  he  got 
himself  killed  at  the  Battle  of  Platsea  a  year  later,  performing 
prodigies  of  reckless  courage.  .  .  .  For  a  whole  day  this  little 
band  had  held  the  pass,  assailed  in  front  and  rear  by  the  whole 
force  of  the  Persians.  They  had  covered  the  retreat  of  the 
main  Greek  army,  they  had  inflicted  great  losses  on  the  in- 
vaders, and  they  had  raised  the  prestige  of  the  Greek  warrior 
over  that  of  the  Mede  higher  even  than  the  victory  of  Marathon 
had  done. 

The  Persian  cavalry  and  transport  filtered  slowly  through 
the  narrow  passage  of  Thermopylse,  and  marched  on  towards 
Athens,  while  a  series  of  naval  encounters  went  on  at  sea.  The 
Hellenic  fleet  retreated  before  the  advance  of  the  Persian  ship- 
ping, which  suffered  seriously  through  its  comparative  ignorance 
of  the  intricate  coasts  and  of  the  tricks  of  the  local  weather; 
Weight  of  numbers  carried  the  Persian  army  forward  to 
Athens;  now  that  Thermopylse  was  lost,  there  was  no  line  of 
defence  nearer  than  the  Isthmus  of  Corinth,  and  this  meant 
the  abandonment  of  all  the  intervening  territory,  including 
Athens.  The  population  had  either  to  fly  or  submit  to  the 
Persians.  Thebes  with  all  Boeotia  submitted,  and  was  pressed 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  285 

into  the  Persian  army,  except  one  town,  Platsea,  whose  in- 
habitants fled  to  Athens.  The  turn  of  Athens  came  next,  and 
great  efforts  were  made  to  persuade  her  to  make  terms;  but, 
instead,  the  whole  population  determined  to  abandon  everything 
and  take  to  the  shipping.  The  women  and  non-combatants  were 
carried  to  Salamis  and  various  adjacent  islands.  Only  a  few 
people  too  old  to  move  and  a  few  dissentients  remained  in  the 
town,  which  was  occupied  by  the  Persians  and  burnt.  The 
sacred  objects,  statues,  etc.,  which  were  burnt  at  this  time,  were 
afterwards  buried  in  the  Acropolis  by  the  returning  Athenians, 
and  have  been  dug  up  in  our  own  day  with  the  marks  of  burn- 
ing visible  upon  them.  Xerxes  sent  off  a  mounted  messenger 
to  Susa  with  the  news,  and  he  invited  the  sons  of  Peisistratus, 
whom  he  had  brought  back  with  him,  to  enter  upon  their  in- 
heritance and  sacrifice  after  the  Athenian  manner  upon  the 
Acropolis. 

Meanwhile,  the  Hellenic  confederate  fleet  had  come  round  to 
Salamis,  and  in  the  council  of  war  there  were  bitter  differences 
of  opinion.  Corinth  and  the  states  behind  the  Isthmus  wanted 
the  fleet  to  fall  back  to  that  position,  abandoning  the  cities  of 
Megara  and  ^Egina.  Themistocles  insisted  with  all  his  force 
on  fighting  in  the  narrows  of  Salamis.  The  majority  was 
steadily  in  favour  of  retreat,  when  there  suddenly  arrived  the 
news  that  retreat  was  cut  off.  The  Persians  had  sailed  round 
Salamis  and  held  the  sea  on  the  other  side.  This  news  was 
brought  by  that  Aristides  the  Just,  of  whose  ostracism  we  have 
already  told;  his  sanity  and  eloquence  did  much  to  help 
Themistccles  to  hearten  the  hesitating  commanders.  These  two 
men  had  formerly  been  bitter  antagonists ;  but,  with  a  generos- 
ity rare  in  those  days,  they  forgot  their  differences  before  the 
common  danger.  At  dawn  the  Greek  ships  pulled  out  to  battle. 

The  fleet  before  them  was  a  fleet  more  composite  and  less 
united  than  their  own.  But  it  was  about  three  times  as  great. 
On  one  wing  were  the  Phoenicians,  on  the  other  Ionian  Greeks 
from  Asia  and  the  Islands.  Some  of  the  latter  fought  stoutly ; 
others  remembered  that  they,  too,  were  Greeks.  The  Greek  ships, 
on  the  other  hand,  were  mostly  manned  by  freemen  fighting  for 
their  homes.  Throughout  the  early  hours  the  battle  raged  con- 
fusedly. Then  it  became  evident  to  Xerxes,  watching  the  combat, 
that  his  fleet  was  attempting  flight.  The  flight  became  disaster. 

Xerxes  had  taken  his  seat  to  watch  the  battle.     He  saw  his 


286 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


galleys  rammed  by  the  sharp  prows  of  other  galleys ;  his  fight- 
ing-men shot  down ;  his  ships  boarded.  Much  of  the  sea-fighting 
in  those  days  was  done  by  ramming ;  the  big  galleys  bore  down 
their  opponents  by  superior  weight  of  impact,  or  sheared  off 
their  oars  and  so  destroyed  their  manoeuvring  power  and  left 
them  helpless.  Presently,  Xerxes  saw  that  some  of  his  broken 


0 


Soldiers'  of 

bodyguard 


(From,  &vzz&  in  th& 
022jd fence  Kali  of 
Darws  at  5usa,.) 


ships  were  surrendering.  In  the  water  he  could  see  the  heads 
of  Greeks  swimming  to  land;  but  "of 'the  Barbarians  the  greater 
number  perished  in  the  sea,  not  knowing  how  to  swim."  The 
clumsy  attempt  of  the  hard-pressed  first  line  of  the  Persian 
fleet  to  put  about  led  to  indescribable  confusion.  Some  were 
rammed  by  the  rear  ships  of  their  own  side.  This  ancient  ship- 
ping was  poor,  unseaworthy  stuff  by  any  modern  standards. 
The  west  wind  was  blowing  and  many  of  the  broken  ships  of 
Xerxes  were  now  drifting  away  out  of  his  sight  to  be  wrecked 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS 


287 


on  the  coast  beyond.  Others  were  being  towed  towards  Salamis 
by  the  Greeks.  Others,  less  injured  and  still  in  fighting  trim, 
were  making  for  the  beaches  close  beneath  him  that  would  bring 
them  under  the  protection  of  his  army.  Scattered  over  the 
further  sea,  beyond  the  headlands,  remote  and  vague,  were  ships 
in  flight  and  Greek  ships  in  pursuit.  Slowly,  incident  by  in- 
cident, the  disaster  had  unfolded  under  his  eyes.  We  can 
imagine  something  of  the  coming  and  going  of  messengers,  the 
issuing  of  futile  orders,  the  changes  of  plan,  throughout  the 
day.  In  the  morning  Xerxes  had  come  out  provided  with  tables 
to  mark  the  most  successful  of  his  commanders  for  reward.  In 
the  gold  of  the  sunset  he  beheld  the  sea  power  of  Persia  utterly 
scattered,  sunken  and  destroyed,  and  the  Greek  fleet  over  against 


Salamis  unbroken  and  triumphant,  ordering  its  ranks,  as  if 
still  incredulous  of  victory. 

The  Persian  army  remained  as  if  in  indecision  for  some  days 
close  to  the  scene  of  this  sea  fight,  and  then  began  to  retreat  to 
Thessaly,  where  it  was  proposed  to  winter  and  resume  the  cam- 
paign. But  Xerxes,  like  Darius  I  before  him,  had  conceived  a 
disgust  for  European  campaigns.  He  was  afraid  of  the  de- 
struction of  the  bridge  of  boats.  With  part  of  the  army  he  went 
on  to  the  Hellespont,  leaving  the  main  force  in  Thessaly  under 
a  general,  Mardonius.  Of  his  own  retreat  the  historian  relates : 

" Whithersoever  they  came  on  the  march  and  to  whatever 
nation  they  seized  the  crops  of  that  people  and  used  them  for 
provisions ;  and  if  they  found  no  crops,  then  they  took  the  grass 


288  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

which  was  growing  up  from  the  earth,  and  stripped  off  the  bark 
from  the  trees  and  plucked  down  the  leaves  and  devoured  them ; 
alike  of  the  cultivated  trees  and  of  those  growing  wild ;  and  they 
left  nothing  behind  them :  thus  they  did  by  reason  of  famine. 
Then  plague  too  seized  upon  the  army  and  dysentery,  which  de- 
stroyed them  by  the  way,  and  some  of  them  also  who  were  sick 
the  king  left  behind,  laying  charge  upon  the  cities  where  at  the 
time  he  chanced  to  be  in  his  march,  to  take  care  of  them  and 
support  them;  of  these  he  left  some  in  Thessaly,  and  some  at 
Siris  in  Paionia,  and  some  in  Macedonia.  .  .  .  When,  passing 
on  from  Thrace  they  came  to  the  passage,  they  crossed  over  the 
Hellespont  in  haste  to  Abydos  by  means  of  the  ships,  for  they 
did  not  find  the  floating  bridges  still  stretched  across,  but 
broken  up  by  a  storm.  While  staying  there  for  a  time  they  had 
distributed  to  them  an  allowance  of  food  more  abundant  than 
they  had  had  by  the  way,  and  from  satisfying  their  hunger  with- 
out restraint  and  also  from  the  changes  of  water  there  died  many 
of  those  in  the  army  who  had  remained  safe  till  then.  The 
rest  arrived  with  Xerxes  at  Sardis." 

§  10 

The  rest  of  the  Persian  army  remained  in  Thessaly  under 
the  command  of  Mardonius,  and  for  a  year  he  maintained  an 
aggressive  compaign  against  the  Greeks.  Finally,  he  was  de- 
feated and  killed  in  a  pitched  battle  at  Platsea  (479  B.C.),  and 
on  the  same  day  the  Persian  fleet  and  a  land  army  met  with 
joint  disaster  under  the  shadow  of  Mount  Mycale  on  the  Asiatic 
mainland,  between  Ephesus  and  Miletus.  The  Persian  ships, 
being  in  fear  of  the  Greeks,  had  been  drawn  up  on  shore  and 
a  wall  built  about  them;  but  the  Greeks  disembarked  and 
stormed  this  enclosure.  They  then  sailed  to  the  Hellespont 
to  destroy  what  was  left  of  the  bridge  of  boats,  so  that  later 
the  Persian  fugitives,  retreating  from  Plataea,  had  to  cross 
by  shipping  at  the  Bosphorus,  and  did  so  with  difficulty. 

Encouraged  by  these  disasters  of  the  imperial  power,  says 
Herodotus,  the  Ionian  cities  in  Asia  began  for  a  second  time 
to  r^;olt  against  the  Persians. 

•Vith  this  the  ninth  book  of  the  History  of  Herodotus  comes 
V)  an  end.  He  was  born  about  484  B.C.,  so  that  at  the  time 
of  the  battle  of  Plataea  he  was  a  child  of  five  years  old.  Much 


THE  GREEKS  AND  THE  PERSIANS  289 

of  the  substance  of  his  story  was  gathered  by  him  from  actors 
in,  and  eye-witnesses  of,  the  great  events  he  relates.  The  war 
still  dragged  on  for  a  long  time;  the  Greeks  supported  a  re- 
bellion against  Persian  rule  in  Egypt,  and  tried  unsuccessfully 
to  take  Cyprus ;  it  did  not  end  until  about  449  B.C.  Then  the 
Greek  coasts  of  Asia  Minor  and  the  Greek  cities  in  the  Black 
Sea  remained  generally  free,  but  Cyprus  and  Egypt  continued 
under  Persian  rule.  Herodotus,  who  had  been  born  a  Persian 
subject  in  the  Ionian  city  of  Halicarnassus,  was  five  and  thirty 
years  old  by  that  time,  and  he  must  have  taken  an  early  op- 
portunity after  this  peace  of  visiting  Babylon  and  Persia.  He 
probably  went  to  Athens,  with  his  History  ready  to  recite, 
about  438  B.C. 

The  idea  of  a  great  union  of  Greece  for  aggression  against 
Persia  was  not  altogether  strange  to  Herodotus.  Some  of  his 
readers  suspect  him  of  writing  to  enforce  it.  It  was  certainly 
in  the  air  at  that  time.  He  describes  Aristagoras,  the  son-in- 
law  of  Histiseus,  as  showing  the  Spartans  aa  tablet  of  bronze 
on  which  was  engraved  a  map  of  the  whole  earth  with  all  the 
seas  and  rivers."  He  makes  Aristagoras  say:  "These  Bar- 
barians are  not  valiant  in  fight.  You,  on  the  other  hand,  have 
now  attained  to  the  utmost  skill  in  war.  They  fight  with  bows 
and  arrows  and  a  short  spear:  they  go  into  battle  wearing 
trousers  and  having  caps  on  their  heads.  You  have  perfected 
your  weapons  and  discipline.  They  are  easily  to  be  conquered. 
Not  all  the  other  nations  of  the  world  have  what  they  possess ; 
gold,  silver,  bronze,  embroidered  garments,  beasts  and  slaves; 
all  this  you  might  have  for  yourselves,  if  you  so  desired." 

It  was  a  hundred  years  before  these  suggestions  bore  fruit. 

Xerxes  was  murdered  in  his  palace  about  465  B.C.,  and  there- 
after Persia  made  no  further  attempts  at  conquest  in  Europe. 
We  have  no  such  knowledge  of  the  things  that  were  happening 
in  the  empire  of  the  Great  King  as  we  have  of  the  occurrences 
in  the  little  states  of  Central  Greece.  Greece  had  suddenly  be- 
gun to  produce  literature,  and  put  itself  upon  record  as  no  other 
nation  had  ever  done  hitherto.  After  479  B.C.  (Platsea)  the 
spirit  seems  to  have  gone  out  o£  the  government  of  the  Medes 
and  Persians.  The  empire  of  the  Great  King  enters  upon  a 
period  of  decay.  An  Artaxerxes,  a  second  Xerxes,  a  second 
Darius,  pass  across  the  stage;  there  are  rebellions  in 
Egypt  and  Syria;  the  Medes  rebel;  a  second  Arta- 


290  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

xerxes  and  a  second  Cyrus,  his  brother,  fight  for  the  throne. 
This  history  is  even  as  the  history  of  Babylonia,  Assyria,  and 
Egypt  in  the  older  times.  It  is  autocracy  reverting  to  its  nor- 
mal state  of  palace  crime,  blood-stained  magnificence,  and  moral 
squalor.  But  the  last-named  struggle  produced  a  Greek  master- 
piece, for  this  second  Cyrus  collected  an  army  of  Greek  mer- 
cenaries and  marched  into  Babylonia,  and  was  there  killed  at 
the  moment  of  victory  over  Artaxerxes  II.  Thereupon,  the 
Ten  Thousand  Greeks,  left  with  no  one  to  employ  them,  made 
a  retreat  to  the  coast  again  (401  B.C.),  and  this  retreat  was 
immortalized  in  a  book,  one  of  the  first  of  personal  war  books, 
the  Anabasis,  by  their  leader  Xenophon. 

Murders,  revolts,  chastisements,  disasters,  cunning  alliances, 
and  base  betrayals,  and  no  Herodotus  to  record  them.  Such  is 
the  texture  of  Persian  history.  An  Artaxerxes  III,  covered 
with  blood,  flourishes  dimly  for  a  time.  "Artaxerxes  III  is 
said  to  have  been  murdered  by  Bagoas,  who  places  Arses,  the 
youngest  of  the  king's  sons,  on  the  throne  only  to  slay  him 
in  turn  when  he  seemed  to  be  contemplating  independent  ac- 
tion." l  So  it  goes  on. 

Athens,  prospering  for  a  time  after  the  Persian  repulse,  was 
smitten  by  the  plague  in  which  Pericles,  its  greatest  ruler,  died 
(428  B.C.).  But,  as  a  noteworthy  fact  amidst  these  confusions, 
the  Ten  Thousand  of  Xenophon  were  scattering  now  among 
the  Greek  cities,  repeating  from  their  own  experience  the 
declaration  of  Aristagoras  that  the  Persian  empire  was  a  rich 
confusion  which  it  would  be  very  easy  for  resolute  men  to 
conquer. 

1Winckler,  in  Helmolt's  Universal  History. 


XXII 

GREEK  THOUGHT  IN  RELATION  TO  HUMAN 
SOCIETY 

§  1.  The  Athens  of  Pericles.  §  2.  Socrates.  §  3.  Plato  and 
the  Academy.  §  4.  Aristotle  and  the  Lyceum.  §  5.  Phi- 
losophy becomes  Unworldly.  §  6.  The  Quality  and  Limita- 
tions of  Greek  Thought. 


GREEK  history  for  the  next  forty  years  after  Platsea  and 
Mycale  is  a  story  of  comparative  peace  and  tranquillity. 
There  were  wars,  but  they  were  not  intense  wars.  For 
a  little  while  in  Athens,  for  a  section  of  the  prosperous,  there 
was  leisure  and  opportunity.  And  by  a  combination  of  acci- 
dents and  through  the  character  of  a  small  group  of  people, 
this  leisure  and  opportunity  produced  the  most  memorable  re- 
sults. Much  beautiful  literature  was  produced;  the  plastic 
arts  flourished,  and  the  foundations  of  modern  science, 
already  laid  by  the  earlier  philosophers  of  the  Ionian  Greek 
cities,  were  consolidated.  Then,  after  an  interlude  of  fifty  odd 
years,  the  long-smouldering  hostility  between  Athens  and 
Sparta  broke  out  into  a  fierce  and  exhausting  war,  which  sapped 
at  last  the  vitality  of  this  creative  movement. 

This  war  is  known  in  history  as  the  Peloponnesian  War ;  it 
went  on  for  nearly  thirty  years,  and  wasted  all  the  power  of 
Greece.  At  first  Athens  was  in  the  ascendant,  then  Sparta. 
Then  arose  Thebes,  a  city  not  fifty  miles  from  Athens,  to  over- 
shadow Sparta.  Once  more  Athens  flared  into  importance  as 
the  head  of  a  confederation.  It  is  a  story  of  narrow  rivalries 
and  inexplicable  hatreds  that  would  have  vanished  long  ago  out 
of  the  memories  of  men,  were  it  not  that  it  is  recorded  and 
reflected  in  a  great  literature. 

Through  all  this  time  Persia  appears  and  reappears  as  the 
ally  first  of  this  league  and  then  of  that.  About  the  middle  of 

291 


292  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  fourth  century  B.C.,  Greece  becomes  aware  of  a  new  in- 
fluence in  its  affairs,  that  of  Philip,  King  of  Macedonia.  Mace- 
donia does,  indeed,  arise  in  the  background  of  this  incurably 
divided  Greece,  as  the  Medes  and  Persians  arose  behind  the 
Chaldean  Empire.  A  time  comes  when  the  Greek  mind  turns 
round,  so  to  speak,  from  its  disputes,  and  stares  in  one  united 
dismay  at  the  Macedonian. 

Planless  and  murderous  squabbles  are  still  planless  and  mur- 
derous squabbles  even  though  Thucydides  tells  the  story,  even 
though  the  great  beginnings  of  a  new  civilization  are  wrecked 
by  their  disorders ;  and  in  this  general  outline  we  can  give 
no  space  at  all  to  the  particulars  of  these  internecine  feuds,  to 
the  fights  and  flights  that  sent  first  this  Greek  city  and  then 
that  up  to  the  sky  in  flames.  Upon  a  one-foot  globe  Greece 
becomes  a  speck  almost  too  small  to  recognize;  and  in  a  short 
history  of  mankind,  all  this  century  and  more  of  dissension 
between  the  days  of  Salamis  and  Plataea  and  the  rise  of  King 
Philip  shrinks  to  a  little,  almost  inaudible  clash  of  disputa- 
tion, to  a  mere  note  upon  the  swift  passing  of  opportunity 
for  nations  as  for  men. 

But  what  does  not  shrink  into  insignificance,  because  it  has 
entered  into  the  intellectual  process  of  all  subsequent  nations, 
because  it  is  inseparably  a  part  of  our  mental  foundation,  is 
the  literature  that  Greece  produced  during  such  patches  and 
gleams  of  tranquillity  and  security  as  these  times  afforded  her. 

Says  Professor  Gilbert   Murray : l 

"Their  outer  political  history,  indeed,  like  that  of  all  other 
nations,  is  filled  with  war  and  diplomacy,  with  cruelty  and  de- 
ceit. It  is  the  inner  history,  the  history  of  thought  and  feeling 
and  character,  that  is  so  grand.  They  had  some  difficulties  to 
contend  with  which  are  now  almost  out  of  our  path.  They  had 
practically  no  experience,  but  were  doing  everything  for  the 
first  time;  they  were  utterly  weak  in  material  resources,  and 
their  emotions,  their  'desires  and  fears  and  rages/  were  prob- 
ably wilder  and  fiercer  than  ours.  Yet  they  produced  the  Athens 
of  Pericles  and  of  Plato." 

This  remarkable  culmination  of  the  long-gathering  creative 
power  of  the  Greek  mind,  which  for  three  and  twenty  centuries 
has  been  to  men  of  intelligence  a  guiding  and  inspiring  beacon 
out  of  the  past,  flared  up  after  the  battles  of  Marathon  and 

1  Ancient  Greek  Literature,  by  Gilbert  Murray    ( Heinemann,  1911). 


GREEK  THOUGHT  293 

Salamis  had  made  Athens  free  and  fearless,  and,  without  any 
great  excesses  of  power,  predominant  in  her  world.  It  was 
the  work  of  a  quite  small  group  of  men.  A  number  of  her 
citizens  lived  for  the  better  part  of  a  generation  under  con- 
ditions which,  in  all  ages,  have  disposed  men  to  produce  good 
and  beautiful  work ;  they  were  secure,  they  were  free,  and  they 
had  pride;  and  they  were  without  that  temptation  of  appar- 
ent and  unchallenged  power  which  disposes  all  of  us  to  inflict 
wrongs  upon  our  fellow  men.  When  political  life  narrowed 
down  again  to  the  waste  and  crimes  of  a  fratricidal  war  with 
Sparta,  there  was  so  broad  and  well-fed  a  flame  of  intellectual 
activity  burning  that  it  lasted  through  all  the  windy  distresses 
of  this  war  and  beyond  the  brief  lifetime  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  for  a  period  altogether  of  more  than  a  hundred  years 
after  the  wars  began. 

Flushed  with  victory  and  the  sense  of  freedom  fairly  won, 
the  people  of  Athens  did  for  a  time  rise  towards  nobility.  Un- 
der the  guidance  of  a  great  demagogue,  Pericles,  the  chief  offi- 
cial of  the  Athenian  general  assembly,  and  a  politician  states- 
man rather  of  the  calibre  of  Gladstone  or  Lincoln  in  modern 
history,  they  were  set  to  the  task  of  rebuilding  their  city  and 
expanding  their  commerce.  For  a  time  they  were  capable  of 
following  a  generous  leader  generously,  and  Fate  gave  them  a 
generous  leader.  In  Pericles  there  was  mingled  in  the  strang- 
est fashion  political  ability  with  a  real  living  passion  for  deep 
and  high  and  beautiful  things.  He  kept  in  power  for  over 
thirty  years.  He  was  a  man  of  extraordinary  vigour  and  lib- 
erality of  mind.  He  stamped  these  qualities  upon  his  time. 
As  Winckler  has  remarked,  the  Athenian  democracy  had  for 
a  time  "the  face  of  Pericles."  He  was  sustained  by  what  was 
probably  a  very  great  and  noble  friendship.  There  was  a  woman 
of  unusual  education,  Aspasia,  from  Miletus,  whom  he  could 
not  marry  because  of  the  law  that  restricted  the  citizenship  of 
Athens  to  the  home-born,  but  who  was  in  effect  his  wife.  She 
played  a  large  part  in  gathering  about  him  men  of  unusual 
gifts.  All  the  great  writers  of  the  time  knew  her,  and  sev- 
eral have  praised  her  wisdom.  Plutarch,  it  is  true,  accuses 
her  of  instigating  a  troublesome  and  dangerous  but  finally  suc- 
cessful war  against  Samos,  but,  as  he  himself  shows  later,  this 
was  necessitated  by  the  naval  hostility  of  the  Samians,  which 


294  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

threatened  the  overseas  trade  of  Athens,  upon  which  all  the 
prosperity  of  the  republic  depended. 

Men's  ambitions  are  apt  to  reflect  the  standards  of  their  in- 
timates. Pericles  was  content,  at  any  rate,  to  serve  as  a  leader 
in  Athens  rather  than  to  dominate  as  a  tyrant.  Alliances  were 
formed  under  his  guidance,  new  colonies  and  trading  stations 
were  established  from  Italy  to  the  Black  Sea ;  and  the  treasures 
of  the  league  at  Delos  were  brought  to  Athens.  Convinced  of 
his  security  from  Persia,  Pericles  spent  the  war  hoard  of  the 
allies  upon  the  beaut ificat ion  of  his  city.  This  was  an  unright- 
eous thing  to  do  by  our  modern  standards,  but  it  was  not  a 
base  or  greedy  thing  to  do.  Athens  had  accomplished  the  work 
of  the  Delian  League,  and  is  not  the  labourer  worthy  of  his 
hire?  This  sequestration  made  a  time  of  exceptional  oppor- 
tunity for  architects  and  artists.  The  Parthenon  of  Athens, 
whose  ruins  are  still  a  thing  of  beauty,  was  but  the  crown  set 
upon  the  clustering  glories  of  the  Athens  Pericles  rebuilt.  Such 
sculptures  as  those  of  Phidias,  Myron,  and  Polyclitus  that  still 
survive,  witness  to  the  artistic  quality  of  the  time. 

The  reader  must  bear  in  mind  that  illuminating  remark  of 
Winckler's,  which  says  that  this  renascent  Athens  bore  for  a 
time  the  face  of  Pericles.  It  was  the  peculiar  genius  of  this 
man  and  of  his  atmosphere  that  let  loose  the  genius  of  men 
about  him,  and  attracted  men  of  great  intellectual  vigour  to 
Athens.  Athens  wore  his  face  for  a  time  as  one  wears  a  mask, 
and  then  became  restless  and  desired  to  put  him  aside.  There 
was  very  little  that  was  great  and  generous  about  the  common 
Athenian.  We  have  told  of  the  spirit  of  one  sample  voter  for 
the  ostracism  of  Aristides,  and  Lloyd  (in  his  Age  of  Pericles) 
declares  that  the  Athenians  would  not  suffer  the  name  of 
Miltiades  to  be  mentioned  in  connection  with  the  battle  of 
Marathon.  The  sturdy  self-respect  of  the  common  voters  re- 
volted presently  against  the  beautiful  buildings  rising  about 
them;  against  the  favours  shown  to  such  sculptors  as  Phidias 
over  popular  worthies  in  the  same  line  of  business;  against 
the  donations  made  to  a  mere  foreigner  like  Herodotus  of 
Halicarnassus ;  against  the  insulting  preference  of  Pericles 
for  the  company  and  conversation  of  a  Milesian  woman.  The 
public  life  of  Pericles  was  conspicuously  orderly,  and  that  pres- 
ently set  the  man  in  the  street  thinking  that  his  private  life 
must  be  very  corrupt.  One  gathers  that  Pericles  was  "superior" 


GREEK  THOUGHT  295 

in  his  demeanour;  he  betrayed  at  times  a  contempt  for  the 
citizens  he  served. 

"Pericles  acquired  not  only  an  elevation  of  sentiment,  and 
a  loftiness  and  purity  of  style  far  removed  from  the  low  ex- 
pression of  the  vulgar,  but  likewise  a  gravity  of  countenance 
which  relaxed  not  into  laughter,  a  firm  and  even  tone  of  voice, 
an  easy  deportment,  and  a  decency  of  dress  which  no  vehemence 
of  speaking  ever  put  into  disorder.  These  things,  and  others 
of  a  like  nature,  excited  admiration  in  all  that  saw  him.  Such 
was  his  conduct,  when  a  vile  and  abandoned  fellow  loaded  him 
a  whole  day  with  reproaches  and  abuse ;  he  bore  it  with  patience 
and  silence,  and  continued  in  public  for  the  despatch  of  some 
urgent  affairs.  In  the  evening  he  walked  softly  home,  this 
impudent  wretch  following,  and  insulting  him  all  the  way  with 
the  most  scurrilous  language.  And  as  it  was  dark  when  he 
came  to  his  own  door,  he  ordered  one  of  his  servants  to  take 
a  torch  and  light  the  man  home.  The  poet  Ion,  however,  says 
he  was  proud  and  supercilious  in  conversation,  and  that  there 
was  a  great  deal  of  vanity  and  contempt  of  others  mixed  with 
his  dignity  of  manner.  .  .  .  He  appeared  not  in  the  streets 
except  when  he  went  to  the  forum  or  the  senate  house.  He 
declined  the  invitations  of  his  friends,  and  all  social  entertain- 
ments and  recreations;  insomuch  that  in  the  whole  time  of  his 
administration,  which  was  a  considerable  length,  he  never  went 
to  sup  with  any  of  his  friends  but  once,  which  was  at  the  mar- 
riage of  his  nephew  Euryptolemus,  and  he  stayed  there  only 
until  the  ceremony  of  libation  was  ended.  He  considered 
that  the  freedom  of  entertainments  takes  away  all  distinction 
of  office,  and  that  dignity  is  but  little  consistent  with 
familiarity.  .  .  ,"  1 

There  was  as  yet  no  gutter  journalism  to  tell  the  world  of 
the  vileness  of  the  conspicuous  and  successful;  but  the  com- 
mon man,  a  little  out  of  conceit  with  himself,  found  much  con- 
solation in  the  art  of  comedy,  which  flourished  exceedingly.  The 
writers  of  comedy  satisfied  that  almost  universal  craving  for 
the  depreciation  of  those  whose  apparent  excellence  offends 
our  self-love.  They  threw  dirt  steadily  and  industriously  at 
Pericles  and  his  friends.  Pericles  was  portrayed  in  a  helmet; 
a  helmet  became  him,  and  it  is  to  be  feared  he  knew  as  much. 
This  led  to  much  joy  and  mirth  over  the  pleasant  suggestion 

1  Plutarch. 


296 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


of  a  frightfully  distorted  head,  an  onion  head.  The  "goings 
on"  of  Aspasia  were  of  course  a  fruitful  vineyard  for  the  in- 
ventions of  the  street.  .  .  . 

Dreaming  souls,  weary  of  the  vulgarities  of  our  time,  have 
desired  to  he  transferred  to  the  sublime  Age  of  Pericles.  But, 
plumped  down  into  that  Athens,  they  would  have  found  them- 
selves in  very  much  the  at- 
mosphere of  the  lower  sort  of 
contemporary  music-hall,  very 
much  in  the  vein  of  our  popu- 
lar newspapers;  the  same  hot 
blast  of  braying  libel,  foul  im- 
putation, greedy  "patri- 
otism,"  and  general  baseness 
would  have  blown  upon  them, 
the  "modern  note"  would 
have  pursued  them.  As  the 
memories  of  Platsea  and 
Salamis  faded  and  the  new 
buildings  grew  familiar, 
Pericles  and  the  pride  of 
Athens  became  more  and 
more  offensive  to  the  homely 
humour  of  the  crowd.  He 
was  never  ostracized — his 
prestige  with  the  quieter  citi- 
zens saved  him  from  that ;  but 
he  was  attacked  with  increas- 

1  ing    boldness    and    steadfast- 

ness. He  lived  and  died  a  poor  man ;  he  was  perhaps  the  most 
honest  of  demagogues;  but  this  did  not  save  him  from  an 
abortive  prosecution  for  peculation.  Defeated  in  that,  his 
enemies  resorted  to  a  more  devious  method ;  they  began  to  lop 
away  his  friends. 

Eeligious  intolerance  and  moral  accusations  are  the  natural 
weapons  of  the  envious  against  the  leaders  of  men.  His  friend 
Damon  was  ostracized.  Phidias  was  attacked  for  impiety.  On 
the  shield  of  the  great  statue  of  the  goddess  Athene,  Phidias 
had  dared  to  put,  among  the  combatants  in  a  fight  between 
Greeks  and  Amazons,  portraits  of  Pericles  and  himself.  Phidias 
died  in  prison.  Anaxagoras,  a  stranger  welcomed  to  Athens 


GREEK  THOUGHT  297 

by  Pericles — when  there  were  plenty  of  honest  fellows  already 
there  quite  willing  to  satisfy  any  reasonable  curiosities — was 
saying  the  strangest  things  about  the  sun  and  stars,  and  hint- 
ing not  obscurely  that  there  were  no  gods,  but  only  one  animat- 
ing spirit  (nous)  in  the  world.1  The  comedy  writers  suddenly 
found  they  had  deep  religious  feelings  that  could  be  profoundly 
and  even  dangerously  shocked,  and  Anaxagoras  fled  the  threat 
of  a  prosecution.  Then  came  the  turn  of  Aspasia.  Athens 
seemed  bent  upon  deporting  her,  and  Pericles  was  torn  be- 
tween the  woman  who  was  the  soul  of  his  life  and  the  un- 
gracious city  he  had  saved,  defended,  and  made  more  beautiful 
and  unforgettable  than  any  other  city  in  history.  He  stood  up 
to  defend  Aspasia,  he  was  seized  by  a  storm  of  very  human 
emotion,  and  as  he  spoke  he  wept — a  gleeful  thing  for  the 
rabble.  His  tears  saved  Aspasia  for  a  time. 

The  Athenians  were  content  to  humiliate  Pericles,  but  he 
had  served  them  so  long  that  they  were  indisposed  to  do  without 
him.  He  had  been  their  leader  now  for  a  third  of  a  century. 

In  431  B.C.  came  the  war  with  Sparta.  Plutarch  accuses 
Pericles  of  bringing  it  on,  because  he  felt  his  popularity  waned 
so  fast  that  a  war  was  needed  to  make  him  indispensable. 

"And  as  he  himself  was  become  obnoxious  to  the  people  upon 
Phidias's  account,  and  was  afraid  of  being  called  in  question 
for  it,  he  urged  on  the  war,  which  as  yet  was  uncertain,  and 
blew  up  that  flame  which  till  then  was  stifled  and  suppressed. 
By  this  means  he  hoped  to  obviate  the  accusations  that  threat- 
ened him,  and  to  mitigate  the  rage  of  envy,  because  such  was  his 
dignity  and  power,  that  in  all  important  affairs,  and  in  every  great 
danger,  the  republic  could  place  its  confidence  in  him  alone." 

But  the  war  was  a  slow  and  dangerous  war,  and  the  Athenian 
people  were  impatient.  A  certain  Cleon  arose,  ambitious  to 
oust  Pericles  from  his  leadership.  There  was  a  great  clamour 
for  a  swift  ending  of  the  war.  Cleon  set  out  to  be  "the  man  who 
won  the  war."  The  popular  poets  got  to  work  in  this  fashion : 

"Thou  king  of  satyrs  .  .  .  why  boast  thy  prowess, 
Yet  shudder  at  the  sound  of  sharpened  swords, 
Spite  of  the  flaming  Cleon?" 

An  expedition  under  the  leadership  of  Pericles  was  unsuc- 
cessful, and  Cleon  seized  the  opportunity  for  a  prosecution. 

*For   an   account  of  his  views,    see   Burnet's   Early   Greek   Philosophy. 
Gomperz'  Greek  Thinkers  is  also  a  good  book  for  this  section. 


298  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Pericles  was  supended  from  his  command  and  fined.  The  story 
goes  that  his  oldest  son — this  was  not  the  son  of  Aspasia,  but 
of  a  former  wife — turned  against  him,  and  pursued  him  with 
vile  and  incredible  accusations.  This  young  man  was  carried 
off  by  the  plague.  Then  the  sister  of  Pericles  died,  and  then 
his  last  legitimate  son.  When,  after  the  fashion  of  the  time, 
he  put  the  funeral  garlands  on  the  boy  he  wept  aloud.  Presently 
he  himself  took  the  contagion  and  died  (428  B.C.). 

The  salient  facts  of  this  brief  summary  will  serve  to  show 
how  discordant  Pericles  was  with  much  of  the  life  of  his  city. 
This  intellectual  and  artistic  outbreak  in  Athens  was  no  doubt 
favoured  by  the  conditions  of  the  time,  but  it  was  also  due  in 
part  to  the  appearance  of  some  very  unusual  men.  It  was  not 
a  general  movement;  it  was  the  movement  of  a  small  group  of 
people  exceptionally  placed  and  gifted. 

§  2 

Another  leading  figure  in  this  Athenian  movement,  a  figure 
still  more  out  of  harmony  with  the  life  around  him,  and  quite 
as  much  an  original  source  and  stimulant  of  the  enduring  great- 
ness of  his  age,  was  a  man  called  Socrates,  a  son  of  a  stone- 
mason. He  was  born  about  sixteen  years  later  than  Herodotus, 
and  he  was  beginning  to  be  heard  of  about  the  time  when 
Pericles  died.  He  himself  wrote  nothing,  but  it  was  his  cus- 
tom to  talk  in  public  places.  There  was  in  those  days  a  great 
searching  for  wisdom  going  on ;  there  was  a  various  multitude 
of  teachers  called  sophists  who  reasoned  upon  truth,  beauty,  and 
right  living,  and  instructed  the  developing  curiosities  and  im- 
aginations of  youth.  This  was  so  because  tnere  were  no  great 
priestly  schools  in  Greece.  And  into  these  discussions  this 
man  came,  a  clumsy  and  slovenly  figure,  barefooted,  gathering 
about  him  a  band  of  admirers  and  disciples. 

His  method  was  profoundly  sceptical;  he  believed  that  the 
only  possible  virtue  was  true  knowledge ;  he  would  tolerate  no 
belief,  no  hope  that  could  not  pass  the  ultimate  acid  test.  For 
himself  this  meant  virtue,  but  for  many  of  his  weaker  followers 
it  meant  the  loss  of  beliefs  and  moral  habits  that  would  have 
restrained  their  impulses.  These  weaklings  became  self-excus- 
ing, self-indulging  scoundrels.  Among  his  young  associates 
were  Plato,  who  afterwards  immortalized  his  method  in  a  series 


GREEK  THOUGHT  299 

of  philosophical  dialogues,  and  founded  the  philosophical  school 
of  the  Academy,  which  lasted  nine  hundred  years,  Xenophon,  of 
the  Ten  Thousand,  who  described  his  death,  and  Isocrates,  one 
of  the  wisest  of  Greek  political  thinkers;  but  there  were  also 
Critias,  who,  when  Athens  was  utterly  defeated  by  Sparta, 
was  leader  among  the  Thirty  Tyrants  appointed  by  the  Spartans 
to  keep  the  crushed  city  under;  1  Charmides,  who  was  killed 
beside  Critias  when  the  Thirty  were  overthrown ;  and  Alcibiades, 
a  brilliant  and  complex  traitor,  who  did  much  to  lead  Athens 
into  the  disastrous  expedition  against  Syracuse  which  destroyed 
her  strength,  who  betrayed  her  to  the  Spartans,  and  who  was 
at  last  assassinated  while  on  his  way  to  the  Persian  court  to 
contrive  mischief  against  Greece.  These  latter  pupils  were  not 
the  only  young  men  of  promise  whose  vulgar  faith  and  patriotism 
Socrates  destroyed,  to  leave  nothing  in  its  place.  His  most 
inveterate  enemy  was  a  certain  Anytus,  whose  son,  a  devoted 
disciple  of  Socrates,  had  become  a  hopeless  drunkard.  Through 
Anytus  it  was  that  Socrates  was  at  last  prosecuted  for  "cor- 
rupting" the  youth  of  Athens,  and  condemned  to  death  by  drink- 
ing a  poisonous  draught  made  from  hemlock  (399  B.C.). 

His  death  is  described  with  great  beauty  in  the  dialogue  of 
Plato  called  by  the  name  of  Phcedo. 

§  3 

Plato  was  born  427  B.C.,  and  he  lived  for  eighty  years. 

In  mental  temperament  Plato  was  of  an  altogether  different 

*"But  it  was  not  only  against  the  lives,  properties,  and  liberties  of 
Athenian  citizens  that  the  Thirty  made  war.  They  were  not  less  solicitous 
to  extinguish  the  intellectual  force  and  education  of  the  city,  a  project  so 
perfectly  in  harmony  both  with  the  sentiment  and  practice  of  Sparta, 
that  they  counted  on  the  support  of  their  foreign  allies.  Among  the  or- 
dinances which  they  promulgated  was  one,  expressly  forbidding  any  one 
'to  teach  the  art  of  words.'  The  edict  of  the  Thirty  was,  in  fact,  a  general 
suppression  of  the  higher  class  of  teachers  or  professors,  above  the  rank  of 
the  elementary  (teacher  of  letters  or)  grammatist.  If  such  an  edict  could 
have  been  maintained  in  force  for  a  generation,  combined  with  the  other 
mandates  of  the  Thirty — the  city  out  of  which  Sophocles  and  Euripides 
had  just  died,  and  in  which  Plato  and  Isocrates  were  in  vigorous  age,  would 
have  been  degraded  to  the  intellectual  level  of  the  meanest  community  in 
Greece.  It  was  not  uncommon  for  a  Grecian  despot  to  suppress  all  those 
assemblies  wherein  youths  came  together'  for  the  purpose  of  common 
training,  cither  intellectual  or  gymnastic,  as  well  as  the  public  banquets 
and  clubs  or  associations,  as  being  dangerous  to  his  authority,  tending  to 
elevation  of  courage,  and  to  a  consciousness  of  political  rights  among  the 
citizens." — Grote's  History  of  Greece. 


300  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

type  from  Socrates.  He  was  a  most  artistic  and  delicate  writer, 
and  Socrates  could  write  nothing  consecutive.  He  cared  for 
beautiful  things  and  Socrates  despised  them.  He  was  supremely 
concerned  with  the  ordering  of  public  affairs  and  the  scheming 
of  happier  human  relationships,  while  Socrates,  heedless  of  heat 
and  cold  and  the  opinion  of  his  fellow  creatures,  concentrated 
his  mind  upon  a  serene  disillusionment.  Life,  said  Socrates, 
was  deception;  only  the  Soul  lived.  Plato  had  a  very  great 
affection  for  this  rugged  old  teacher,  he  found  his  method  of 
the  utmost  value  in  disentangling  and  cleaning  up  opinions, 
and  he  made  him  the  central  figure  of  his  immortal  dialogues; 
but  his  own  thoughts  and  disposition  turned  him  altogether 
away  from  the  sceptical  attitude.  In  many  of  the  dialogues 
the  voice  is  the  voice  of  Socrates,  but  the  thought  is  the  thought 
of  Plato. 

Plato  was  living  in  a  time  of  doubt  and  questioning  about 
all  human  relationships.  In  the  great,  days  of  Pericles,  be- 
fore 450  B.C.,  there  seems  to  have  been  a  complete  satisfaction 
in  Athens  with  social  and  political  institutions.  Then  there 
seemed  no  reason  for  questioning.  Men  felt  free;  the  com- 
munity prospered;  one  suffered  chiefly  from  jealousy.  The 
History  of  Herodotus  displays  little  or  no  dissatisfaction  with 
Athenian  political  institutions. 

But  Plato,  who  was  born  about  the  time  Herodotus  died, 
and  who  grew  up  in  the  atmosphere  of  a  disastrous  war  and 
great  social  distress  and  confusion,  was  from  the  first  face  to 
face  with  human  discord  and  the  misfit  of  human  institutions. 
To  that  challenge  his  mind  responded.  One  of  his  earlier 
works  and  his  latest  are  bold  and  penetrating  discussions  of 
the  possible  betterment  of  social  relations.  Socrates  had  taught 
him  to  take  nothing  for  granted,  not  even  the  common  relations 
of  husband  and  wife  or  parent  and  child.  His  Republic,  the 
first  of  all  Utopian  books,  is  a  young  man's  dream  of 
a  city  in  which  human  life  is  arranged  according  to 
a  novel  and  a  better  plan ;  his  last  unfinished  work,  the  Laws, 
is  a  discussion  of  the  regulation  of  another  such  Utopia.  There 
is  much  in  Plato  at  which  we  cannot  even  glance  here,  but  it 
is  a  landmark  in  this  history,  it  is  a  new  thing  in  the  develop- 
ment of  mankind,  this  appearance  of  the  idea  of  wilfully  and 
completely  recasting  human  conditions.  So  far  mankind  has 
been  living  by  tradition  under  the  fear  of  the  gods.  Here  is 


GREEK  THOUGHT  301 

a  man  who  says  boldly  to  our  race,  and  as  if  it  were  a  quite 
reasonable  and  natural  thing  to  say,  "Take  hold  of  your  lives. 
Most  of  these  things  that  distress  you,  you  can  avoid;  most  of 
these  things  that  dominate  you,  you  can  overthrow.  You  can 
do  as  you  will  with  them." 

One  other  thing  besides  the  conflicts  of  the  time  perhaps 
stimulated  the  mind  of  Plato  in  this  direction.  In  the  days  of 
Pericles  Athens  had  founded  many  settlements  overseas,  and 
the  setting  up  of  these  settlements  had  familiarized  men  with 
the  idea  that  a  community  need  not  grow,  it  could  also  be  made. 

Closely  associated  with  Plato  was  a  younger  man,  who  later 
also  maintained  a  school  in  Athens  and  lived  to  an  even  greater 
age.  This  was  Isocrates.  He  was  what  we  should  call  a  pub- 
licist, a  writer  rather  than  an  orator,  and  his  peculiar  work  was 
to  develop  the  idea  of  Herodotus,  the  idea  of  a  unification  of 
Greece  against  the  Persian  Empire,  as  a  remedy  for  the  base- 
ness and  confusion  of  her  politics  and  the  waste  and  destruc- 
tion of  her  internecine  wars.  His  political  horizon  was  in 
some  respects  broader  than  Plato's,  and  in  his  later  years  he 
looked  towards  monarchy,  and  particularly  towards  the  Mace- 
donian monarchy  of  Philip,  as  a  more  unifying  and  broadening 
method  of  government  than  city  democracy.  The  same  drift  to 
monarchist  ideas  had  occurred  in  the  case  of  that  Xenophon 
whose  Anabasis  we  have  already  mentioned.  In  his  old  age 
Xenophon  wrote  the  Cyropcedia,  a  "vindication  both  theoreti- 
cally and  practically  of  absolute  monarchy  as  shown  in  the 
organization  of  the  Persian  Empire."  * 

§4 

Plato  taught  in  the  Academy.  To  him  in  his  old  age  came 
a  certain  good-looking  youngster  from  Stagira  in  Macedonia, 
Aristotle,  who  was  the  son  of  the  Macedonian  king's  physician, 
and  a  man  with  a  very  different  type  of  mind  from  that  of 
the  great  Athenian.  He  was  naturally  sceptical  of  the  imagina- 
tive will,  and  with  a  great  respect  for  and  comprehension  of 
established  fact.  Later  on,  after  Plato  was  dead,  he  set  up 
a  school  at  the  Lyceum  in  Athens  and  taught,  criticizing  Plato 
and  Socrates  with  a  certain  hardness.  When  he  taught,  the 
shadow  of  Alexander  the  Great  lay  across  the  freedom  of 

1  Mahaffy. 


302  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Greece,  and  he  favoured  slavery  and  constitutional  kings.  He 
had  previously  been  the  tutor  of  Alexander  for  several  years 
at  the  court  of  Philip  of  Macedon.  Intelligent  men  were 
losing  heart  in  those  days,  their  faith  in  the  power  of  men 
to  make  their  own  conditions  of  life  was  fading.  There  were 
n©  more  Utopias.  The  rush  of  events  was  manifestly  too  power- 
ful for  such  organized  effort  as  was  then  practicable  between 
men  of  fine  intelligence.  It  was  possible  to  think  of  recasting 
human  society  when  human  society  was  a  little  city  of  a  few 
thousand  citizens,  but  what  was  happening  about  them  was 
something  cataclysmal;  it  was  the  political  recasting  of  the 
whole  known  world,  of  the  affairs  of  what  even  then  must  have 
amounted  to  something  between  fifty  and  a  hundred  million 
people.  It  was  recasting  upon  a  scale  no  human  mind  was 
yet  equipped  to  grasp.  It  drove  thought  back  upon  the  idea 
of  a  vast  and  implacable  Fate.  It  made  men  snatch  at  what- 
ever looked  stable  and  unifying.  Monarchy,  for  instance,  for 
all  its  manifest  vices,  was  a  conceivable  government  for  mil- 
lions; it  had,  to  a  certain  extent,  worked;  it  imposed  a  ruling 
will  where  it  would  seem  that  a  collective  will  was  impossible. 
This  change  of  the  general  intellectual  mood  harmonized  with 
Aristotle's  natural  respect  for  existing  fact.  If,  on  the  one 
hand,  it  made  him  approve*  of  monarchy  and  slavery  and  the 
subjection  of  women  as  reasonable  institutions,  on  the  other 
hand  it  made  him  eager  to  understand  fact  and  to  get  some 
orderly  knowledge  of  these  realities  of  nature  and  human  nature 
that  were  now  so  manifestly  triumphant  over  the  creative  dreams 
of  the  preceding  generation.  He  is  terribly  sane  and  luminous, 
and  terribly  wanting  in  self-sacrificial  enthusiasm.  He  ques- 
tions Plato  when  Plato  would  exile  poets  from  his  Utopia,  for 
poetry  is  a  power;  he  directs  his  energy  along  a  line  dia- 
metrically opposed  to  Socrates'  depreciation  of  Anaxagoras. 
He  anticipates  Bacon  and  the  modern  scientific  movement  in  his 
realization  of  the  importance  of  ordered  knowledge.  He  set 
himself  to  the  task  of  gathering  together  and  setting  down 
knowledge.  He  was  the  first  natural  historian.  Other  men 
before  him  had  speculated  about  the  nature  of  things,  but  he, 
with  every  young  man  he  could  win  over  to  the  task,  set  him- 
self to  classify  and  compare  things.  Plato  says  in  effect :  "Let 
us  take  hold  of  life  and  remodel  it";  this  soberer  successor: 
"Let  us  first  know  more  of  life  and  meanwhile  serve  the  king." 


GREEK  THOUGHT  303 

It  was  not  so  much  a  contradiction  as  an  immense  qualification 
of  the  master. 

The  peculiar  relation  of  Aristotle  to  Alexander  the  Great 
enabled  him  to  procure  means  for  his  work  such  as  were  not 
available  again  for  scientific  inquiry  for  long  ages.  He  could 
command  hundreds  of  talents  (a  talent  =  about  £240)  for  his 
expenses.  At  one  time  he  had  at  his  disposal  a  thousand  men 
scattered  throughout  Asia  and  Greece,  collecting  matter  for 
his  natural  history.  They  were,  of  course,  very  untrained  obser- 
vers, collectors  of  stories  rather  than  observers;  but  nothing 
of  the  kind  had  ever  been  attempted,  had  even  been  thought  of, 
so  far  as  we  know,  before  his  time.  Political  as  well  as  natural 
science  began.  The  students  of  the  Lyceum  under  his  direc- 
tion made  an  analysis  of  158  political  constitutions.  .  .  . 

This  was  the  first  gleam  of  organized  science  in  the  world. 
The  early  death  of  Alexander  and  the  breaking  up  of  his  empire 
almost  before  it  had  begun,  put  an  end  to  endowments  on  this 
scale  for  2,000  years.  Only  in  Egypt  at  the  Alexandria  Museum 
did  any  scientific  research  continue,  and  that  only  for  a  few 
generations.  Of  that  we  will  presently  tell.  Fifty  years 
after  Aristotle's  death  the  Lyceum  had  already  dwindled  to 
insignificance. 

§  5 

The  general  drift  of  thought  in  the  concluding  years  of  the 
fourth  century  B.C.  was  not  with  Aristotle,  nor  towards  the 
laborious  and  necessary  accumulation  of  ordered  knowledge. 
It  is  possible  that  without  his  endowments  from  the  king  he 
would  have  made  but  a  small  figure  in  intellectual  history. 
Through  them  he  was  able  to  give  his  splendid  intelligence  sub- 
stance and  effect.  The  ordinary  man  prefers  easy  ways  so 
long  as  they  may  be  followed,  and  is  almost  wilfully  heedless 
whether  they  end  at  last  in  a  cul-de-sac.  Finding  the  stream 
of  events  too  powerful  to  control  at  once,  the  generality  of 
philosophical  teachers  drifted  in  those  days  from  the  scheming 
of  model  cities  and  the  planning  of  new  ways  of  living  into  the 
elaboration  of  beautiful  and  consoling  systems  of  evasion. 

Perhaps  that  is  putting  things  coarsely  and  unjustly.  But 
let  Professor  Gilbert  Murray  speak  upon  this  matter.1 

*  Ancient  Greek  Literature, 


304  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

"The  Cynics  cared  only  for  virtue  and  the  relation  of  the 
soul  to  God;  the  world  and  its  learning  and  its  honours  were 
as  dross  to  them.  The  Stoics  and  Epicureans,  so  far  apart  at 
first  sight,  were  very  similar  in  their  ultimate  aim.  What  they 
really  cared  ahout  was  ethics — the  practical  question  how  a 
man  should  order  his  life.  Both,  indeed,  gave  themselves  to  some 
science — the  Epicureans  to  physics,  the  Stoics  to  logic  and 
rhetoric — but  only  as  a  means  to  an  end.  The  Stoic  tried  to 
win  men's  hearts  and  convictions  by  sheer  subtlety  of  abstract 
argument  and  dazzling  sublimity  of  thought  and  expression. 
The  Epicurean  was  determined  to  make  Humanity  go  its  way 
without  cringing  to  capricious  gods  and  without  sacrificing 
Free-Will.  He  condensed  his  gospel  into  four  maxims:  "God 
is  not  to  be  feared ;  Death  cannot  be  felt ;  the  Good  can  be  won ; 
all  that  we  dread  can  be  borne  and  conquered." 

And  meanwhile  the  stream  of  events  flowed  on,  with  a 
reciprocal  indifference  to  philosophy. 

§6 

If  the  Greek  classics  are  to  be  read  with  any  benefit  by  mod- 
ern men,  they  must  be  read  as  the  work  of  men  like  ourselves. 
Kegard  must  be  had  to  their  traditions,  their  opportunities,  and 
their  limitations.  There  is  a  disposition  to  exaggeration  in  all 
human  admiration;  most  of  our  classical  texts  are  very  much 
mangled,  and  all  were  originally  the  work  of  human  beings  in 
difficulties,  living  in  a  time  of  such  darkness  and  narrowness 
of  outlook  as  makes  our  own  age  by  comparison  a  period  of 
dazzling  illumination.  What  we  shall  lose  in  reverence  by  this 
familiar  treatment,  we  shall  gain  in  sympathy  for  that  group 
of  troubled,  uncertain,  and  very  modern  minds.  The  Athenian 
writers  were,  indeed,  the  first  of  modern  men.  They  were 
discussing  questions  that  we  still  discuss ;  they  began  to  struggle 
with  the  great  problems  that  confront  us  to-day.  Their  writ- 
ings are  our  dawn.1 

1  Jung  in  his  Psychology  of  the  Unconscious  is  very  good  in  his  Chapter 
I  on  the  differences  between  ancient  (pre- Athenian)  thought  and  modern 
thought.  The  former  he  calls  Undirected  Thinking,  the  latter  Directed 
Thinking.  The  former  was  a  thinking  in  images,  akin  to  dreaming;  the 
latter  a  thinking  in  words.  Science  is  an  organization  of  directed  thinking. 
The  Antique  spirit  (before  the  Greek  thinkers  i.e.]  created  not  science 
but  mythology.  The  ancient  human  world  was  a  world  of  subjective 
fantasies  like  the  world  of  children  and  uneducated  young  people  to-day, 


GREEK  THOUGHT  305 

They  began  an  inquiry,  and  they  arrived  at  no  solutions. 
We  cannot  pretend  to-day  that  we  have  arrived  at  solutions 
to  most  of  the  questions  they  asked.  The  mind  of  the  Hebrews, 
as  we  have  already  shown,  awoke  suddenly  to  the  endless 
miseries  and  disorders  of  life,  saw  that  these  miseries  and 
disorders  were  largely  due  to  the  lawless  acts  of  men,  and  con- 
cluded that  salvation  could  come  only  through  subduing  our- 
selves to  the  service  of  the  one  God  who  rules  heaven  and 
earth.  The  Greek,  rising  to  the  same  perception,  was  not  pre- 
pared with  the  same  idea  of  a  patriarchal  deity;  he  lived  in  a 
world  in  which  there  was  not  God  but  the  gods;  if  perhaps 
he  felt  that  the  gods  themselves  were  limited,  then  he  thought 
of  Fate  behind  them,  cold  and  impersonal.  So  he  put  his 
problem  in  the  form  of  an  inquiry  as  to  what  was  right  living, 
without  any  definite  correlation  of  the  right-living  man  with 
the  will  of  God.  ...  To  us,  looking  at  the  matter  from  a 
standpoint  purely  historical,  the  common  problem  can  now 
be  presented  in  a  form  that,  for  the  purposes  of  history,  covers 
both  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  way  of  putting  it.  We  have  seen 
our  kind  rising  out  of  the  unconsciousness  of  animals  to  a 
continuing  racial  self -consciousness,  realizing  the  unhappiness 
of  its  wild  diversity  of  aims,  realizing  the  inevitable  tragedy  of 
individual  self-seeking,  and  feeling  its  way  blindly  towards  some 
linking  and  subordinating  idea  to  save  it  from  the  pains  and 
accidents  of  mere  individuality.  The  gods,  the  god-king,  the 
idea  of  the  tribe,  the  idea  of  the  city ;  here  are  ideas  that  have 
claimed  and  held  for  a  time  the  devotion  of  men,  ideas  in  which 
they  have  a  little  lost  their  individual  selfishness  and  escaped 
to  the  realization  of  a  more  enduring  life.  Yet,  as  our  wars 
and  disasters  prove,  none  of  these  greater  ideas  have  yet  been 
great  enough.  The  gods  have  failed  to  protect,  the  tribe  has 
proved  itself  vile  and  cruel,  the  city  ostracized  one's  best  and 
truest  friends,  the  god-king  made  a  beast  of  himself.  .  .  . 

As  we  read  over  the  speculative  literature  of  this  great  period 

and  like  the  world  of  savages  and  dreams.  Infantile  thought  and  dreams 
are  a  re-echo  of  prehistoric  and  savage  methods  of  thinking.  Myths, 
says  Jung,  are  the  mass  dreams  of  peoples,  and  dreams  the  myths  of  in- 
dividuals. We  have  already  directed  the  reader's  attention  to  the  re- 
semblance of  the  early  gods  of  civilization  to  the  fantasies  of  children. 
The  work  of  hard  and  disciplined  thinking  by  means  of  carefully  analyzed 
words  and  statements  which  was  begun  by  the  Greek  thinkers  and  re- 
sumed by  the  scholastic  philosophers  of  whom  we  shall  tell  in  the  middle 
ages,  was  a  necessary  preliminary  to  the  development  of  modern  science. 


30G  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  the  Greeks,  we  realize  three  barriers  set  about  the  Greek 
mind,  from  which  it  rarely  escaped,  but  from  which  we  now 
perhaps  are  beginning  to  escape. 

The  first  of  these  limitations  was  the  obsession  of  the  Greek 
mind  by  the  idea  of  the  city  as  the  ultimate  state.  In  a  world 
in  which  empire  had  followed  empire,  each  greater  than  its  pre- 
decessor, in  a  world  through  which  men  and  ideas  drove  ever 
more  loosely  and  freely,  in  a  world  visibly  unifying  even  then, 
the  Greeks,  because  of  their  peculiar  physical  and  political  cir- 
cumstances, were  still  dreaming  impossibly  of  a  compact  little 
city  state,  impervious  to  outer  influences,  valiantly  secure 
against  the  whole  world.  Plato's  estimate  of  the  number  of  citi- 
zens in  a  perfect  state  varied  between  1,000  (the  Republic)  and 
5,040  (the  Laws)  citizens.  1  This  state  was  to  go  to  war  and 
hold  its  own  against  other  cities  of  the  same  size.  And  this 
was  not  a  couple  of  generations  after  the  hosts  of  Xerxes  had 
crossed  the  Hellespont ! 

Perhaps  these  Greeks  thought  the  day  of  world  empires  had 
passed  for  ever,  whereas  it  was  only  beginning.  At  the  utmost 
their  minds  reached  out  to  alliances  and  leagues.  There  must 
have  been  men  at  the  court  of  Artaxerxes  thinking  far  away 
beyond  these  little  ideas  of  the  rocky  creek,  the  island,  and  the 
mountain-encircled  valley.  But  the  need  for  unification  against 
the  greater  powers  that  moved  outside  the  Greek-speaking  world, 
the  Greek  mind  disregarded  wilfully.  These  outsiders  were 
barbarians,  not  to  be  needlessly  thought  about ;  they  were  barred 
out  now  from  Greece  for  ever.  One  took  Persian  money ;  every- 
body took  Persian  money;  what  did  it  matter?  Or  one  en- 
listed for  a  time  in  their  armies  (as  Xenophon  did)  and  hoped 
for  his  luck  with  a  rich  prisoner.  Athens  took  sides  in  Egyptian 
affairs,  and  carried  on  minor  wars  with  Persia,  but  there  was 
no  conception  of  a  common  policy  or  a  common  future  for 
Greece.  .  .  .  Until  at  last  a  voice  in  Athens  began  to  shout 
"Macedonia  !"  to  clamour  like  a  watch-dog,  "Macedonia !"  This 
was  the  voice  of  the  orator  and  demagogue,  Demosthenes,  hurl- 
ing warnings  and  threats  and  denunciations  at  King  Philip 

1  "For  the  proper  administration  of  justice  and  for .  the  distribution  of 
authority  it  is  necessary  that  the  citizens  be  acquainted  with  each  other's 
characters,  so  that,  where  this  cannot  be,  much  mischief  ensues,  both  in 
the  use  of  authority  and  in  the  administration  of  justice;  for  it  is  not 
just  to  decide  arbitrarily,  as  must  be  the  case  with  excessive  population." 
Aristotle:  Politics. 


GREEK  THOUGHT  307 

of  Macedon,  who  had  learnt  his  politics  not  only  from  Plato 
and  Aristotle,  but  also  from  Isocrates  and  Xenophon,  and  from 
Babylon  and  Susa,  and  who  was  preparing  quietly,  ably,  and 
steadfastly  to  dominate  all  Greece,  and  through  Greece  to  con- 
quer the  known  world.  .  .  . 

There  was  a  second  thing  that  cramped  the  Greek  mind,  the 
institution  of  domestic  slavery.  Slavery  was  implicit  in  Greek 
life ;  men  could  conceive  of  neither  comfort  nor  dignity  without 
it.  But  slavery  shuts  off  one's  sympathy  not  only  from  a  class 
of  one's  fellow  subjects ;  it  puts  the  slave-owner  into  a  class  and 
organization  against  all  stranger  men.  One  is  of  an  elect  tribe. 
Plato,  carried  b}^  his  clear  reason  and  the  noble  sanity  of  his 
spirit  beyond  the  things  of  the  present,  would  have  abolished 
slavery;  much  popular  feeling  and  the  ~New  Comedy  were 
against  it;  the  Stoics  and  Epicureans,  many  of  whom  were 
slaves,  condemned  it  as  unnatural,  but  finding  it  too  strong  to 
upset,  decided  that  it  did  not  affect  the  soul  and  might  be 
ignored.  With  the  wise  there  was  no  bound  or  free.  To  the 
matter-of-fact  Aristotle,  and  probably  to  most  practical  men, 
its  abolition  was  inconceivable.  So  they  declared  that  there 
were  in  the  world  men  "naturally  slaves."  ... 

Finally,  the  thought  of  the  Greeks  was  hampered  by  a  want 
of  knowledge  that  is  almost  inconceivable  to  us  to-day.  They 
had  no  knowledge  of  the  past  of  mankind  at  all;  at  best  they 
had  a  few  shrewd  guesses.  They  had  no  knowledge  of  geography 
beyond  the  range  of  the  Mediterranean  basin  and  the  frontiers 
of  Persia.  We  know  far  more  to-day  of  what  was  going  on 
in  Susa,  Persepolis,  Babylon,  and  Memphis  in  the  time  of 
Pericles  than  he  did.  Their  astronomical  ideas  were  still  in  the 
state  of  rudimentary  speculations.  Anaxagoras,  greatly  daring, 
thought  the  sun  and  moon  were  vast  globes,  so  vast  that  the  sun 
was  probably  "as  big  as  all  the  Peloponnesus."  Their  ideas 
in  physics  and  chemistry  were  the  results  of  profound  cogita- 
tion; it  is  wonderful  that  they  did  guess  at  atomic  structure. 
One  has  to  remember  their  extraordinary  poverty  in  the  matter 
of  experimental  apparatus.  They  had  coloured  glass  for  orna- 
ment, but  no  white  glass ;  no  accurate  means  of  measuring  the 
minor  intervals  of  time,  no  really  efficient  numerical  notation, 
no  very  accurate  scales,  no  rudiments  of  telescope  or  microscope. 
A  modern  scientific  man  dumped  down  in  the  Athens  of  Pericles 
would  have  found  the  utmost  difficulty  in  demonstrating  the 


308  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

elements  of  his  knowledge,  however  crudely,  to  the  men  he  would 
have  found  there.  He  would  have  had  to  rig  up  the  simplest 
apparatus  under  every  disadvantage,  while  Socrates  pointed 
out  the  absurdity  of  seeking  Truth  with  pieces  of  wood  and 
string  and  metal  such  as  small  boys  use  for  fishing.  And  our 
professor  of  science  would  also  have  been  in  constant  danger 
of  a  prosecution  for  impiety. 

Our  world  to-day  draws  upon  relatively  immense  accumula- 
tions of  knowledge  of  fact.  In  the  age  of  Pericles  scarcely  the 
first  stone  of  our  comparatively  tremendous  cairn  of  things 
recorded  and  proved  had  been  put  in  place.  When  we  reflect 
upon  this  difference,  then  it  ceases  to  be  remarkable  that  the 
Greeks,  with  all  their  aptitude  for  political  speculation,  were 
blind  to  the  insecurities  of  their  civilization  from  without  and 
from  within,  to  the  necessity  for  effective  unification,  to  the 
swift  rush  of  events  that  was  to  end  for  long  ages  these  first 
brief  freedoms  of  the  human  mind. 

It  is  not  in  the  results  it  achieved,  but  in  the  attempts  it 
made,  that  the  true  value  for  us  of  this  group  of  Greek  talkers 
and  writers  lies.  It  is  not  that  they  answered  questions,  but 
that  they  dared  to  ask  them.  Never  before  had  man  challenged 
his  world  and  the  way  of  life  to  which  he  found  his  birth  had 
brought  him.  Never  had  he  said  before  that  he  could  alter  his 
conditions.  Tradition  and  a  seeming  necessity  had  held  him 
to  life  as  he  had  found  it  grown  up  about  his  tribe  since  time 
immemorial.  Hitherto  he  had  taken  the  world  as  children  still 
take  the  homes  and  habits  in  which  they  have  been  reared. 

So  in  the  fifth  and  fourth  centuries  B.C.  we  perceive,  most 
plainly  in  Judea  and  in  Athens,  but  by  no  means  confined  to 
those  centres,  the  beginnings  of  a  moral  and  an  intellectual 
process  in  mankind,  an  appeal  to  righteousness  and  an  appeal 
to  the  truth  from  the  passions  and  confusions  and  immediate 
appearances  of  existence.  It  is  like  the  dawn  of  the  sense  of 
responsibility  in  a  youth,,  who  suddenly  discovers  that  life  is 
neither  easy  nor  aimless.  Mankind  is  growing  up.  The  rest 
of  history  for  three  and  twenty  centuries  is  threaded  with  the 
spreading  out  and  development  and  interaction  and  the  clearer 
and  more  effective  statement  of  these  main  leading  ideas.  Slowly 
more  and  more  men  apprehend  the  reality  of  human  brother- 
hood, the  needlessness  of  wars  and  cruelties  and*  oppression, 
the  possibilities  of  a  common  purpose  for  the  whole  of  our 


GREEK  THOUGHT  309 

kind.  In  every  generation  thereafter  there  is  the  evidence 
of  men  seeking  for  that  better  order  to  which  they  feel  our 
world  must  come.  But  everywhere  and  wherever  in  any  man 
the  great  constructive  ideas  have  taken  hold,  the  hot  greeds, 
the  jealousies,  the  suspicions  and  impatience  that  are  in  the 
nature  of  every  one  of  us,  war 'against  the  struggle  towards 
greater  and  broader  purposes.  The  last  twenty-three  centimes 
of  history  are  like  the  efforts  of  some  impulsive,  hasty  immortal 
to  think  clearly  and  live  rightly.  Blunder  follows  blunder; 
promising  beginnings  end  in  grotesque  disappointments ;  streams 
of  living  water  are  poisoned  by  the  cup  that  conveys  them  to 
the  thirsty  lips  of  mankind.  But  the  hope  of  men  rises  again 
at  last  after  every  disaster.  .  .  . 

We  pass  on  now  to  the  story  of  one  futile  commencement, 
one  glorious  shattered  beginning  of  human  unity.  There  was 
in  Alexander  the  Great  knowledge  and  imagination,  power  and 
opportunity,  folly,  egotism,  detestable  vulgarity,  and  an  im- 
mense promise  broken  by  the  accident  of  his  early  death  while 
men  were  still  dazzled  by  its  immensity. 


XXIII 
THE  CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT 

§  1.  Philip  of  Macedonia.  §  2.  The  Murder  of  King  Philip. 
§  3.  Alexander's  First  Conquests.  §,4.  The  Wanderings  of 
Alexander.  §  5.  Was  Alexander  Indeed  Great?  §  6.'  The 
Successors  of  Alexander.  §  7.  Pergamum  a  Refuge  of  Cul- 
ture. §  8.  Alexander  as  a  Portent  of  World  Unity. 


flr^HE  true  hero  of  the  story  of  Alexander  is  not  so  much 
Alexander  as  his  father  Philip.  The  author  of  a  piece 
does  not  shine  in  the  limelight  as  the  actor  does,  and 
it  was  Philip  who  planned  much  of  the  greatness  that  his  son 
achieved,  who  laid  the  foundations  and  forged  the  tools,  who 
had  indeed  already  begun  the  Persian  expedition  at  the  time 
of  his  death.  Philip,  beyond  doubting,  was  one  of  the  greatest 
monarchs  the  world  has  ever  seen ;  he  was  a  man  of  the  utmost 
intelligence  and  ability,  and  his  range  of  ideas  was  vastly 
beyond  the  scope  of  his  time.  He  made  Aristotle  his  friend; 
he  must  have  discussed  with  him  those  schemes  for  the  organ- 
ization of  real  knowledge  which  the  philosopher  was  to  realize 
later  through  Alexander's  endowments.  Philip,  so  far  as  we 
can  judge,  seems  to  have  been  Aristotle's  "Prince";  to  him 
Aristotle  turned  as  men  turn  only  to  those  whom  they  admire 
and  trust.  To  Philip  also  Isocrates  appealed  as  the  great  leader 
who  should  unify  and  ennoble  the  chaotic  public  life  of  Greece. 
In  many  books  it  is  stated  that  Philip  was  a  man  of  in- 
credible cynicism  and  of  uncontrolled  lusts.  It  is  true  that  at 
feasts,  like  all  the  Macedonians  of  his  time,  he  was  a  hard 
drinker  and  sometimes  drunken — it  was  probably  considered 
unamiable  not  to  drink  excessively  at  feasts;  but  of  the  other 
accusations  there  is  no  real  proof,  and  for  evidence  we  have 
only  the  railings  of  such  antagonists  as  Demosthenes,  the 
Athenian  demagogue  and  orator,  a  man  of  reckless  rhetoric. 

310 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT 


31} 


The  quotation  of  a  phrase  or  so  will  serve  to  show  to  what  the 
patriotic  anger  of  Demosthenes  could  bring  him.  In  one  of 
the  Philippics,  as  his  denunciations  of  Philip  are  called,  he 
gives  vent  in  this  style: 

"Philip — a  man  who  not  only  is  no  Greek,  and  no  way 
akin  to  the  Greeks,  but  is  not  even  a  barbarian  from  a  re- 
spectable country- — no,  a  pestilent  fellow  of  Macedon,  a  country 
from  which  we  never 
get  even  a  decent 
slave."  And  so  on  and 
so  on.  We  know,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  that 
the  Macedonians  were 
an  Aryan  people  very 
closely  akin  to  the 
Greeks,  and  that 
Philip  was  probably 
the  best  educated  man 
of  his  time.  This  was 
the  spirit  in  which  the 
adverse  accounts  of 
Philip  were  written. 

When  Philip  be- 
came king  of  Mace- 
donia in  359  B.C.,  his 
country  was  a  little 
country  without  a  seaport  or  industries  or  any  considerable 
city.  It  had  a  peasant  population,  Greek  almost  in  lan- 
guage and  ready  to  be  Greek  in  sympathies,  but  more  purely 
Nordic  in  blood  than  any  people  to  the  south  of  it.  Philip 
made  this  little  barbaric  state  into  a  great  one;  he  cre- 
ated the  most  efficient  military  organization  the  world 
had  so  far  seen,  and  he  had  brought  most  of  Greece  into  one 
confederacy  under  his  leadership  at  the  time  of  his  death.  And 
his  extraordinary  quality,  his  power  of  thinking  out  beyond 
the  current  ideas  of  his  time,  is  shown  not  so  much  in  those 
matters  as  in  the  care  with  which  he  had  his  son  trained  to  carry 
on  the  policy  he  had  created.  He  is  one  of  the  few  monarchs 
in  history  who  cared  for  his  successor.  Alexander  was,  as  few 
other  monarchs  have  ever  been,  a  specially  educated  king; 
he  was  educated  for  empire.  Aristotle  was  but  one  of  the  sev- 


312  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

eral  able  tutors  his  father  chose  for  him.  Philip  confided  his 
policy  to  him,  and  entrusted  him  with  commands  and  authority 
by  the  time  he  was  sixteen.  He  commanded  the  cavalry  at 
ChaBronea  under  his  father's  eye.  He  was  nursed  into  power 
— generously  and  unsuspiciously. 

To  any  one  who  reads  his  life  with  care  it  is  evident  that 
Alexander  started  with  an  equipment  of  training  and  ideas 
of  unprecedented  value.  As  he  got  beyond  the  wisdom  of  his 
upbringing  he  began  to  blunder  and  misbehave — sometimes  with 
a  dreadful  folly.  The  defects  of  his  character  had  triumphed 
over  his  upbringing  long  before  he  died. 

Philip  was  a  king  after  the  old  pattern,  a  leader-king,  first 
among  his  peers,  of  the  ancient  Nordic  Aryan  type.  The  army 
he  found  in  Macedonia  consisted  of  a  general  foot  levy  and 
a  noble  equestrian  order  called  the  "companions."  The  people 
were  farmers  and  hunters  and  somewhat  drunken  in  their 
habits,  but  ready  for  discipline  and  good  fighting  stuff.  And 
if  the  people  were  homely,  the  government  was  intelligent  and 
alert.  For  some  generations  the  court  language  had  been  Attic 
(—  Athenian)  Greek,  and  the  court  had  been  sufficiently  civi- 
lized to  shelter  and  entertain  such  great  figures  as  Euripides, 
who  died  there  in  406  B.C.,  and  Zeuxis  the  artist.  Moreover, 
Philip,  before  his  accession,  had  spent  some  years  as  a  hostage 
in  Greece.  He  had  had  as  good  an  education  as  Greece  could 
give  at  that  time.  He  was,  therefore,  quite  familiar  with  what 
we  may  call  the  idea  of  Isocrates — the  idea  of  a  great  union 
of  the  Greek  states  in  Europe  to  dominate  the  Eastern  world; 
and  he  knew,  too,  how  incapable  was  the  Athenian  democracy, 
because  of  its  constitution  and  tradition,  of  taking  the  op- 
portunity that  lay  before  it.  For  it  was  an  opportunity  that 
would  have  to  be  shared.  To  the  Athenians  or  the  Spartans 
it  would  mean  letting  in  a  "lot  of  foreigners"  to  the  advantages 
of  citizenship.  It  would  mean  lowering  themselves  to  the  level 
of  equality  and  fellowship  with  Macedonians — a  people  from 
whom  "we"  do  not  get  "even  a  decent  slave." 

There  was  no  way  to  secure  unanimity  among  the  Greeks 
for  the  contemplated  enterprise  except  by  some  revolutionary 
political  action.  It  was  no  love  of  peace  that  kept  the  Greeks 
from  such  an  adventure;  it  was  their  political  divisions.  The 
resources  of  the  several  states  were  exhausted  in  a  series  of 
internecine  wars — wars  arising  out  of  the  merest  excuses  and 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT 


SIS 


fanned  by  oratorical  wind.  The  ploughing  of  certain  sacred 
lands  near  Delphi  by  the  Phocians  was,  for  example,  the  pre- 
text for  a  sanguinary  Sacred  War. 

Philip's  first  years  of  kingship  were  devoted  to  the  discipline 
of  his  army.     Hitherto  most  of  the  main  battle  fighting  in  the 


world  had  been  done  by  footmen  in  formation.  In  the  very 
ancient  Sumerian  battle-pieces  we  see  spearmen  in  close  order 
forming  the  main  battle,  just  as  they  did  in  the  Zulu  armies 
of  the  nineteenth  century;  the  Greek  troops  of  Philip's  time 
were  still  fighting  in  that  same  style ;  the  Theban  phalanx  was 
a  mass  of  infantry  holding  spears,  the  hinder  ranks  thrusting 
their  longer  spears  between  the  front-line  men.  Such  a  forma- 
tion went  through  anything  less  disciplined  that  opposed  it. 


314  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY       ' 

Mounted  archers  could,  of  course,  inflict  considerable  losses 
on  such  a  mass  of  men,  and  accordingly,  as  the  horse  came  into 
warfare,  horsemen  appeared  on  either  side  as  an  accessory  to 
this  main  battle.  The  reader  must  remember  that  the  horse 
did  not  come  into  very  effective  use  in  western  war  until  the 
rise  of  the  Assyrians,  and  then  at  first  only  as  a  chariot  horse. 
The  chariots  drove  full  tilt  at  the  infantry  mass  and  tried  to 
break  it.  Unless  its  discipline  was  very  solid  they  succeeded. 
The  Homeric  fighting  is  chariot  fighting.  It  is  not  until  the 
last  thousand  years  B.C.  that  we  begin  to  find  mounted  soldiers, 
as  distinct  from  charioteers,  playing  a  part  in  warfare.  At  first 
they  appear  to  have  fought  in  a  scattered  fashion,  each  man 
doing  his  personal  feats.  So  the  Lydians  fought  against  Cyrus. 
It  was  Philip  who  seems  to  have  created  charging  cavalry. 
He  caused  his  "companions"  to  drill  for  a  massed  charge. 
And  also  he  strengthened  his  phalanx  by  giving  the  rear  men 
longer  spears  than  had  been  used  hitherto,  and  so  deepening 
its  mass.  The  Macedonian  phalanx  was  merely  a  more  solid 
version  of  the  Theban  phalanx.  None  of  these  massed  in- 
fantry formations  was  flexible  enough  to  stand  a  flank  or  rear 
attack.  They  had  very  slight  manoeuvring  power.  Both 
Philip's  and  his  son's  victories  followed,  therefore,  with  varia- 
tions, one  general  scheme  of  co-operation  between  these  two 
arms.  The  phalanx  advanced  in  the  centre  and  held  the 
enemy's  main  body;  on  one  wing  or  the  other  the  cavalry 
charges  swept  away  the  enemy  cavalry,  and  then  swooped  round 
upon  the  flank  and  rear  of  the  enemy  phalanx,  the  front,  of 
which  the  Macedonian  phalanx  was  already  smiting.  The 
enemy  main  battle  then  broke  and  was  massacred.  As  Alex- 
ander's military  experience  grew,  he  also  added  a  use  of  cata- 
pults in  the  field,  big  stone-throwing  affairs,  to  break  up 
the  enemy  infantry.  Before  his  time  catapults  had  been 
used  in  sieges,  but  never  in  battles.  He  invented  "artillery 
preparation." 

With  the  weapon  of  his  new  army  in  his  hand,  Philip  first 
turned  his  attention  to  the  north  of  Macedonia.  He  carried 
expeditions  into  Illyria  and  as  far  as  the  Danube;  he  also 
spread  his  power  along  the  coast  as  far  as  the  Hellespont.  He 
secured  possession  of  a  port,  Amphipolis,  and  certain  gold 
mines  adjacent.  After  several  Thracian  expeditions  he  turned 
southward  in  good  earnest.  He  took  up  the  cause  of  the  Delphic 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     315 

ainphictyony  against  those  sacrilegious  Phocians,  and  so  ap- 
peared as  the  champion  of  Hellenic  religion. 

There  was  a  strong  party  of  Greeks,  it  must  be  understood, 
a  Pan-Hellenic  party,  in  favour  of  the  Greek  headship  of  Philip. 
The  chief  writer  of  this  Pan-Hellenic  movement  was  Isocrates. 
Athens,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  head  and  front  of  the  op- 
position to  Philip,  and  Athens  was  in  open  sympathy  with 
Persia,  even  sending  emissaries  to  the  Great  King  to  warn 
him  of  the  danger  to  him  of  a  united  Greece.  The  comings 
and  goings  of  twelve  years  cannot  he  related  here.  In  338  B.C. 
the  long  struggle  between  division  and  pan-Hellenism  came  to  a 
decisive  issue,  and  at  the  battle  of  Chseronea  Philip  inflicted 
a  crushing  defeat  upon  Athens  and  her  allies.  He  gave  Athens 
peace  upon  astonishingly  generous  terms;  he  displayed  him- 
self steadfastly  resolved  to  propitiate  and  favour  that  im- 
placable city;  and  in  338  B.C.  a  congress  of  Greek  states  recog- 
nized him  as  captain-general  for  the  war  against  Persia. 

He  was  now  a  man  of  forty-seven.  It  seemed  as  though  the 
world  lay  at  his  feet.  He  had  made  his  little  country  into 
the  leading  state  in  a  great  Grseco-Macedonian  confederacy. 
That  unification  was  to  be  the  prelude  to  a  still  greater  one, 
the  unification  of  the  Western  world  with  the  Persian  empire 
into  one  world  state  of  all  known  peoples.  Who  can  doubt  he 
had  that  dream  ?  The  writings  of  Isocrates  convince  us  that 
he  had  it.  Who  can  deny  that  he  might  have  realized  it  ?  He 
had  a  reasonable  hope  of  living  for  perhaps  another  quarter 
century  of  activity.  In  336  B.C.  his  advanced  guard  crossed 
into  Asia.  .  .  . 

But  he  never  followed  with  his  main  force.  He  was 
assassinated. 

§  2 

It  is  necessary  now  to  .tell  something  of  the  domestic  life  of 
King  Philip.  The  lives  of  both  Philip  and  his  son  were  per- 
vaded by  the  personality  of  a  restless  and  evil  woman,  Olympias, 
the  mother  of  Alexander. 

She  was  the  daughter  of  the  king  of  Epirus,  a  country  to 
the  west  of  Macedonia,  and,  like  Macedonia,  a  semi-Greek  land. 
She  met  Philip,  or  was  thrown  in  his  way,  at  some  religious 
gathering  in  Samothrace.  Plutarch  declares  the  marriage  was 


316 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


a  love-match,  and  there  seems  to  be  at  least  this  much  in  the 
charges  against  Philip  that,  like  many  energetic  and  imaginative 
men,  he  was  prone  to  impatient  love  impulses.  He  married 
her  when  he  was  already  a  king,  and  Alexander  was  born 
to  him  three  years  later. 

It  was  not  long  before  Olympias  and  Philip  were  bitterly 
estranged.  She  was  jealous  of  him,  but  there  was  another 

and  graver  source  of  trouble  in  her 
passion  for  religious  mysteries.  We 
have  already  noted  that  beneath  the 
fine  and  restrained  Nordic  religion 
of  the  Greeks  the  land  abounded 
with  religious  cults  of  a  darker  and 
more  ancient  kind,  aboriginal  cults 
with  secret  initiations,  orgiastic 
celebrations,  and  often  with  cruel 
and  obscene  rites.  These  religions 
of  the  shadows,  these  practices  of 
the  women  and  peasants  and  slaves, 
gave  Greece  her  Orphic,  Dionysic, 
and  Demeter  cults ;  they  have 
lurked  in  the  tradition  of  Europe 
down  almost  to  our  own  times.  The 
witchcraft  of  the  Middle  Ages,  with 
its  resort  to  the  blood  of  babes, 
scraps  of  executed  criminals,  incan- 
tations and  magic  circles,  seems  to  have  been  little  else  than 
the  lingering  vestiges  of  these  solemnities  of  the  dark  whites. 
In  these  matters  Olympias  was  an  expert  and  an  enthusiast, 
and  Plutarch  mentions  that  she  achieved  considerable  celebrity 
by  use  of  tame  serpents  in  these  pious  exercises.  The 
snakes  invaded  her  domestic  apartments,  and  history  is  not 
clear  whether  Philip  found  in  them  matter  for  exasperation 
or  religious  awe.  These  occupations  of  his  wife  must  have 
been  a  serious  inconvenience  to  Philip,  for  the  Macedonian 
people  were  still  in  that  sturdy  stage  of  social  development  in 
which  neither  enthusiastic  religiosity  nor  uncontrollable  wives 
are  admired. 

The  evidence  of  a  bitter  hostility  between  mother  and  father 
peeps  out  in  many  little  things  in  the  histories.  She  was  evi- 
dently jealous  of  Philip's  conquests ;  she  hated  his  fame.  There 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     817 

are  many  signs  that  Olympias  did  her  best  to  set  her  son  against 
his  father  and  attach  him  wholly  to  herself.  A  story  survives 
(in  Plutarch's  Life)  that  "whenever  news  was  brought  of 
Philip's  victories,  the  capture  of  a  city  or  the  winning  of 
some  great  battle,  he  never  seemed  greatly  rejoiced  to  hear 
it ;  on  the  contrary  he  used  to  say  to  his  play-fellows :  'Father 
will  get  everything  in  advance,  boys;  he  won't  leave  any 
great  task  for  me  to  share  with  you.' "  .  .  . 

It  is  not  a  natural  thing  for  a  boy  to  envy  his  father  in 
this  fashion  without  some  inspiration.  That  sentence  sounds 
like  an  echo. 

We  have  already  pointed  out  how  manifest  it  is  that  Philip 
planned  the  succession  of  Alexander,  and  how  eager  he  was 
to  thrust  fame  and  power  into  the  boy's  hands.  He  was  think- 
ing of  the  political  structure  he  was  building — but  the  mother 
was  thinking  of  the  glory  and  pride  of  that  wonderful  lady, 
Olympias.  She  masked  her  hatred  of  her  husband  under  the 
cloak  of  a  mother's  solicitude  for  her  son's  future.  When  in 
337  B.C.  Philip,  after  the  fashion  of  kings  in  those  days,  mar- 
ried a  second  wife  who  was  a  native  Macedonian,  Cleopatra,  "of 
whom  he  was  passionately  enamoured,"  Olympias  made  much 
trouble. 

Plutarch  tells  of  a  pitiful  scene  that  occurred  at  Philip's 
marriage  to  Cleopatra.  There  was  much  drinking  of  wine  at 
the  banquet,  and  Attains,  the  father  of  the  bride,  being  "in- 
toxicated with  liquor,"  betrayed  the  general  hostility  to 
Olympias  and  Epirus  by  saying  he  hoped  there  would  be  a 
child  by  the  marriage  to  give  them  a  truly  Macedonian  heir. 
Whereupon  Alexander,  taut  for  such  an  insult,  cried  out, 
"What  then  am  I?"  and  hurled  his  cup  at  Attalus.  Philip, 
enraged,  stood  up  and,  says  Plutarch,  drew  his  sword,  only  to 
stumble  and  fall.  Alexander,  blind  with  rage  and  jealousy, 
taunted  and  insulted  his  father. 

"Macedonians,"  he  said.  "See  there  the  general  who  would 
go  from  Europe  to  Asia !  Why !  he  cannot  get  from  one  table 
to  another!" 

How  that  scene  lives  still,  the  sprawl,  the  flushed  faces,  the 
angry  voice  of  the  boy!  Next  day  Alexander  departed  with 
his  mother — and  Philip  did  nothing  to  restrain  them.  Olympias 
went  home  to  Epirus;  Alexander  departed  to  Illyria,  Thence 
Philip  persuaded  him  to  return. 


318  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Fresh  trouble  arose.  Alexander  had  a  brother  of  weak  inr 
tellect,  Aridseus,  whom  the  Persian  governor  of  Caria  sought 
as  a  son-in-law.  " Alexanders  friends  and  his  mother  now 
infused  notions  into  him  again,  though  perfectly  groundless, 
that  by  so  noble  a  match,  and  the  support  consequent  upon  it, 
Philip  designed  the  crown  for  Aridseus,  Alexander,  in  the 
uneasiness  these  suspicions  gave  him,  sent  one  Thessalus,  a 
player,  into  Caria,  to  desire  the  grandee  to  pass  by  Aridseus, 
who  was  of  spurious  birth,  and  deficient  in  point  of  under- 
standing, and  to  take  the  lawful  heir  to  the  crown  into  his 
alliance.  Pixcdarus  was  infinitely  more  pleased  with  this  pro- 
posal. But  Philip  no  sooner  had  intelligence  of  it,  than  he 
went  to  Alexander's  apartment,  taking  along  with  him  Philotas, 
the  son  of  Parmenio,  one  of  his  most  intimate  friends  and 
companions,  and,  in  his  presence,  reproached  him  with  his 
degeneracy  and  meanness  of  spirit,  in  thinking  of  being  son- 
in-law  to  a  man  of  Caria,  one  of  the  slaves  of  a  barbarian  king. 
At  the  same  time  he  wrote  to  the  Corinthians,  insisting  that  they 
should  send  Thessalus  to  him  in  chains.  Harpalus  and 
Niarchus,  Phrygius  and  Ptolemy,  some  of  the  other  companions 
of  the  prince,  he  banished.  But  Alexander  afterwards  recalled 
them,  and  treated  them  with  great  distinction." 

There  is  something  very  touching  in  this  story  of  the  father 
pleading  with  the  son  he  manifestly  loved,  and  baffled  by  the 
web  of  mean  suggestion  which  had  been  spun  about  the  boy's 
imagination. 

It  was  at  the  marriage  of  his  daughter  to  her  uncle,  the  king 
of  Epirus  and  the  brother  of  Olympias,  that  Philip  was  stabbed. 
He  was  walking  in  a  procession  into  the  theatre  unarmed,  in 
a  white  robe,  and  he  was  cut  down  by  one  of  his  bodyguard. 
The  murderer  had  a  horse  waiting,  and  would  have  got  away, 
but  the  foot  of  his  horse  caught  in  a  wild  vine  and  he  was 
thrown  from  the  saddle  by  the  stumble  and  slain  by  his 
pursuers.  .  .  . 

So  at  the  age  of  twenty  Alexander  was  at  the  end  of 
his  anxiety  about  the  succession,  and  established  king  in 
Macedonia. 

Olympias  then  reappeared  in  Macedonia,  a  woman  proudly 
vindicated.  It  is  said  that  she  insisted  upon  paying  the  same 
funeral  honours  to  the  memory  of  the  murderer  as  to  Philip. 

In  Greece  there  were  great  rejoicings  over  this  auspicious 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     319 

event,  and  Demosthenes,  when  he  had  the  news,  although  it 
was  but  seven  days  after  the  death  of  his  own  daughter,  went 
into  the  public  assembly  at  Athens  in  gay  attire  wearing  a 
chaplet. 

Whatever  Olympias  may  have  done  about  her  husband's 
assassin,  history  does  not  doubt  about  her  treatment  of  her  sup- 
planter,  Cleopatra.  So  soon  as  Alexander  was  out  of  the  way 
—and  a  revolt  of  the  hillmen  in  the  north  called  at  once  for 
his  attention  —  Cleopatra's  newly  born  child  was  killed  in  its 
mother's  arms,  and  Cleopatra  —  no  doubt  after  a  little  taunting 
—was  then  strangled.  These  excesses  of  womanly  feeling  are 
said  to  -have  shocked  Alexander,  but  they  did  not  prevent  him 
from  leaving  his  mother  in  a  position  of  considerable  authority 
in  Macedonia.  She  wrote  letters  to  him  upon  religious  and 
political  questions,  and  he  showed  a  dutiful  disposition  in  send- 
ing her  always  a  large  share  of  the  plunder  he  made. 


These  stories  have  to  be  told  because  history  cannot  be  un- 
derstood without  them.  Here  was  the  great  world  of  men  be- 
tween India  and  the  Adriatic  ready  for  union,  ready  as  it  had 
never  been  before  for  a  unifying  control.  Here  was  the  wide 
order  of  the  Persian  empire  with  its  roads,  its  posts,  its  gen- 
eral peace  and  prosperity,  ripe  for  the  fertilizing  influence  of 
the  Greek  mind.  And  these  stories  display  the  quality  of 
the  human  beings  to  whom  those  great  opportunities  came. 
Here  was  this  Philip  who  was  a  very  great  and  noble  man,  and 
yet  he  was  drunken,  he  could  keep  no  order  in  his  household. 
Here  was  Alexander  in  many  ways  gifted  above  any  man 
of  his  time,  and  he  was  vain,  suspicious,  and  passionate,  with 
a  mind  set  awry  by  his  mother. 

We  are  :  beginning  to  understand  something  of  what  the 
world  might  be,  something  of  what  our  race  might  become, 
Were  it  not  for  our  still  raw  humanity.  It  is  barely  a  matter 
of  seventy  generations  between  ourselves  and  Alexander  ;  and 
between  ourselves  and  the  savage  hunters,  our  ancestors,  who 
charred  their  food  in  the  embers  or  ate  it  raw,  intervene  some 
four  or  five  hundred  generations.  There  is  not  much  scope  for 
the  modification  of  a  species  in  four  or  five  hundred  gen- 
erations. Make  men  and  women  only  sufficiently  jealous  or 


320  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

fearful  or  drunken  or  angry,  and  the  hot  red  eyes  of  the  cave- 
men will  glare  out  at  us  to-day.  We  have  writing  and  teach- 
ing, science  and  .power ;  we  have  tamed  the  beasts  and  schooled 
the  lightning ;  but  we  are  still  only  shambling  towards  the  light. 
We  have  tamed  and  bred  the  beasts,  but  we  have  still  to  tame 
and  breed  ourselves. 

From  the  very  beginning  of  his  reign  the  deeds  of  Alexander 
showed  how  well  he  had  assimilated  his  father's  plans,  and 
how  great  were  his  own  abilities.  A  map  of  the  known  world 
is  needed  to  show  the  course  of  his  life.  At  first,  after  re- 
ceiving assurances  from  Greece  that  he  was  to  be  captain-gen- 
eral of  the  Grecian  forces,  he  marched  through  Thrace  to  the 
Danube;  he  crossed  the  river  and  burnt  a  village,  the  second 
great  monarch  to  raid  the  Scythian  country  beyond  the  Danube ; 
then  recrossed  it  and  marched  westward  and  so  came  down,  by 
Illyria.  By  that  time  the  city  of  Thebes  was  in  rebellion,  and 
his  next  blow  was  at  Greece.  Thebes — unsupported  of  course 
by  Athens — was  taken  and  looted;  it  was  treated  with  ex- 
travagant violence;  all  its  buildings,  except  the  temple  and 
the  house  of  the  poet  Pindar,  were  razed,  and  thirty  thousand 
people  sold  into  slavery.  Greece  was  stunned,  and  Alexander 
was  free  to  go  on  with  the  Persian  campaign. 

This  destruction  of  Thebes  betrayed  a  streak  of  violence  in 
the  new  master  of  human  destinies.  It  was  too  heavy  a  blow 
to  have  dealt.  It  was  a  barbaric  thing  to  do.  If  the  spirit  of 
rebellion  was  killed,  so  abo  was  the  spirit  of  help.  The  Greek 
states  remained  inert  thereafter,  neither  troublesome  nor  help- 
ful. They  would  not  support  Alexander  with  their  shipping, 
a  thing  which  was  to  prove  a  very  grave  embarrassment  to  him. 

There  is  a  story  told  by  Plutarch  about  this  Theban  massacre, 
as  if  it  redounded  to  the  credit  of  Alexander,  but  indeed  it 
shows  only  how  his  saner  and  his  crazy  sides  were  in  con- 
flict. It  tells  of  a  Macedonian  officer  and  a  Theban  lady.  This 
officer  was  among  the  looters,  and  he  entered  this  woman's  house, 
inflicted  unspeakable  insults  and  injuries  upon  her,  and  at 
last  demanded  whether  she  had  gold  or  silver  hidden.  She 
told  him  all  her  treasures  had  been  put  into  the  well,  conducted 
him  thither,  and,  as  he  stooped  to  peer  down,  pushed  him  sud- 
denly in  and  killed  him  by  throwing  great  stones  upon  him. 
Some  allied  soldiers  came  upon  this  scene  and  took  her  forth- 
with to  Alexander  for  judgment 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     321 

She  defied  him.  Already  the  extravagant  impulse  that  had 
ordered  the  massacre  was  upon  the  wane,  and  he  not  only 
spared  her,  hut  had  her  family  and  property  and  freedom  re- 
stored to  her.  This  Plutarch  makes  out  to  he  a  generosity, 
hut  the  issue  is  more  complicated  than  that.  It  was  Alex- 
ander who  was  outraging  and  plundering  and  enslaving  all 
Thebes.  That  poor  crumpled  Macedonian  brute  in  the  well 
had  been  doing  only  what  he  had  been  told  he  had  full  lib- 
erty to  do.  Is  a  commander  first  to  give  cruel  orders,  and  then 
to  forgive  and  reward  those  who  slay  his  instruments?  This 
gleam  of  remorse  at  the  instance  of  one  woman  who  was  not 
perhaps  wanting  in  tragic  dignity  and  beauty,  is  a  poor  set- 
off  to  the  murder  of  a  great  city. 

Mixed  with  the  craziness  of  Olympias  in  Alexander  was 
the  sanity  of  Philip  and  the  teachings  of  Aristotle.  This  The- 
ban  business  certainly  troubled  the  mind  of  Alexander.  When- 
ever afterwards  he  encountered  Thebans,  he  tried  to  show  them 
special  favour.  Thebes,  to  his  credit,  haunted  him. 

Yet  the  memory  of  Thebes  did  not  save  three  other  great 
cities  from,  similar  brain  storms ;  Tyre  he  destroyed,  and  Gaza, 
and  a  city  in  India,  in  the  storming  of  which  he  was  knocked 
down  in  fair  fight  and  wounded;  and  of  the  latter  place  not 
a  soul,  not  a  child,  was  spared.  He  must  have  been  badly 
frightened  to  have  taken  so  evil  a  revenge. 

At  the  outset  of  the  war  the  Persians  had  this  supreme  ad- 
vantage, they  were  practically  masters  of  the  sea.  The  ships 
of  the  Athenians  and  their  allies  sulked  unhelpfully.  Alex- 
ander, to  get  at  Asia,  had  to  go  round  by  the  Hellespont;  and 
if  he  pushed  far  into  the  Persian  empire,  he  ran  the  risk  of 
being  cut  off  completely  from  his  base.  His  first  task,  there- 
fore, was  to  cripple  the  enemy  at  sea,  and  this  he  could  only 
do  by  marching  along  the  coast  of  Asia  Minor  and  capturing 
port  after  port  until  the  Persian  sea  bases  were  destroyed.  If 
the  Persians  had  avoided  battle  and  hung  upon  his  lengthening 
line  of  communications  they  could  probably  have  destroyed 
him,  but  this  they  did  not  do.  A  Persian  army  not  very  much 
greater  than  his  own  gave  battle  on  the  banks  of  the  Granicus 
(334  B.C.)  and  was  destroyed.  This  left  him  free  to  take 
Sardis,  Ephesus,  Miletus,  and,  after  a  fierce  struggle,  Halicar- 
nassus.  Meanwhile  the  Persian  fleet  was  on  his  right  flank  and 


322  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

between  him  and  Greece,  threatening  much  but  accomplishing 
nothing. 

In  333  B.C.,  pursuing  this  attack  upon  the  sea  bases,  he 
marched  along  the  coast  as  far  as  the  head  of  the  gulf  now  called 
the  Gulf  of  Alexandretta.  A  huge  Persian  army,  under  the 
great  king  Darius  III,  was  inland  of  his  line  of  march,  sep- 
arated from  the  coast  by  mountains,  and  Alexander  went  right 
beyond  this  enemy  force  before  he  or  the  Persians  realized 
their  proximity.  Scouting  was  evidently  very  badly  done  by 
Greek  and  Persian  alike.  The  Persian  army  was  a  vast,  ill- 
organized  assembly  of  soldiers,  transport,  camp  followers,  and 
so  forth.  Darius,  for  instance,  was  accompanied  by  his  harem, 
and  there  was  a  great  multitude  of  harem  slaves,  musicians, 
dancers,  and  cooks.  Many  of  the  leading  officers  had  brought 
their  families  to  witness  the  hunting  down  of  the  Macedonian 
invaders.  The  troops  had  been  levied  from  every  province  in 
the  empire;  they  had  no  tradition  or  principle  of  combined 
action.  Seized  by  the  idea  of  cutting  off  Alexander  from  Greece, 
Darius  moved  this  multitude  over  the  mountains  to  the  sea ;  he 
had  the  luck  to  get  through  the  passes  without  opposition,  and 
he  encamped  on  the  plain  of  Issus  between  the  mountains  and 
the  shore.  And  there  Alexander,  who  had  turned  back  to  fight, 
struck  him.  The  cavalry  charge  and  the  phalanx  smashed  this 
great  brittle  host  as  a  stone  smashes  a  bottle.  It  was  routed. 
Darius  escaped  from  his  war  chariot — that  out-of-date  instru- 
ment— and  fled  on  horseback,  leaving  even  his  harem  in  the 
hands  of  Alexander. 

All  the  accounts  of  Alexander  after  this  battle  show  him  at 
his  best.  He  was  restrained  and  magnanimous.  He  treated 
the  Persian  princesses  with  the  utmost  civility.  And  he  kept 
his  head ;  he  held  steadfastly  to  his  plan.  He  let  Darius  escape, 
unpursued,  into  Syria,  and  he  continued  his  march  upon  the 
naval  bases  of  the  Persians — that  is  to  say,  upon  the  Phoenician 
ports  of  Tyre  and  Sidon. 

Sidon  surrendered  to  him;  Tyre  resisted. 

Here,  if  anywhere,  we  have  the  evidence  of  great  military 
ability  on  the  part  of  Alexander.  His  army  was  his  father's 
creation,  but  Philip  had  never  shone  in  the  siege  of  cities. 
When  Alexander  was  a  boy  of  sixteen,  he  had  seen  his  father 
repulsed  by  the  fortified  city  of  Byzantium  upon  the  Bosphorus. 
he  was  face  to  face  with  an  inviolate  city  which  had  stood 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     323 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

siege  after  siege,  which  had  resisted  Nebuchadnezzar  the  Great 
for  fourteen  years.  For  the  standing  of  sieges  Semitic  peoples 
hold  the  palm.  Tyre  was  then  an  island  half  a  mile  from  the 
shore,  and  her  fleet  was  unbeaten.  On  the  other  hand,  Alex- 
ander had  already  learnt  much  by  the  siege  of  the  citadel  of 
Halicarnassus ;  he  had  gathered  to  himself  a  corps  of  engineers 
from  Cyprus  and  Phoenicia,  the  Sidonian  fleet  was  with  him, 
and  presently  the  king  of  Cyprus  came  over  to  him  with  a 
hundred  and  twenty  ships,  which  gave  him  the  command  of  the 
sea.  Moreover,  great  Carthage,  either  relying  on  the  strength 
of  the  mother  city  or  being  disloyal  to  her,  and  being  further- 
more entangled  in  a  war  in  Sicily,  sent  no  help. 

The  first  measure  of  Alexander  was  to  build  a  pier  from  the 
mainland  to  the  island,  a  dam  which  remains  to  this  day ;  and 
on  this,  as  it  came  close  to  the  walls  of  Tyre,  he  set  up  his 
towers  and  battering-rams.  Against  the  walls  he  also  moored 
ships  in  which  towers  and  rams  were  erected.  The  Tyrians 
used  fire-ships  against  this  flotilla,  and  made  sorties  from  their 
two  harbours.  In  a  big  surprise  raid  that  they  made  on  the 
Cyprian  ships  they  were  caught  and  badly  mauled;  many  of 
their  ships  were  rammed,  and  one  big  galley  of  five  banks  of 
oars  and  one  of  four  were  captured  outright.  Finally  a  breach 
in  the  walls  was  made,  and  the  Macedonians,  clambering  up  the 
debris  from  their  ships,  stormed  the  city. 

The  siege  had  lasted  seven  months.  Gaza  held  out  for  two. 
In  each  case  there  was  a  massacre,  the  plundering  of  the  city, 
and  the  selling  of  the  survivors  into  slavery.  Then  towards  the 
end  of  332  B.C.  Alexander  entered  Egypt,  and  the  command 
of  the  sea  was  assured.  Greece,  which  all  this  while  had  been 
wavering  in  its  policy,  decided  now  at  last  that  it  was  on  the 
side  of  Alexander,  and  the  council  of  the  Greek  states  at  Corinth 
voted  its  "captain-general"  a  golden  crown  of  victory.  From 
this  time  onward  the  Greeks  were  with  the  Macedonians. 

Tho  Egyptians  also  were  with  the  Macedonians.  But  they 
had  been  for  Alexander  from  the  beginning.  They  had  lived 
under  Persian  rule  for  nearly  two  hundred  years,  and  the  com- 
ing of  Alexander  meant  for  them  only  a  change  of  masters; 
on  the  whole,  a  change  for  the  better.  The  country  surrendered 
without  a  blow.  Alexander  treated  its  religious  feelings  with 
extreme  respect.  He  unwrapped  no  mummies  as  Cambyses 
nad  done;  he  took  no  liberties  with  Apis,  the  sacred  bull  of 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     325 

Memphis.  Here,  in  great  temples  and  upon  a  vast  scale,  Alex- 
ander found  the  evidences  of  a  religiosity,  mysterious  and  ir- 
rational, to  remind  him  of  the  secrets  and  mysteries  that  had 
entertained  his  mother  and  impressed  his  childhood.  During 
his  four  months  in  Egypt  he  flirted  with  religious  emotions. 

He  was  still  a  very  young  man,  we  must  rememher,  divided 
against  himself.  The  strong  sanity  he  inherited  from  his  father 
had  made  him  a  great  soldier;  the  teaching  of  Aristotle  had 
given  him  something  of  the  scientific  outlook  upon  the  world. 
He  had  destroyed  Tyre ;  in  Egypt,  at  one  of  the  mouths  of  the 
Nile,  he  now  founded  a  new  city,  Alexandria,  to  replace  that 
ancient  centre  of  trade.  To  the  north  of  Tyre,  near  Issus,  he 
founded  a  second  port,  Alexandretta.  Both  of  these  cities 
flourish  to  this  day,  and  for  a  time  Alexandria  was  perhaps 
the  greatest  city  in  the  world.  The  sites,  therefore,  must  have 
been  wisely  chosen.  But  also  Alexander  had  the  unstable  emo- 
tional imaginativeness  of  his  mother,  and  side  by  side  with 
such  creative  work  he  indulged  in  religious  adventures.  The 
gods  of  Egypt  took  possession  of  his  mind.  He  travelled  four 
hundred  miles  to  the  remote  oasis  of  the  oracle  of  Ammon. 
He  wanted  to  settle  certain  doubts  about  his  true  parentage. 
His  mother  had  inflamed  his  mind  by  hints  and  vague  speeches 
of  some  deep  mystery  about  his  parentage.  Was  so  ordinary  a 
humaa  being  as  Philip  of  Macedon  really  his  rather? 

For  nearly  four  hundred  years  Egypt  had  been  a  country 
politically  contemptible,  overrun  now  by  Ethiopians,  now  by 
Assyrians,  now  by  Babylonians,  now  by  Persians.  As  the  in- 
dignities of  the  present  became  more  and  more  disagreeable  to 
contemplate,  the  past  and  the  other  world  became  more  splendid 
to  Egyptian  eyes.  It  is  from  the  festering  humiliations  of  peo- 
ples that  arrogant  religious  propagandas  spring.  To  the  tri- 
umphant the  downtrodden  can  say,  "It  is  naught  in  the  sight 
of  the  true  gods."  So  the  son  of  Philip  of  Macedon,  the  master- 
general  of  Greece,  was  made  to  feel  a  small  person  amidst  the 
gigantic  temples.  And  he  had  an  abnormal  share  of  youth's 
normal  ambition  to  impress  everybody.  How  gratifying  then 
for  him  to  discover  presently  that  he  was  no  mere  successful 
mortal,  not  one  of  these  modern  vulgar  Greekish  folk,  but  an- 
cient and  divine,  the  son  of  a  god,  the  Pharaoh  god,  son  of 
Ammon  Ha! 


326  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Already  in.  a  previous  chapter  we  have  given  a  description 
of  that  encounter  in  the  desert  temple. 

Not  altogether  was  the  young  man  convinced.  He  had  his 
moments  of  conviction ;  he  had  his  saner  phases  when  the  thing 
was  almost  a  jest.  In  the  presence  of  Macedonians  and  Greeks 
he  doubted  if  he  was  divine.  When  it  thundered  loudly,  the 
ribald  Aristarchus  could  ask  him:  "Won't  you  do  something 
of  the  sort,  oh  Son  of  Zeus  ?"  But  the  crazy  notion  was,  never- 
theless, present  henceforth  in  his  brain,  ready  to  be  inflamed 
by  wine  or  flattery. 

Next  spring  (331  B.C.)  he  returned  to  Tyre,  and  marched 
thence  round  towards  Assyria,  leaving  the  Syrian  desert  on  his 
right.  Near  the  ruins  of  forgotten  Nineveh  he  found  a  great 
Persian  army,  that  had  been  gathering  since  the  battle  of  Issus, 
awaiting  him.  It  was  another  huge  medley  of  contingents,  and 
it  relied  for  its  chief  force  upon  that  now  antiquated  weapon, 
the  war  chariot.  Of  these  Darius  had  a  force  of  two  hundred, 
and  each  chariot  had  scythes  attached  to  its  wheels  and  to  the 
pole  and  body  of  the  chariot.  There  seem  to  have  been  four 
horses  to  each  chariot,  and  it  will  be  obvious  that  if  one  of  those 
horses  was  wounded  by  javelin  or  arrow,  that  chariot  was  held 
up.  The  outer  horses  acted  chiefly  as  buffers  for  the  inner 
wheel  horses ;  they  were  hitched  to  the  chariot  by  a  single  out- 
side trace  which  could  be  easily  cut  away,  but  the  loss  of  one 
of  the  wheel  horses  completely  incapacitated  the  whole  affair. 
Against  broken  footmen  or  a  crowd  of  individualist  fighters 
such  vehicles  might  be  formidable;  but  Darius  began  the  battle 
by  flinging  them  against  the  cavalry  and  light  infantry.  Few 
reached  their  objective,  and  those  that  did  were  readily  disposed 
of.  There  was  some  manoeuvring  for  position.  The  well-drilled 
Macedonians  moved  obliquely  across  the  Persian  front,  keeping 
good  order ;  the  Persians,  following  this  movement  to  the  flank, 
opened  gaps  in  their  array.  Then  suddenly  the  disciplined 
Macedonian  cavalry  charged  at  one  of  these  torn  places  and 
smote  the  centre  of  the  Persian  host  The  infantry  followed 
close  upon  their  charge.  The  centre  and  left  of  the  Persians 
crumpled  up.  For  a  while  the  light  cavalry  on  the  Persian  right 
gained  ground  against  Alexander's  left,  only  to  be  cut  to  pieces 
by  the  cavalry  from  Thessaly,  which  by  this  time  had  become 
almost  as  good  as  its  Macedonian  model.  The  Persian  forces 
ceased  to  resemble  an  army.  They  dissolved  into  a  vast  multi- 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     327 

tude  of  fugitives  streaming  under  great  dust  clouds  and  without 
a  single  rally  across  the  hot  plain  towards  Arbela.  Through 
the  dust  and  the  flying  crowd  rode  the  victors,  slaying  and 
slaying  until  darkness  stayed  the  slaughter.  Darius  led  the 
retreat. 

Such  was  the  battle  of  Arbela.  It  was  fought  on  October 
the  1st,  331  B.C.  We  know  its  date  so  exactly,  because  it  is 
recorded  that,  eleven  days  before  it  began,  the  soothsayers  on 
both  sides  had  been  greatly  exercised  by  an  eclipse  of  the  moon. 

Darius  fled  to  the  north  into  the  country  of  the  Medes.  Alex- 
ander marched  on  to  Babylon.  The  ancient  city  of  Hammurabi 
(who  had  reigned  seventeen  hundred  years  before)  and  of 
Nebuchadnezzar  the  Great  and  of  Nabonidus  was  still,  unlike 
Nineveh,  a  prosperous  and  important  centre.  Like  the  Egyp- 
tians, the  Babylonians  were  not  greatly  concerned  at  a  change 
of  rule  to  Macedonian  from  Persian.  The  temple  of  Bel- 
Marduk  was  in  ruins,  a  quarry  for  building  material,  but  the 
tradition  of  the  Chaldean  priests  still  lingered,  and  Alexander 
promised  to  restore  the  building. 

Thence  he  marched  on  to  Susa,  once  the  chief  city  of  the  van- 
ished and  forgotten  Elamites,  and  now  the  Persian  capital. 

He  went  on  to  Persepolis,  where,  as  the  climax  of  a  drunken 
carouse,  he  burnt  down  the  great  palace  of  the  king  of  kings. 
This  he  afterwards  declared  was  the  revenge  of  Greece  for  the 
burning  of  Athens  by  Xerxes. 


And  now  begins  a  new  phase  in  the  story  of  Alexander.  For 
the  next  seven  years  he  wandered  with  an  army  chiefly  of  Mace- 
donians in  the  north  and  east  of  what  was  then  the  known  world. 
At  first  it  was  a  pursuit  of  Darius.  Afterwards  it  became  -  ? 
Was  it  -a  systematic  survey  of  a  world  he  meant  to  consolidate 
into  one  great  order,  or  was  it  a  wild-goose  chase  ?  His  own 
soldiers,  his  own  intimates,  thought,  the  latter,  and  at  last  stayed 
his  career  beyond  the  Indus.  On  the  map  it  looks  very  like  a 
wild-goose  chase;  it  seems  to  aim  at  nothing  in  particular  and 
to  get  nowhere. 

The  pursuit  of  Darius  III  soon  came  to  a  pitiful  end.  After 
the  battle  of  Arbela  his  own  generals  seem  to  have  revolted 
against  his  weakness  and  incompetence;  they  made  him  a  pris- 


328  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

oner,  and  took  him  with  them  in  spite  of  his  desire  to  throw 
himself  upon  the  generosity  of  his  conqueror.  Bessus,  the 
satrap  of  Bactria,  they  made  their  leader.  There  was  at  last  a 
hot  and  exciting  chase  of  the  flying  caravan  which  conveyed  the 
captive  king  of  kings.  At  dawn,  after  an  all-night  pursuit,  it 
was  sighted  far  ahead.  The  flight  became  a  headlong  bolt. 
Baggage,  women,  everything  was  abandoned  by  Bessus  and 
his  captains;  and  one  other  impediment  also  they  left  behind. 
By  the  side  of  a  pool  of  water  far  away  from  the  road  a  Mace- 
donian trooper  presently  found  a  deserted  mule-cart  with  its 
mules  still  in  the  traces.  In  this  cart  lay  Darius,  stabbed  in  a 
score  of  places  and  bleeding  to  death.  He  had  refused  to  go  on 
with  Bessus,  refused  to  mount  the  horse  that  was  brought  to 
him.  So  his  captains  had  run  him  through  with  their  spears  and 
left  him.  .  .  .  He  asked  his  captors  for  water.  What  else  he 
may  have  said  we  do  not  know.  The  historians  have  seen  fit 
to  fabricate  a  quite  impossible  last  dying  speech  for  him.  Prob- 
ably he  said  very  little.  .  .  . 

When,  a  little  after  sunrise,  Alexander  came  up,  Darius  was 
already  dead.  .  .  . 

To  the  historian  of  the  world  the  wanderings  of  Alexander 
have  an  interest  of  their  own  quite  apart  from  the  light  they 
throw  upon  his  character.  Just  as  the  campaign  of  Darius  I 
lifted  the  curtain  behind  Greece  and  Macedonia,  and  showed  us 
something  of  the  silent  background  to  the  north  of  the  audible 
and  recorded  history  of  the  early  civilizations,  so  now  Alex- 
ander's campaigns  take  us  into  regions  about  which  there  had 
hitherto  been  no  trustworthy  record  made. 

We  discover  they  were  not  desert  regions,  but  full  of  a 
gathering  life  of  their  own. 

He  marched  to  the  shores  of  the  Caspian,  thence  he  travelled 
eastward  across  what  is  now  called  Western  Turkestan.  He 
founded  a  city  that  is  now  known  as  Herat;  whence  he  went 
northward  by  Cabul  and  by  what  is  now  Samarkand,  right  up 
into  the  mountains  of  Central  Turkestan.  He  returned  south- 
ward, and  came  down  into  India  by  the  Khyber  Pass.  He 
fought  a  great  battle  on  the  Upper  Indus  against  a  very  tall 
and  chivalrous  king,  Porus,  in  which  the  Macedonian  infantry 
encountered  an  array  of  elephants  and  defeated  them.  Possi- 
bly he  would  have  pushed  eastward  across  the  deserts  to  the 
Ganges  valley,  but  his  troops  refused  to  go  further.  Possibly, 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     329 

had  they  not  done  so,  then  or  later  he  would  have  gone  on  until 
he  vanished  eastward  out  of  history.  But  he  was  forced  to  turn 
about.  He  built  a  fleet  and  descended  to  the  mouth  of  the  Indus. 
There  he  divided  his  forces.  The  main  army  he  took  along 
the  desolate  coast  back  to  the  Persian  Gulf,  and  on  the  way  it 
suffered  dreadfully  and  lost  many  men  through  thirst.  The 
fleet  followed  him  by  sea,  and  rejoined  him  at  the  entrance  to 
the  Persian  Gulf.  In  the  course  of  this  six-year  tour  he  fought 
battles,  received  the  submission  of  many  strange  peoples,  and 
founded  cities.  He  saw  the  dead  body  of  Darius  in  June,  330 
B.C.  ;  he  returned  to  Susa  in  324  B.C.  He  found  the  empire  in 
disorder:  the  provincial  satraps  raising  armies  of  their  own, 
Bactria  and  Media  in  insurrection,  and  Olympias  making  gov- 
ernment impossible  in  Macedonia.  Harpalus,  the  royal  treas- 
urer, had  bolted  with  all  that  was  portable  of  the  royal  treas- 
ure, and  was  making  his  way,  bribing  as  he  went,  towards 
Greece.  Some  of  the  Harpalus  money  is  said  to  have  reached 
Demosthenes. 

But  before  we  deal  with  the  closing  chapter  of  the  story  of 
Alexander,  let  us  say  a  word  or  so  about  these  northern  regions 
into  which  he  wandered.  It  is  evident  that  from  the  Danube 
region  right  across  South  Russia,  right  across  the  country  to 
the  north  of  the  Caspian,  right  across  the  country  to  the  east  of 
the  Caspian,  as  far  as  the  mountain  masses  of  the  Pamir 
Plateau  and  eastward  into  the  Tarim  basin  of  Eastern  Turkes- 
tan, there  spread  then  a  series  of  similar  barbaric  tribes  and 
peoples  all  at  about  the  same  stage  of  culture,  and  for  the  most 
part  Aryan  in  their  language  and  possibly  Nordic  in  their  race. 
They  had  few  cities,  mostly  they  were  nomadic ;  at  times  they 
settled  temporarily  to  cultivate  the  land.  They  were  certainly 
already  mingling  in  Central  Asia  with  Mongolian  tribes,  but 
the  Mongolian  tribes  were  not  then  prevalent  there. 

An  immense  process  of  drying  up  and  elevation  has  been 
going  on  'in  these  parts  of  the  world  during  the  last  ten  thou- 
sand years.  Ten  thousand  years  ago  there  was  probably  a  con- 
tinuous water  barrier  between  the  basin  of  the  Obi  and  the 
Aral-Caspian  sea.  As  this  had  dried  up  and  the  marshy  land 
had  become  steppe-like  country,  Nordic  nomads  from  the  west 
and  Mongolian  nomads  from  the  east  had  met  and  mixed, 
and  the  riding  horse  had  come  back  into  the  western  world. 
It  is  evident  this  great  stretch  of  country  was  becoming  a  region 


330  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  accumulation  for  these  barbaric  peoples.  They  were  very 
loosely  attached  to  the  lands  they  occupied.  They  lived  in  tents 
and  wagons  rather  than  houses.  A  brief  cycle  of  plentiful  and 
healthy  years,  or  a  cessation  of  tribal  warfare  under  some  strong 
ruler,  would  lead  to  considerable  increases  of  population;  then 
two  or  three  hard  years  would  suffice  to  send  the  tribes  wander- 
ing again  in  search  of  food. 

From  before  the  dawn  of  recorded  history  this  region  of 
human  accumulation  between  the  Danube  and  China  had  been, 
as  it  were,  intermittently  raining  out  tribes  southward  and 
westward.  It  was  like  a  cloud  bank  behind  the  settled  landscape 
that  accumulated  and  then  precipitated  invaders.  We  have 
noted  how  the  Keltic  peoples  drizzled  westward,  how  the  Ital- 
ians, the  Greeks,  and  their  Epirote,  Macedonian,  and  Phrygian 
kindred  came  :  outh.  We  have  noted,  too,  the  Cimmerian  drive 
from  the  east,  like  a  sudden  driving  shower  of  barbarians  across 
Asia  Minor,  the  southward  coming  of  the  Scythians  and  Medes 
and  Persians,  and  the  Aryan  descent  into  India.  About  a  cen- 
tury before  Alexander  there  had  been  a  fresh  Aryan  invasion 
of  Italy  by  a  Keltic  people,  the  Gauls,  who  had  settled  in  the 
valley  of  the  Po.  Those  various  races  came  down  out  of  their 
northern  obscurity  into  the  light  of  history;  and  meanwhile 
beyond  that  light  the  reservoir  accumulated  for  fresh  discharges. 
Alexander's  march  in  Central  Asia  brings  now  into  our  history 
names  that  are  fresh  to  us;  the  Parthians,  a  race  of  mounted 
bowmen  who  were  destined  to  play  an  important  role  in  history 
a  century  or  so  later,  and  the  Bactrians  who  lived  in  the  sandy 
native  land  of  the  camel.  Everywhere  he  seems  to  have  met 
Aryan-speaking  peoples.  The  Mongolian  barbarians  to  the 
north-eastward  were  still  unsuspected,  no  one  imagined  there 
was  yet  another  great  cloud  bank  of  population  beyond  the 
Scythians  and  their  kind,  in  the  north  of  China,  that  was  pres- 
ently also  to  begin  a  drift  westward  and  southward,  mixing  as  it 
came  with  the  Nordic  Scythians  and  every  other  people  of 
kindred  habits  that  it  encountered.  As  yet  only  China  knew 
of  the  Huns ;  there  were  no  Turks  in  Western  Turkestan  or  any- 
where else  then,  no  Tartars  in  the  world. 

This  glimpse  of  the  state  of  affairs  in  Turkestan  in  the  fourth 
century  B.C.  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  aspects  of  the  wan- 
derings of  Alexander;  another  is  his  raid  through  the  Punjab. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  teller  of  the  human  story  it  is 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     331 

provocative  that  he  did  not  go  on  into  the  Ganges  country,  and 
that  consequently  we  have  no  independent  accounts  by  Greek 
writers  of  the  life  in  ancient  Bengal.  But  there  is  a  consider- 
able literature  in  various  Indian  languages  dealing  with  Indian 
history  and  social  life -that  still  needs  to  be  made  accessible  to 
European  readers. 

§5 

Alexander  had  been  in  undisputed  possession  of  the  Persian 
empire  for  six  years.  He  was  now  thirty-one.  In  those  six 
years  he  had  created  very  little.  He  had  retained  most  of  the 
organization  of  the  Persian  provinces,  appointing  fresh  satraps 
or  retaining  the  former  ones ;  the  roads,  the  ports,  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  empire  was  still  as  Cyrus,  his  greater  predecessor, 
had  left  them ;  in  Egypt  he  had  merely  replaced  old  provincial 
governors  by  new  ones;  in  India  he  had  defeated  Porus,  and 
then  left  him  in  power  much  as  he  found  him,  except  that  Porus 
was  now  called  a  satrap  by  the  Greeks.  Alexander  had,  it  is 
true,  planned  out  a  number  of  towns,  and  some  of  them  were 
to  grow  into  great  towns ;  seventeen  Alexandrias  he  founded  al- 
together; 1  but  he  had  destroyed  Tyre,  and  with  Tyre  the  se- 
curity of  the  sea  routes  which  had  hitherto  been  the  chief  west- 
ward outlet  for  Mesopotamia.  Historians  say  that  he  Hellenized 
the  east.  But  Babylonia  and  Egypt  swarmed  with  Greeks 
before  his  time;  he  was  not  the  cause,  he  was  a  part  of  the 
Hellenizat.ion.  For  a  time  the  whole  world,  from  the  Adriatic 
to  the  Indus,  was  under  one  ruler;  so  far  he  had  realized  the 
dreams  of  Isocrates  and  Philip  his  father.  But  how  far  was 
he  making  this  a  permanent  and  enduring  union  ?  How  far  as 
yet  was  it  anything  more  than  a  dazzling  but  transitory  flourish 
of  his  own  magnificent  self  ? 

He  was  making  no  great  roads,  setting  up  no  sure  sea  com- 
munications. It  is  idle  to  accuse  him  of  leaving  education  alone, 
because  the  idea  that  empires  must  be  cemented  by  education 
was  still  foreign  to  human  thought.  But  he  was  forming  no 
group  of  statesmen  about  him ;  he  was  thinking  of  no  successor ; 
he  was  creating  no  tradition — nothing  more  than  a  personal 
legend.  The  idea  that  the  world  would  have  to  go  on  after 

1  Mahaffy.  Their  names  have  undergone  various  changes — e.g.,  Candahar 
(Iskender)  and  Secunderabad. 


332  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Alexander,  engaged  in  any  other  employment  than  the  discus- 
sion of  his  magnificence,  seems  to  have  been  outside  his  mental 
range.  He  was  still  young,  it  is  true,  but  well  before  Philip 
was  one  and  thirty  he  had  been  thinking  of  the  education  of 
Alexander. 

Was  Alexander  a  statesman  at  all  ? 

Some  students  of  his  career  assure  us  that  he  was ;  that  now 
at  Susa  he  planned  a  mighty  world  empire,  seeing  it  not  simply 
as  a  Macedonian  conquest  of  the  world,  but  as  a  melting  to- 
gether of  racial  traditions.  He  did  one  thing,  at  any  rate, 
that  gives  colour  to  this  idea;  he  held  a  great  marriage  feast, 
in  which  he  and  ninety  of  his  generals  and  friends  were  mar- 
ried to  Persian  brides.  He  himself  married  a  daughter  of 
Darius,  though  already  he  possessed  an  Asiatic  wife  in  Roxana, 
the  daughter  of  the  king  of  Samarkand.  This  wholesale  wed- 
ding was  made  a  very  splendid  festival,  and  at  the  same  time 
all  of  his  Macedonian  soldiers,  to  the  number  of  several  thou- 
sands, who  had  married  Asiatic  brides,  were  given  wedding 
gifts.  This  has  been  called  the  Marriage  of  Europe  and  Asia ; 
the  two  continents  were  to  be  joined,  wrote  Plutarch,  "in  lawful 
wedlock  and  by  community  of  offspring."  And  next  he  began 
to  train  recruits  from  Persia  and  the  north,  Parthians,  Bac- 
trians,  and  the  like,  in  the  distinctive  disciplines  of  the  phalanx 
and  the  cavalry.  Was  that  also  to  assimilate  Europe  and  Asia, 
or  was  it  to  make  himself  independent  of  his  Macedonians? 
They  thought  the  latter,  at  any  rate,  and  mutinied,  and  it  was 
with  some  difficulty  that  he  brought  them  to  a  penitent  mood 
and  induced  them  to  take  part  in  a  common  feast  with  the  Per- 
sians. The  historians  have  made  a  long  and  eloquent  speech 
for  him  on  this  occasion,  but  the  gist  of  it  was  that  he  bade  his 
Macedonians  begone,  and  gave  no  sign  of  how  he  proposed  they 
should  get  home  out  of  Persia.  After  three  days  of  dismay  they 
submitted  to  him  and  begged  his  forgiveness. 

Here  is  the  matter  for  a  very  pretty  discussion.  Was  Alex- 
ander really  planning  a  racial  fusion  or  had  he  just  fallen  in 
love  with  the  pomp  and  divinity  of  an  Oriental  monarch,  and 
wished  to  get  rid  of  these  Europeans  to  whom  he  was  only  a 
king-leader  ?  The  writers  of  his  own  time:  and  those  who  lived 
near  to  his  time,  lean  very  much  to  the  latter  alternative.  They 
insist  upon  his  immense  vanity.  They  relate  how  he  began 
to  wear  the  robes  and  tiara  of  a  Persian  monarch.  "At  first 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT 


333 


only  before  the  barbarians  and  privately,  but  afterwards  lie 
came  to  wear  it  in  public  when  he  sat  for  the  dispatch  of  busi- 
ness." And  presently  he  demanded  Oriental  prostrations  from 
his  friends. 

One  thing  seems  to  support  the  suggestion  of  great  personal 
vanity  in  Alexander.  His  portrait  was  painted  and  sculptured 
frequently,  and  always  he  is  represented  as  a  beautiful  youth, 
with  wonderful  locks  flowing  backward  from  a  broad  forehead. 
Previously  most,  men  had  worn  beards.  But  Alexander,  en- 
amoured of  his  own 
youthful  loveliness, 
would  not  part  with 
it;  he  remained  a 
sham  boy  at  thirty- 
two;  he  shaved  his 
face,  and  so  set  a 
fashion  in  Greece 
and  Italy  that  lasted 
many  centuries. 

The  stories  of  vio- 
lence and  vanity  in 
his  closing  years 
cluster  thick  upon  his 
memory.  He  listened 
to  tittle-tattle  about 
Philotas,  the  son  of 
Parmenio,  one  of  his 

most  trusted  and  'Alexander  the 

faithful  generals,  (sfoer  coui  of  Lqsimadms ,  321-  281  B.C) 
Philotas,  it  was  said, 

had  boasted  to  some  woman  he  was  making  love  to  that  Alex- 
ander was  a  mere  boy ;  that,  but  for  such  men  as  his  father  and 
himself,  there  would  have  been  no  conquest  of  Persia,  and  the 
like.  Such  assertions  had  a  certain  element  of  truth  in  them. 
The  woman  was  brought  to  Alexander,  who  listened  to  her 
treacheries.  Presently  Philotas  was  accused  of  conspiracy,  and, 
upon  very  insufficient  evidence,  tortured  and  executed.  Then 
Alexander  thought  of  Parmenio,  whose  other  two  sons  had 
died  for  him  in  battle.  He  sent  swift  messengers  to  assas- 
sinate the  old  man  before  he  could  hear  of  his  son's  death! 
Now  Parmenio  had  een  one  of  the  most  trusted  of  Philip's 


3S4,  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

generals ;  it  was  Pannenio  who  had  led  the  Macedonian  armies 
into  Asia  before  the  murder  of  Philip.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  of  the  substantial  truth  of  this  story,  nor  about  the 
execution  of  Callisthenes,  the  nephew  of  Aristotle,  who  re- 
fused Alexander  divine  honours,  and  "went  about  with  as 
much  pride  as  if  he  had  demolished  a  tyranny,  while  the  young 
men  followed  him  as  the  only  freeman  among  thousands." 
Mixed  with  such  incidents  we  have  the  very  illuminating  story 
of  the  drunken  quarrel  in  which  he  killed  Clitus.  The  monarch 
and  his  company  had  been  drinking  hard,  and  the  drink  had 
made  the  talk  loud  and  free.  There  was  much  flattery  of  the 
"young  god,77  much  detraction  of  Philip,  at  which  Alexander 
had  smiled  with  satisfaction.1  This  drunken  self-complacency 
was  more  than  the  Macedonians  could  stand ;  it  roused  Clitus, 
his  foster-brother,  to  a  frenzy.  Clitus  reproached  Alexander 
with  his  Median  costume  and  praised  Philip,  there  was  a  loud 
quarrel,  and,  to  end  it,  Clitus  was  hustled  out  of  the  room  by 
his  friends.  He  was,  however,  in  the  obstinate  phase  of  drunk- 
enness, and  he  returned  by  another  entrance.  He  was  heard 
outside  quoting  Euripides  "in  a  bold  and  disrespectful  tone": 

"Are  these  your  customs  ?  Is  it  thus  that  Greece 
Rewards  her  combatants?  Shall  one  man  claim 
The  trophies  won  by  thousands?" 

Whereupon  Alexander  snatched  a  spear  from  one  of  his 
guards  and  ran  Clitus  through  the  body  as  he  lifted  the  curtain 
to  come  in.  ... 

One  is  forced  to  believe  that  this  was  the  real  atmosphere  of 
the  young  conqueror's  life.  Then  the  story  of  his  frantic  and 
cruel  display  of  grief  for  Hepha3stion  can  scarcely  be  all  in- 
vention. If  it  is  true,  or  in  any  part  true,  it  displays  a  mind 
ill-balanced  and  altogether  wrapped  up  in  personal  things,  to 
whom  empire  was  no  more  than  opportunity  for  egoistic  display, 
and  all  the  resources  of  the  world,  stuff  for  freaks  of  that  sort 
of  "generosity"  which  robs  a  thousand  people  to  extort  the  ad- 
miration of  one  astounded  recipient. 

HephaBstion,  being  ill,  was  put  upon  a  strict  diet,  but  in  the 
absence  of  his  physician  at  the  theatre  he  ate  a  roasted  fowl  and 
drank  a  flagon  of  iced  wine,  in  consequence  of  which  he  died. 

1D.  G.  Hogarth. 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT 


335 


336  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Thereupon  Alexander  decided  upon  a  display  of  grief.  It  was 
the  grief  of  a  lunatic.  He  had  the  physician  crucified!  He 
ordered  every  horse  and  mule  in  Persia  to  be  shorn,  and  pulled 
down  the  battlements  of  the  neighbouring  cities.  He  prohibited 
all  music  in  his  camp  for  a  long  time,  and,  having  taken  certain 
villages  of  the  Cusseans,  he  caused  all  the  adults  to  be  massacred, 
as  a  sacrifice  to  the  manes  of  Hephasstion.  Finally  he  set  aside 
ten  thousand  talents  (a  talent  =  £240)  for  a  tomb.  For  those 
days  this  was  an  enormous  sum  of  money.  None  of  which 
things  did  any  real  honour  to  Hephaastion,  but  they  served  to 

demonstrate  to  an  awe-stricken 
world  what  a  tremendous  thing 
the  sorrow  of  Alexander  could  be. 
This  last  story  and  many  such 
stories  may  be  lies  or  distortions  or 
exaggerations.  But  they  have  a 
vein  in  common.  After  a  bout  of 
hard  drinking  in  Babylon  a  sud- 
den fever  came  upon  Alexander 
(323  B.C.),  and  he  sickened  and 
died.  He  was  still  only  thirty- 
three  years  of  age.  Forthwith  the 
world  empire  he  had  snatched  at 
I.  and  held  in  his  hands,  as  a  child 

might  snatch  at  and  hold  a  precious 
vase,  fell  to  the  ground  and  was  shattered  to  pieces. 

Whatever  appearance  of  a  worldwide  order  may  have  gleamed 
upon  men's  imaginations,  vanished  at  his  death.  The  story  be- 
comes the  story  of  a  barbaric  autocracy  in  confusion.  Every- 
where the  provincial  rulers  set  up  for  themselves.  In  the  course 
of  a  few  years  the  entire  family  of  Alexander  had  been  de- 
stroyed. Roxana,  his  barbarian  wife,  was  prompt  to  murder, 
as  a  rival,  the  daughter  of  Darius.  She  herself  presently  bore 
Alexander  a  posthumous  son,  who  was  also  called  Alexander. 
He  was  murdered,  with  her,  a  few  years  later  (311  B.C.).  Her- 
cules, the  only  other  son  of  Alexander,  was  murdered  also.  So, 
too,  was  Arida3us,  the  weak-minded  half-brother  (see  §  2). 
Plutarch  gives  a  last  glimpse  of  Olympias  during  a  brief  in- 
terval of  power  in  Macedonia,  accusing  first  this  person  and 
then  that  of  poisoning  her  wonderful  son.  Many  she  killed  in 
her  fury.  The  bodies  of  some  of  his  circle  who  had  died  after 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     337 

his  death  she  caused  to  be  dug  up,  but  we  do  not  know  if  any 
fresh  light  was  shed  upon  his  death  by  these  disinterments. 
Finally  Olympias  was  killed  in  Macedonia  by  the  friends  of 
those  she  had  slain. 

§  e 

From  this  welter  of  crime  there  presently  emerged  three 
leading  figures.  Much  of  the  old  Persian  empire,  as  far  as 
the  Indus  eastward  and  almost  to  Lydia  in  the  west,  was  held 
by  one  general  Seleucus,  who  founded  a  dynasty,  the  Seleucid 
Dynasty;  Macedonia  fell  to  another  Macedonian  general,  Anti- 
gonus;  a  third  Macedonian,  Ptolemy,  secured  Egypt,  and 
making  Alexandria  his  chief  city,  established  a  sufficient  naval 
ascendancy  to  keep  also  Cyprus  and  most  of  the  coast  of 
Phoenicia  and  Asia  Minor.  The  Ptolemaic  and  Seleucid  em- 
pires lasted  for  a  considerable  time ;  the  forms  of  government  in 
Asia  Minor  and  the  Balkans  were  more  unstable.  Two  maps 
will  help  the  reader  to  a  sense  of  the  kaleidoscopic  nature  of 
the  political  boundaries  of  the  third  century  B.C.  Antigonus 
was  defeated  and  killed  at  the  battle  of  Ipsus  (301),  leaving 
Lysimachus,  the  governor  of  Thrace,  and  Cassander,  of  Mace- 
donia and  Greece,  as  equally  transitory  successors.  Minor  gov- 
ernors carved  out  smaller  states.  Meanwhile  the  barbarians 
swung  down  into  the  broken-up  and  enfeebled  world  of  civiliza- 
tion from  the  west  and  from  the  east.  From  the  west  came  the 
Gauls,  a  people  closely  related  to  the  Kelts.  They  raided  down 
through  Macedonia  and  Greece  to  Delphi,  and  (227  B.C.)  two 
sections  of  them  crossed  the  Bosphorus  into  Asia  Minor,  being 
first  employed  as  mercenaries  and  then  setting  up  for  them- 
selves as  independent  plunderers;  and  after  raiding  almost  to 
the  Taurus,  they  settled  in  the  old  Phrygian  land,  holding  the 
people  about  them  to  tribute.  (These  Gauls  of  Phrygia  be- 
came the  Galatians  of  St.  Paul's  Epistle.)  Armenia  and  the 
southern  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  became  a  confusion  of  chang- 
ing rulers.  Kings  with  Hellenistic  ideas  appeared  in  Cappa- 
docia,  in  Pontus  (the  south  shore  of  the  Black  Sea),  in  Bithynia, 
and  in  Pergamum.  From  the  east  the  Scythians  and  the 
Parthians  and  Bactrians  also  drove  southward.  .  .  .  For  a  time 
there  were  Greek-ruled  Bactrian  states  becoming  more  and  more 
Orientalized;  in  the  second  century  B.C.  Greek  adventurers  from 


338  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Bactria  raided  down  into  North  India  and  founded  short-lived 
kingdoms  there,  the  last  eastward  fling  of  the  Greek;  then 
gradually  barbarism  fell  again  like  a  curtain  between  the  West- 
ern civilizations  and  India. 


§  7 

Amidst  all  these  shattered  fragments  of  the  burst  bubble  of 
Hellenic  empire  one  small  state  stands  out  and  demands  at 
least  a  brief  section  to  itself,  the  kingdom  of  Pergamum.  We 
hear  first  of  this  town  as  an  independent  centre  during  the 
struggle  that  ended  in  the  battle  of  Ipsus.  While  the  tide  of 
the  Gaulish  invasion  swirled  and  foamed  to  and  fro  about  Asia 
Minor  between  the  years  277  and  241,  Pergamum  for  a  time 
paid  them  tribute,  but  she  retained  her  general  independence, 
and  at  last,  under  Attains  I,  refused  her  tribute  and  defeated 
them  in  two  decisive  battles.  For  more  than  a  century  there- 
after (until  133  B.C.)  Pergamum  remained  free,  and  was  per- 
haps during  that  period  the  most  highly  civilized  state  in  the 
world.  On  the  hill  of  the  Acropolis  was  reared  a  rich  group  of 
buildings,  palaces,  temples,  a  museum,  and  a  library,  rivals  of 
those  of  Alexandria  of  which  we  shall  presently  tell,  and  almost 
the  first  in  the  world.  Under  the  princes  of  Pergamum,  Greek 
art  blossomed  afresh,  and  the  reliefs  of  the  altar  of  the  temple 
of  Zeus  and  the  statues  of  the  fighting  and  dying  Gauls  which 
were  made  there,  are  among  the  great  artistic  treasures  of 
mankind. 

In  a  little  while,  as  we  shall  tell  later,  the  influence  of  a 
new  power  began  to  be  felt  in  the  Eastern  Mediterranean,  the 
power  of  the  Roman  republic,  friendly  to  Greece  and  to  Greek 
civilization;  and  in  this  power  the  Hellenic  communities  of 
Pergamum  and  Rhodes  found  a  natural  and  useful  ally  and 
supporter  against  the  Galatians  and  against  the  Orientalized 
Seleucid  empire.  We  shall  relate  how  at  last  the  Roman  power 
came  into  Asia,  how  it  defeated  the  Seleucid  empire  at  the 
battle  of  Magnesia  (190  B.C.),  and  drove  it  out  of  Asia  Minor 
and  beyond  the  Taurus  mountains,  and  how  finally  in  133  B.C. 
Attalus  III,  the  last  king  of  Pergamum,  bowing  to  his  sense  of 
an  inevitable  destiny,  made  the  Roman  republic  the  heir  to 
his  kingdom,  which  became  then  the  Roman  province  of  "Asia." 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     339 


340  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

§8 

Nearly  all  historians  are  disposed  to  regard  the  career  of 
Alexander  the  Great  as  marking  an  epoch  in  human  affairs. 
It  drew  together  all  the  known  world,  excepting  only  the  west- 
ern Mediterranean,  into  one  drama.  But  the  opinions  men 
have  formed  of  Alexander  himself  vary  enormously.  They 
fall,  most  of  them,  into  two  main  schools.  One  type  of  scholar 
is  fascinated  by  the  youth  and  splendour  of  this  young  man. 
These  Alexander-worshippers  seem  disposed  to  take  him  at  his 
own  valuation,  to  condone  every  crime  and  folly  either  as  the 
mere  ebullience  of  a  rich  nature  or  as  the  bitter  necessity  to 
some  gigantic  scheme,  and  to  regard  his  life  as  framed  v^pon  a 
design,  a  scheme  of  statesmanship,  such  as  all  the  wider  knowl- 
edge and  wider  ideas  of  these  later  times  barely  suffice  to  bring 
into  the  scope  of  our  understanding.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  those  who  see  him  only  as  a  wrecker  of  the  slowly  maturing 
possibilities  of  a  free  and  tranquil  Hellenized  world. 

Before  we  ascribe  to  Alexander  or  to  his  father  Philip 
schemes  of  world  policy  such  as  a  twentieth-century  historian- 
philosopher  might  approve,  we  shall  do  well  to  consider  very 
carefully  the  utmost  range  of  knowledge  and  thought  that  was 
possible  in  those  days.  The  world  of  Plato,  Isocrates,  and 
Aristotle  had  practically  no  historical  perspective  at  all;  there 
had  not  been  such  a  thing  as  history  in  the  world,  history,  that 
is,  as  distinguished  from  mere  priestly  chronicles,  until  the  last 
couple  of  centuries.  Even  highly  educated  men  had  the  most 
circumscribed  ideas  of  geography  and  foreign  countries.  For 
most  men  the  world  was  still  flat  and  limitless.  The  only  sys- 
tematic political  philosophy  was  based  on  the  experiences  of 
minute  city  states,  and  took  no  thought  of  empires.  Nobody 
knew  anything  of  the  origins  of  civilization.  No  one  had  specu- 
lated upon  economics  before  that  time.  No  one  had  worked 
out  the  reaction  of  one  social  class  upon  another.  We  are  too 
apt  to  consider  the  career  of  Alexander  as  the  crown  of  some 
process  that  had  long  been  afoot;  as  the  climax  of  a  crescendo. 
In .  a  sense,  no  doubt,  it  was  that ;  but  much  more  true  is  it 
that  it  was  not  so  much  an  end  as  a  beginning ;  it  was  the  first 
revelation  to  the  human  imagination  of  the. oneness  of  human 
affairs.  The  utmost  reach  of  the  thought  of  Greece  before  his 
time  was  of  a  Persian  empire  Hellenized,  a  predominance  in 


CAREER  OF  ALEXANDER  THE  GREAT     341 

the  world  of  Macedonians  and  Greeks.  But  before  Alexander 
was  dead,  and  much  more  after  he  was  dead  and  there  had 
been  time  to  think  him  over,  the  conception  of  a  world  law 
and  organization  was  a  practicable  and  assimilable  idea  for 
the  minds  of  men. 

Fo-r  some  generations  Alexander  the  Great  was  for  mankind 
the  symbol  and  embodiment  of  world  order  and  world  dominion. 
He  became  a  fabulous  being.  His  head,  adorned  with  the 
divine  symbols  of  the  demi-god  Hercules  or  the  god  Ammon 
Ra,  appears  on  the  coins  of  such  among  his  successors  as  could 
claim  to  be  his  heirs.  Then  the  idea  of  world  dominion  was 
taken  up  by  another  great  people,  a  people  who  for  some  cen- 
turies exhibited  considerable  political  genius,  the  Romans ;  and 
the  figure  of  another  conspicuous  adventurer,  CaBsar,  eclipsed 
for  the  western  half  of  the  old  world  the  figure  of  Alexander. 

So  by  the  beginning  of  the  third  century  B.C.  we  find  already 
arisen  in  the  Western  civilization  of  the  old  world  three  of  the 
great  structural  ideas  that  rule  the  mind  of  contemporary  man- 
kind. We  have  already  traced  the  escape  of  writing  and  knowl- 
edge from  the  secrets  and  mysteries  and  initiations  of  the  old- 
world  priesthoods,  and  the  development  of  the  idea  of  a  uni- 
versal knowledge,  of  a  universally  understandable  and  com- 
municable history  and  philosophy.  We  have  taken  the  figures 
of  Herodotus  and  Aristotle  as  typical  exponents  of  this  first 
great  idea,  the  idea  of  science — using  the  word  science  in  its 
widest  and  properest  sense,  to  include  history  and  signify  a 
clear  vision  of  man  in  relation  to  the  things  about  him.  We 
have  traced  also  the  generalization  of  religion  among  the  Baby- 
lonians, Jews,  and  other  Semitic  peoples,  from  the  dark  worship 
in  temples  and  consecrated  places  of  some  local  or  tribal  god 
to  the  open  service  of  one  universal  God  of  Righteousness, 
whose  temple  is  the  whc^e  world.  And  now  we  have  traced 
also  the  first  germination  of  the  idea  of  a,  world  polity.  The 
rest  of  the  history  of  mankind  is  very  largely  the  history  of 
those  three  ideas  of  science,  of  a  universal  righteousness,  and 
of  a  human  commonweal,  spreading  out  from  the  minds  of  the 
rare  and  exceptional  persons  and  peoples  in  which  they  first 
originated,  into  the  general  consciousness  of  the  race,  and  giving 
first  a  new  colour,  then  a  new  spirit,  and  then  a  new  direction 
to  human  affairs. 


XXIV 
SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA 

§  1.  The  Science  of  Alexandria.     §  2.  Philosophy  of  Alexan- 
dria.    §  3.  Alexandria  as  a  Factory  of  Religions. 


ONE  of  the  most  prosperous  fragments  of  the  brief  world 
empire  of  Alexander  the  Great  was  Egypt,  which  fell 
to  the  share  of  the  Ptolemy  whose  name  we  have  al- 
ready noted  as  one  of  the  associates  of  Alexander  whom  King 
Philip  had  banished.  The  country  was  at  a  secure  distance 
from  plundering  Gaul  or  Parthian,  and  the  destruction  of  Tyre 
and  the  Phoenician  navy,  and  the  creation  of  Alexandria  gave 
Egypt  a  temporary  naval  ascendancy  in  the  Eastern  Mediter- 
ranean. Alexandria  grew  to  proportions  that  rivalled  Car- 
thage; eastward  she  had  an  overseas  trade  through  the  Red  Sea 
with  Arabia  and  India ;  and  westward  her  traffic  competed  with 
the  Carthaginian.  In  the  Macedonian  and  Greek  governors  of 
the  Ptolemies,  the  Egyptians  found  a  government  more  sympa- 
thetic and  tolerable  than  any  they  had  ever  known  since  they 
ceased  to  be  a  self-governing  empire.  Indeed  it  is  rather  that 
Egypt  conquered  and  annexed  the  Ptolemies  politically,  than 
that  the  Macedonians  ruled  Egypt. 

There  was  a  return  to  Egyptian  political  ideas,  rather  than 
any  attempt  to  Hellenize  the  government  of  the  country. 
Ptolemy  became  Pharaoh,  the  god-king,  and  his  administration 
continued  the  ancient  tradition  of  Pepi,  Thotmes,  Rameses, 
and  Necho.  Alexandria,  however,  for  her  town  affairs,  and 
subject  to  the  divine  overlordship  of  Pharaoh,  had  a  constitu- 
tion of  the  Greek  city  type.  And  the  language  of  the  court  and 
administration  was  Attic  Greek.  Greek  became  so  much  the 
general  language  of  educated  people  in  Egypt  that  the  Jewish 
community  there  found  it  necessary  to  translate  their  Bible  into 
the  Greek  language,  many  men  of  their  own  people  being  no 

342 


SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA      343 

longer  able  to  understand  Hebrew.  Attic  Greek  for  some  cen- 
turies before  and  after  Christ  was  the  language  of  all  educated 
men  from  the  Adriatic  to  the  Persian  Gulf. 

Of  all  Alexander's  group  of  young  men,  Ptolemy  seems  to 
have  done  most  to  carry  out  those  ideas  of  a  systematic  organi- 
zation of  knowledge  with  which  Aristotle  had  no  doubt 
familiarized  the  court  of  Philip  of  Macedon.  Ptolemy  was  a 
man  of  very  extraordinary  intellectual  gifts,  at  once  creative 
and  modest,  with  a  certain  understandable  cynicism  towards 
the  strain  of  Olympias  in  the  mind  of  Alexander.  His  contem- 
porary history  of  Alexander's  campaigns  has  perished;  but  it 
was  a  source  to  which  all  the  surviving  accounts  are  deeply 
indebted. 

The  Museum  he  set  up  in  Alexandria  was  in  effect  the  first 
university  in  the  world.  As  its  name  implies,  it  was  dedicated 
to  the  service  of  the  Muses,  which  was  also  the  case  with  the 
Peripatetic  school  at  Athens.  It  was,  however,  a  religious  body 
only  in  form,  in  order  to  meet  the  legal  difficulties  of  endow- 
ment in  a  world  that  had  never  foreseen  such  a  thing  as  a 
secular  intellectual  process.  It  was  essentially  a  college  of 
learned  men  engaged  chiefly  in  research  and  record,  but  also 
to  a  certain  extent  in  teaching.  At  the  outset,  and  for  two  or 
three  generations,  the  Museum  at  Alexandria  presented  such  a 
scientific  constellation  as  even  Athens  at  its  best  could  not  rival. 
Particularly  sound  and  good  was  the  mathematical  and  geo- 
graphical work.  The  names  of  Euclid,  familiar  to  every  school- 
boy, Eratosthenes,  who  measured  the  size  of  the  earth  and  came 
within  fifty  miles  of  the  true  diameter,  Apollonius,  who  wrote 
on  conic  sections,  stand  out.  Hipparchus  made  the  first  attempt 
to  catalogue  and  map  the  stars  with  a  view  to  checking  any 
changes  that  might  be  occurring  in  the  heavens.  Hero  devised 
the  first  steam  engine.  Archimedes  came  to  Alexandria  to 
study,  and  remained  a  frequent  correspondent  of  the  Museum. 
The  medical  school  of  Alexandria  was  equally  famous.  For 
the  first  time  in  the  world's  history  a  standard  of  professional 
knowledge  was  set  up.  Herophilus,  the  greatest  of  the  Alexan- 
drian anatomists,  is  said  to  have  conducted  vivisections  upon 
condemned  criminals.  Other  teachers,  in  opposition  to  Hero- 
philus, condemned  the  study  of  anatomy  and  developed  the  sci- 
ence of  drugs.  But  this  scientific  blaze  at  Alexandria  did  not 
endure  altogether  for  more  than  a  century.  The  organization 


344, 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


of  the  Museum  was  not  planned  to  ensure  its  mental  continuity. 
It  was  a  "royal"  college ;  its  professors  and  fellows  (as  we  may 
call  them)  were  appointed  and  paid  by  Pharaoh.  "The  repub- 
lican character  of  the 
private  corporations 
called  the  schools  or 
academies  at  Athens 
was  far  more  stable 
and  independent." 
Royal  patronage  was 
all  very  well  so  long 
as  Pharaoh  was  Ptol- 
emy I,  or  Ptolemy 
II,  but  the  strain  de- 
generated, and  the 
long  tradition  o  f 
Egyptian  priestcraft 
presently  swallowed 
up  the  Ptolemies — 
and  destroyed  the 
Aristotelian  mental- 
ity of  the  Museum 
altogether.  The 
Museum  had  not  ex- 
isted for  a  hundred 
years  before  its  sci- 
entific energy  was 
extinct. 

Side  by  side  with 
the  Museum,  Ptol- 
emy I  created  a  more 
enduring  monument 
to  himself  in  the 
great  library.  This 
was  a  combination  of 
state  library  and 
state  publishing  upon 
a  scale  hitherto  unheard  of.  It  was  to  be  altogether  encyclopa> 
dic.  If  any  stranger  brought  an  unknown  book  to  Egypt,  he 
had  to  have  it  copied  for  the  collection,  and  a  considerable  staff 
of  copyists  was  engaged  continually  in  making  duplicates  of  all 


SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA      345 

the  more  popular  and  necessary  works.  The  library,  like  a 
university  press,  had  an  outward  trade.  It  was  a  book-selling 
affair.  Under  Callimachus,  the  head  of  the  library  during  the 
time  of  Ptolemy  II  and  III,  the  arrangement  and  cataloguing 
of  the  accumulations  was  systematically  undertaken.  In  those 
days,  it  must  be  remembered,  books  were  not  in  pages,  but  rolled 
like  the  music-rolls  of  the  modern  piano-player,  and  in  order 
to  refer  to  any  particular  passage,  a  reader  had  to  roll  back 
or  roll  forward  very  tediously,  a  process  which  wore  out  books 
and  readers  together.  One  thinks  at  once  of  a  simple  and 
obvious  little  machine  by  which  such  a  roll  could  have  been 
quickly  wound  to  and  fro  for  reference,  but  nothing  of  the  sort 
seems  to  have  been  used.  Every  time  a  roll  was  read  it  was 
handled  by  two  perspiring  hands.  It  was  to  minimize  the  waste 
of  time  and  trouble  that  Callimachus  broke  up  long  works,  such 
as  the  History  of  Herodotus,  into  "books"  or  volumes,  as  we 
should  call  them,  each  upon  a  separate  roll.  The  library  of 
Alexandria  drew  a  far  vaster  crowd  of  students  than  the  teachers 
of  the  Museum.  The  lodging  and  catering  for  these  visitors 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  became  a  considerable  business 
interest  for  the  Alexandrian  population. 

It  is  curious  to  note  how  slowly  the  mechanism  of  the  in- 
tellectual life  improves.  Contrast  the  ordinary  library  facilities 
of  a  middle-class  English  home,  such  as  the  present  writer  is 
now  working  in,  with  the  inconveniences  and  deficiencies  of 
the  equipment  of  an  Alexandrian  writer,  and  one  realizes  the 
enormous  waste  of  time,  physical  exertion,  and  attention  that 
went  on  through  all  the  centuries  during  which  that  library  flour- 
ished. Before  the  present  writer  lie  half  a  dozen  books,  and 
there  are  good  indices  to  three  of  them.  He  can  pick  up  any 
one  of  these  six  books,  refer  quickly  to  a  statement,  verify  a 
quotation,  and  go  on  writing.  Contrast  with  that  the  tedious 
unfolding  of  a  rolled  manuscript.  Close  at  hand  are  two 
encyclopaedias,  a  dictionary,  an  atlas  of  the  world,  a  biograph- 
ical dictionary,  and  other  books  of  reference.  They  have  no 
marginal  indices,  it  is  true ;  but  that  perhaps  is  asking  for  toe 
much  at  present.  There  were  no  such  resources  in  the  world  in 
300  B.C.  Alexandria  had  still  to  produce  the  first  grammar 
and  the  first  dictionary.  This  present  book  is  being  written  in 
manuscript;  it  is  then  taken  by  a  typist  and  typewritten  very 
accurately.  It  can  then,  with  the  utmost  convenience,  be  read 


346 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


over,  corrected  amply,  rearranged  freely,  retyped,  and  recor- 
rected.  The  Alexandrian  author  had  to  dictate  or  recopy  every 
word  he  wrote.  Before  he  could  turn  back  to  what  he  had 
written  previously,  he  had  to  dry  his  last  words  hy  waving  them 
in  the  air  or  pouring  sand  over  them ;  he  had  not  even  blotting- 


paper.  Whatever  an  author  wrote  had  to  be  recopied  again 
and  again  before  it  could  reach  any  considerable  circle  of 
readers,  and  every  copyist  introduced  some  new  error.  When- 
ever a  need  for  maps  or  diagrams  arose,  there  were  fresh  diffi- 
culties. Such  a  science  as  anatomy,  for  example,  depending  as 
it  does  upon  accurate  drawing,  must  have  been  enormously 
hampered  by  the  natural  limitations  of  the  copyist.  The  trans- 
mission of  geographical  fact  again  must  have  been  almost  in- 
credibly tedious.  No  doubt  a  day  will  come  when  a  private 


SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA      347 

library  and  writing-desk  of  the  year  A.D.  1919  wil]  seem  quaintly 
clumsy  and  difficult;  but,  measured  by  the  standards  of  Alex- 
andria, they  are  astonishingly  quick,  efficient,  and  economical 
of  nervous  and  mental  energy. 

No  attempt  seems  to  have  been  made  at  Alexandria  to  print 
anything  at  all.  That  strikes  one  at  first  as  a  very  remarkable 
fact.  The  world  was  crying  out  for  books,  and  not  simply  for 
books.  There  was  an  urgent  public  need  for  notices,  proclama- 
tions, and  the  like.  Yet  there  is  nothing  in  the  history  of 
the  Western  civilizations  that  one  can  call  printing  until  the 
fifteenth  century  A.D.  It  is  not  as  though  printing  was  a 
recondite  art  or  dependent  upon  any  precedent  and  preliminary 
discoveries.  Printing  is  the  most  obvious  of  dodges.  In  prin- 
ciple it  has  always  been  known.  As  we  have  already  stated, 
there  is  ground  for  supposing  that  the  Paleolithic  men  of  the 
Magdalenian  period  may  have  printed  designs  on  their  leather 
garments.  The  "seals"  of  ancient  Sumeria  again  were  printing 
devices.  Coins  are  print.  Illiterate  persons  in  all  ages  have 
used  wooden  or  metal  stamps  for  their  signatures;  William  I, 
the  Norman  Conqueror  of  England,  for  example,  used  such  a 
stamp  with  ink  to  sign  documents.  In  China  the  classics  were 
being  printed  by  the  second  century  A.D.  Yet  either  because  of 
a  complex  of  small  difficulties  about  ink  or  papyrus  or  the  form 
of  books,  or  because  of  some  protective  resistance  on  the  part 
of  the  owners  of  the  slave  copyists,  or  because  the  script  was 
too  swift  and  easy  to  set  men  thinking  how  to  write  it  still  more 
easily,  as  the  Chinese  character  or  the  Gothic  letters  did,  or 
because  of  a  gap  in  the  social  system  between  men  of  thought 
and  knowledge  and  men  of  technical  skill,  printing  was  not  used 
— not  even  used  for  the  exact  reproduction  of  illustrations. 

The  chief  reason  for  this  failure  to  develop  printing  sys- 
tematically lies,  no  doubt,  in  the  fact  that  there  was  no  abundant 
supply  of  printable  material  of  a  uniform  texture  and  con- 
venient form.  The  supply  of  papyrus  was  strictly  limited, 
strip  had  to  be  fastened  to  strip,  and  there  was  no  standard  size 
of  sheet.  Paper  had  yet  to  come  from  China  to  release  the 
mind  of  Europe.  Had  there  been  presses,  they  would  have 
had  to  stand  idle  while  the  papyrus  rolls  were  slowly  made. 
But  this  explanation  does  not  account  for  the  failure  to  use 
block  printing  in  the  case  of  illustrations  and  diagrams. 

These  limitations  enable  us  to  understand  why  it  was  that 


348  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Alexandria  could  at  once  achieve  the  most  extraordinary  intel- 
lectual triumphs — for  such  a  feat  as  that  of  Eratosthenes,  for 
instance,  having  regard  to  his  poverty  of  apparatus,  is  suffi- 
cient to  put  him  on  a  level  with  Newton  or  Pasteur — and  yet 
have  little  or  no  effect  upon  the  course  of  politics  or  the  lives 
and  thoughts  of  people  round  about  her.  Her  Museum  and 
library  were  a  centre  of  light,  but  it  was  light  in  a  dark  lantern 
hidden  from  the  general  world.  There  were  no  means  of  carry- 
ing its  results  even  to  sympathetic  men  abroad  except  by  tedious 
letter-writing.  There  was  no  possibility  of  communicating  what 
was  known  there  to  the  general  body  of  men.  Students  had  to 
come  at  great  cost  to  themselves  to  this  crowded  centre  because 
there  was  no  other  way  of  gathering  even  scraps  of  knowledge. 
At  Athens  and  Alexandria  there  were  bookstalls  where  manu- 
script note-books  of  variable  quality  could  be  bought  at  reason- 
able prices,  but  any  extension  of  education  to  larger  classes  and 
other  centres  would  have  produced  at  once  a  restrictive  shortage 
of  papyrus.  Education  did  not  reach  into  the  masses  at  all; 
to  become  more  than  superficially  educated  one  had  to  abandon 
the  ordinary  life  of  the  times  and  come  for  long  years  to  live  a 
hovering  existence  in  the  neighbourhood  of  ill-equipped  and 
overworked  sages.  Learning  was  not  indeed  so  complete  a 
withdrawal  from  ordinary  life  as  initiation  into  a  priesthood, 
but  it  was  still  something  in  that  nature. 

And  very  speedily  that  feeling  of  freedom,  that  openness  and 
directness  of  statement  which  is  the  vital  air  of  the  true  intel- 
lectual life,  faded  out  of  Alexandria.  From  the  first  the  patron- 
age even  of  Ptolemy  I  set  a  limit  to  political  discussion.  Pres- 
ently the  dissensions  of  the  schools  let  in  the  superstitions  and 
prejudices  of  the  city  mob  to  scholastic  affairs. 

Wisdom  passed  away  from  Alexandria  and  left  pedantry  be- 
hind. For  the  use  of  books  was  substituted  the  worship  of 
books.  Very  speedily  the  learned  became  a  specialized  queer 
class  with  unpleasant  characteristics  of  its  own.  The  Museum 
had  not  existed  for  half  a  dozen  generations  before  Alexandria 
was  familiar  with  a  new  type  of  human  being;  shy,  eccentric, 
unpractical,  incapable  of  essentials,  strangely  fierce  upon  trivi- 
alities of  literary  detail,  as  bitterly  jealous  of  the  colleague 
within  as  of  the  unlearned  without,  the  bent  Scholarly  Man. 
He  was  as  intolerant  as  a  priest,  though  he  had  no  altar;  as 
obscurantist  as  a  magician,  though  he  had  no  cave.  For  him 


SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA      349 

no  method  of  copying  was  sufficiently  tedious  and  no  rare  book 
sufficiently  inaccessible.  He  was  a  sort  of  by-product  of  the 
intellectual  process  of  mankind.  For  many  precious  genera- 
tions the  new-lit  fires  of  the  human  intelligence  were  to  be  seri- 
ously banked  down  by  this  by-product. 

Right  thinking  is  necessarily  an  open  process,  and  the  only 
science  and  history  of  full  value  to  men  consist  of  what  is  gen- 
erally and  clearly  known ;  this  is  surely  a  platitude,  but  we  have 
still  to  discover  how  to  preserve  our  centres  of  philosophy  and 
research  from  the  caking  and  darkening  accumulations  of  nar- 
row and  dingy-spirited  specialists.  We  have  still  to  ensure  that 
a  man  of  learning  shall  be  none  the  less  a  man  of  affairs,  and 
that  all  that  can  be  thought  and  known  is  kept  plainly,  honestly, 
and  easily  available  to  the  ordinary  men  and  women  who  are 
the  substance  of  mankind. 

§  2 

At  first  the  mental  activities  of  Alexandria  centred  upon 
the  Museum,  and  were  mainly  scientific.  Philosophy,  which  in 
a  more  vigorous  age  had  been  a  doctrine  of  power  over  self  and 
the  material  world,  without  abandoning  these  pretensions,  be- 
came in  reality  a  doctrine  of  secret  consolation.  The  stimulant 
changed  into  an  opiate.  The  philosopher  let  the  world,  as  the 
vulgar  say,  rip,  the  world  of  which  he  was  a  part,  and  consoled 
himself  by  saying  in  very  beautiful  and  elaborate  forms  that  the 
world  was  illusion  and  that  there  was  in  him  something  quintes- 
sential and  sublime,  outside  and  above  the  world.  Athens, 
politically  insignificant,  but  still  a  great  and  crowded  mart 
throughout  the  fourth  century,  decaying  almost  imperceptibly 
so  far  as  outer  seeming  went,  and  treated  with  a  strange  respect 
that  was  half  contempt  by  all  the  warring  powers  and  adven- 
turers of  the  world,  was  the  fitting  centre  of  such  philosophical 
teaching.  It  was  quite  a  couple  of  centuries  before  the  schools 
of  Alexandria  became  as  important  in  philosophical  discussion. 

§  3 

If  Alexandria  was  late  to  develop  a  distinctive  philosophy, 
she  was  early  prominent  as  a  great  factory  and  exchange  of 
religious  ideas. 


350  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  Museum  and  Library  represented  only  one  of  the  three 
sides  of  the  triple  city  of  Alexandria.  They  represented  the 
Aristotelian,  the  Hellenic,  and  Macedonian  element.  But 
Ptolemy  I  had  brought  together  two  other  factors  to  this  strange 
centre.  First  there  was  a  great  number  of  Jews,  brought  partly 
from  Palestine,  but  largely  also  from  those  settlements  in  Egypt 
which  had  never  returned  to  Jerusalem;  these  latter  were  the 
Jews  of  the  Diaspora  or  Dispersion,  a  race  of  Jews  who,  as  we 
have  already  noted  in  Chapter  XIX,  had  not  shared  the  Baby- 
lonian Captivity,  but  who  were  nevertheless  in  possession  of  the 
Bible  and  in  close  correspondence  with  their  co-religionists 
throughout  the  world.  These  Jews  populated  so  great  a  quarter 
of  Alexandria  that  the  town  became  the  largest  Jewish  city 
in  the  world,  with  far  more  Jews  in  it  than  there  were  in 
Jerusalem.  We  have  already  noted  that  they  had  found 
it  necessary  to  translate  their  scriptures  into  Greek.  And, 
finally,  there  was  a  great  population  of  native  Egyptians,  also 
for  the  most  part  speaking  Greek,  but  with  the  superstitious 
temperament  of  the  dark  whites  and  with  the  vast  tradition  of 
forty  centuries  of  temple  religion  and  temple  sacrifices  at  the 
back  of  their  minds.  In  Alexandria  three  types  of  mind  and 
spirit  met,  the  three  main  types  of  the  white  race,  the  clear- 
headed criticism  of  the  Aryan  Greek,  the  moral  fervour  and 
monotheism  of  the  Semitic  Jew,  and  the  deep  Mediterranean 
tradition  of  mysteries  and  sacrifices  that  we  have  already  seen 
at  work  in  the  secret  cults  and  occult  practices  of  Greece,  ideas 
which  in  Hamitic  Egypt  ruled  proudly  in  great  temples  in  the 
open  light  of  day. 

These  three  were  the  permanent  elements  of  the  Alexandrian 
blend.  But  in  the  seaport  and  markets  mingled  men  of  every 
known  race,  comparing  their  religious  ideas  and  customs.  It 
is  even  related  that  in  the  third  century  B.C.  Buddhist  mis- 
sionaries came  from  the  court  of  King  Asoka  in  India.  Aris- 
totle remarks  in  his  Politics  that  the  religious  beliefs  of  men 
are  apt  to  borrow  their  form  from  political  institutions,  "men 
assimilate  the  lives  no  less  than  the  bodily  forms  of  the  gods 
to  their  own/7  and  this  age  of  Greek-speaking  great  empires 
under  autocratic  monarchs  was  bearing  hardly  upon  those  merely 
local  celebrities,  the  old  tribal  and  city  deities.  Men  were 
requiring  deities  with  an  outlook  at  least  as  wide  as  the  em- 
pires, and  except  where  the  interests  of  powerful  priesthood^ 


SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA       351 


Iffiff  and 

Horug 


stood  in  the  way,  a  curious  process  of  assimilation  of  gods  was 
going  on.  Men  found  that  though  there  were  many  gods,  they 
were  all  very  much  alike.  Where  there  had  been  many  gods, 
men  came  to  think  there  must  be  really  only  one  god  under  a 
diversity  of  names.  He  had  been  everywhere — under  an  alias. 
The  Roman  Jupiter,  the  Greek  Zeus,  the  Egyptian  Ammon,  the 
putative  father  of  Alexander  and  the  old  antagonist  of  Ameno- 
phis  IV  the  Babylonian  Bel-Marduk,  were  all  sufficiently  sim- 
ilar to  be  identified. 

"Father  of  all  in  every  age,  in  every  clime  adored 
By  saint,  by  savage  and  by  sage,  Jehovah,  Jove 
or  Lord." 

Where  there  were  distinct  differences,  the  difficulty  was  met 
by  saying  that  these  were  different  aspects  of  the  same  god. 
Bel-Marduk,  however,  was  now  a  very  decadent  god  indeed, 
who  hardly  survived  as  a  pseudonym; 
Assur,  Dagon,  and  the  like,  poor  old  gods 
of  fallen  nations,  had  long  since  passed 
out  of  memory,  and  did  not  come  into  the 
amalgamation.  Osiris,  a  god  popular 
with  the  Egyptian  commonalty,  was  al- 
ready identified  with  Apis,  the  sacred 
bull  in  the  temple  of  Memphis,  and  some- 
what confused  with  Ammon.  Under  the 
name  of  Serapis  he  became  the  great 
god  of  Hellenic  Alexandria.  He  was 
Jupiter-Serapis.  The  Egyptian  cow 
goddess,  Hathor  or  Isis,  was  also  repre- 
sented now  in  human  guise  as  the  wife 
of  Osiris,  to  whom  she  bore  the  infant 
Horus,  who  grew  up  to  be  Osiris  again. 
These  bald  statements  sound  strange, 
no  doubt,  to  a  modern  mind,  but  these 
identifications  and  mixing  up  of  one  god 
with  another  are  very  illustrative  of  the 
struggle  the  quickening  human  intelligence  was  making  to  cling 
still  to  religion  and  its  emotional  bonds  and  fellowship,  while 
making  its  gods  more  reasonable  and  universal. 

This  fusing  of  one  god  with  another  is  called  tlieocrasia,  and 
nowhere  was  it  more  vigorously  going  on  than  in  Alexandria. 


352 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Only  two  peoples  resisted  it  in  this  period:  the  Jews,  who  al- 
ready had  their  faith  in  the  One  God  of  Heaven  and  Earth, 
Jehovah,  and  the  Persian0  who  had  a  monotheistic  sun  worship. 

It  was  Ptolemy  I  who  set  up 
not  only  the  Museum  in  Alex- 
andria, but  the  Serapeum,  de- 
voted to  the  worship  of  a  trinity 
of  god  which  represented  the  re- 
sult of  a  process  of  theocrasia  ap- 
plied more  particularly  to  the 
gods  of  Greece  and  Egypt. 

This  trinity  consisted  of  the 
god  Serapis  (=  Osiris  +  Apis), 
the  goddess  Isis  (=  Hathor,  the 
cow-moon  goddess),  and  the  child- 
god  Horus.  In  one  way  or  an- 
other almost  every  other  god  was 
identified  with  one  or  other  of 
these  three  aspects  of  the  one 
God,  even  the  sun  god  Mithras  of 
the  Persians.  And  they  were 
each  other;  they  were  three,  but 
they  were  also  one.  They  were 
worshipped  with  great  fervour, 
and  the  jangling  of  a  peculiar  in- 
strument, the  sistrum,  a  frame  set  with  bells  and  used  rather 
after  the  fashion  of  the  tambourine  in  the  proceedings  of  the 
modern  Salvation  Army,  was  a  distinctive  accessory  to  the  cere- 
monies. And  now  for  the  first  time  we  find  the  idea  of  immor- 
tality becoming  the  central  idea  of  a  religion  that  extended  be- 
yond Egypt.  Neither  the  early  Aryans  nor  the  early  Semites 
seem  to  have  troubled  very  much  about  immortality,  it  has  af- 
fected the  Mongolian  mind  very  little,  but  the  continuation  of 
the  individual  life  after  death  had  been  from  the  earliest  times 
an  intense  preccupation  of  the  Egyptians.  It  played  now  a 
large  part  in  the  worship  of  Serapis.  In  the  devotional  litera- 
ture of  his  cult  he  is  spoken  of  as  "the  saviour  and  leader  of 
souls,  leading  souls  to  the  light  and  receiving  them  again."  It 
is  stated  that  "he  raises  the  dead,  he  shows  forth  the  longed-for 
\ight  of  the  sun  to  those  who  see,  whose  holy  tombs  contain  multi- 
tudes of  sacred  books'7 ;  and  again,  "we  never  can  escape  him, 


Serapis 


SCIENCE  AND  RELIGION  AT  ALEXANDRIA       353 

he  will  save  us,  after  death  we  shall  still  be  the  care  of  his 
providence."  l 

The  ceremonial  burning,  of  candles  and  the  offering  of  ex- 
votos,  that  is  to  say  of  small  models  of  parts  of  the  human  body 
in  need  of  succour,  was  a  part  of  the  worship  of  the  Serapeum. 
Isis  attracted  many  devotees,  who  vowed  their  lives  to  her. 
Her  images  stood  in  the  temple,  crowned  as  the  Queen  of 
Heaven  and  bearing  the  infant  Horus  in  .her  arms.  The  candles 
flared  and  guttered  before  her,  and  the  wax  ex-votos  hung  about 
the  shrine.  The  novice  was  put  through  a  long  and  careful  prep- 
aration, he  took  vows  of  celibacy,  and  when  he  was  initiated  his 
head  was  shaved  and  he  was  clad  in  a  linen  garment.  .  .  . 

In  this  worship  of  Serapis,  which  spread  very  widely  through- 
out the  civilized  world  in  the  third  and  second  centuries  B.C., 
we  see  the  most  remarkable  anticipations  of  usages  and  forms 
of  expression  that  were  destined  to  dominate  the  European 
world  throughout  the  Christian  era.  The  essential  idea,  the 
living  spirit,  of  Christianity  was,  as  we  shall  presently  show, 
a  new  thing  in  the  history  of  the  mind  and  will  of  man;  but 
the  garments  of  ritual  and  symbol  and  formula  that  Christianity 
has  worn,  and  still  in  many  countries  wears  to  this  day,  were 
certainly  woven  in  the  cult  and  temples  of  Jupiter,  Serapis,  and 
Isis  that  spread  now  from  Alexandria  throughout  the  civilized 
world  in  the  age  of  theocrasia  in  the  second  and  first  centuries 
before  Christ. 

1Legge,  Forerunners  and  Rivals  oj  Christianity. 


XXV 

THE  KISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM 

1.  The  Story  of  Gautama.  §  2.  Teaching  and  Legend  in 
Conflict.  §  3.  The  Gospel  of  Gautama  Buddha,  §  4.  Bud- 
dhism and  AsoJca.1  §  5.  Two  Great  Chinese  Teachers.  §  6. 
The  Corruptions  of  Buddhism.  §  7.  The  Present  Range  of 
Buddhism. 


IT  is  interesting  to  turn  from  the  mental  and  moral  activities 
of  Athens  and  Alexandria,  and  the  growth  of  human  ideas 
in  the  Mediterranean  world,  to  the  almost  entirely  separate 
intellectual  life  of  India.  Here  was  a  civilization  which  from 
the  first  seems  to  have  grown  up  upon  its  own  roots  and  with  a 
character  of  its  own.  It  was  cut  off  from  the  civilizations  to 
the  west  and  to  the  east  hy  vast  mountain  barriers  and  desert 
regions.  The  Aryan  tribes  who  had  come  down  into  the  penin- 
sula soon  lost  touch  with  their  kindred  to  the  west  and  north, 
and  developed  upon  lines  of  their  own.  This  was  more  particu- 
larly the  case  with  those  who  had  passed  on  into  the  Ganges 
country  and  beyond.  They  found  a  civilization  already  scat- 
tered over  India,  the  Dravidian  civilization.  This  had  arisen 
independently,  just  as  the  Sumerian,  Cretan,  and  Egyptian 
civilizations  seem  to  have  arisen,  out  of  that  widespread  de- 
velopment of  the  neolithic  culture,  the  heliolithic  culture,  whose 
characteristics  we  have  already  described.  They  revived  and 
changed  this  Dravidian  civilization  much  as  the  Greeks  did  the 
^Egean  or  the  Semites  the  Sumerian. 

These  Indian  Aryans  were  living  under  different  conditions 
from  those  that  prevailed  to  the  north-west.  They  were  living 
in  a  warmer  climate,  in  which  a  diet  of  beef  and  fermented 
liquor  was  destructive;  they  were  forced,  therefore,  to  a  gen- 
erally vegetarian  dietary,  and  the  prolific  soil,  almost  unasked, 
gave  them  all  the  food  they  needed.  There  was  no  further 

1  Pronounced  Ashoka. 
354 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          355 

reason  for  them  to  wander;  the  crops  and  seasons  were  trust- 
worthy. They  wanted  little  clothing  or  housing.  They  wanted 
so  little  that  trade  was  undeveloped.  There  was  still  land  for 
every  one  who  desired  to  cultivate  a  patch — and  a  little  patch 
sufficed.  Their  political  life  was  simple  and  comparatively 
secure ;  no  great  conquering  powers  had  arisen  as  yet  in  India, 
and  her  natural  barriers  sufficed  to  stop  the  early  imperialisms 
to  the  west  of  her  and  to  the  east.  Thousands  of  comparatively 
pacific  little  village  republics  and  chieftainships  were  spread 
over  the  land.  There  was  no  sea  life,  there  were  no  pirate 
raiders,  no  strange  traders.  One  might  write  a  history  of  India 
coming  down  to  four  hundred  years  ago  and  hardly  mention 
the  sea. 

The  history  of  India  for  many  centuries  had  been  happier, 
less  fierce,  and  more  dreamlike  than  any  other  history.  The 
noblemen,  the  rajahs,  hunted;  life  was  largely  made  up  of  love 
stories.  Here  and  there  a  maharajah  arose  amidst  the  rajahs 
and  built  a  city,  caught  and  tamed  many  elephants,  slew  many 
tigers,  and  left  a  tradition  of  his  splendour  and  his  wonderful 
processions. 

It  was  somewhen  between  500  and  600  B.C.,  when  Croasus 
was  flourishing  in  Lydia  and  Cyrus  was  preparing  to  snatch 
Babylon  from  Nabonidus,  that  the  founder  of  Buddhism  was 
born  in  India.  He  was  born  in  a  small  republican  'tribal  com- 
munity in  the  north  of  Bengal  under  the  Himalayas,  in  what  is 
now  overgrown  jungle  country  on  the  borders  of  Nepal.  The 
little  state  was  ruled  by  a  family,  the  Sakya  clan,  of  which 
this  man,  Siddhattha  Gautama,  was  a  member.  Siddhattha 
was  his  personal  name,  like  Caius  or  John;  Gautama,  or 
Gotama,  his  family  name,  like  Caesar  or  Smith ;  Sakya  his  clan 
name,  like  Julius.  The  institution  of  caste  was  not  yet  fully 
established  in  India,  and  the  Brahmins,  though  they  were  privi- 
leged and  influential,  had  not  yet  struggled  to  the  head  of  the 
system;  but  there  were  already  strongly  marked  class  distinc- 
tions and  a  practically  impermeable  partition  between  the  noble 
Aryans  and  the  darker  common  people.  Gautama  belonged  to 
the  former  race.  His  teaching,  we  may  note,  was  called  the 
Aryan  Path,  the  Aryan  Truth. 

It  is  only  within  the  last  half-century  that  the  increasing 
study  of  the  Pali  language,  in  which  most  of  the  original  sources 
were  written,  has  given  the  world  a  real  knowledge  of  the  life 


356  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  actual  thought  of  Gautama.  Previously  his  story  was  over- 
laid by  monstrous  accumulations  of  legend,  and  his  teaching 
violently  misconceived.  But  now  we  have  a  very  human  and 
understandable  account  of  him. 

He  was  a  good-looking,  capable  young  man  of  fortune,  and 
until  he  was  twenty-nine  he  lived  the  ordinary  aristocratic  life 
of  his  time.  It  was  not  a  very  satisfying  life  intellectually. 
There  was  no  literature  except  the  oral  tradition  of  the  Vedas, 
and  that  was  chiefly  monopolized  by  the  Brahmins;  there  was 
even  less  knowledge.  The  world  was  bound  by  the  snowy 
Himalayas  to  the  north  and  spread  indefinitely  to  the  south. 
The  city  of  Benares,  which  had  a  king,  was  about  a  hundred 
miles  away.  The  chief  amusements  were  hunting  and  love- 
making.  All  the  good  that  life  seemed  to  offer,  Gautama  en- 
joyed. He  was  married  at  nineteen  to  a  beautiful  cousin.  For 
some  years  they  remained  childless.  He  hunted  and  played  and 
went  about  in  his  sunny  world  of  gardens  and  groves  and 
irrigated  rice-fields.  And  it  was  amidst  this  life  that  a  great 
discontent  fell  upon  him.  It  was  the  unhappiness  of  a  fine 
brain  that  seeks  employment.  He  lived  amidst  plenty  and 
beauty,  he  passed  from  gratification  to  gratification,  and  his  soul 
was  not  satisfied.  It  was  as  if  he  heard  the  destinies  of  the 
race  calling  to  him.  He  felt  that  the  existence  he  was  leading 
was  not  the  reality  of  life,  but  a  holiday — a  holiday  that  had 
gone  on  too  long. 

While  he  was  in  this  mood  he  saw  four  things  that  served  to 
point  his  thoughts.  He  was  driving  on  some  excursion  of 
pleasure,  when  he  came  upon  a  man  dreadfully  broken  down 
by  age.  The  poor  bent,  enfeebled  creature  struck  his  imagina- 
tion. "Such  is  the  way  of  life,"  said  Channa,  his  charioteer, 
and  "to  that  we  must  all  come."  While  this  was  yet  in  his  mind 
he  chanced  upon  a  man  suffering  horribly  from  some  loathsome 
disease.  "Such  is  the  way  of  life,"  said  Channa.  The  third 
vision  was  of  an  unburied  body,  swollen,  eyeless,  mauled  by 
passing  birds  and  beasts  and  altogether  terrible.  "That  is  the 
way  of  life,"  said  Channa. 

The  sense  of  disease  and  mortality,  the  insecurity  and  the 
unsatisfactoriness  of  all  happiness,  descended  upon  the  mind  of 
Gautama.  And  then  he  and  Channa  saw  one  of  those  wander- 
ing ascetics  who  already  existed  in  great  numbers  in  India. 
These  men  lived  under  severe  rules,  spending  much  time  in 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          357 

meditation  and  in  religious  discussion.  For  many  men  before 
Gautama  in  that  land  of  uneventful  sunshine  had  found  life 
distressing  and  mysterious.  These  ascetics  were  all  supposed 
to  be  seeking  some  deeper  reality  in  life,  and  a  passionate  desire 
to  do  likewise  took  possession  of  Gautama. 

He  was  meditating  upon  this  project,  says  the  story,  when 
the  news  was  brought  to  him  that  his  wife  had  been  delivered 
of  his  first-born  son.  "This  is  another  tie  to  break,"  said 
Gautama. 

He  returned  to  the  village  amidst  the  rejoicings  of  his  fel- 
low clansmen.  There  was  a  great  feast  and  a  ISTautch  dance 
to  celebrate  the  birth  of  this  new  tie,  and  in  the  night  Gautama 
awoke  in  a  great  agony  of  spirit,  "like  a  man  who  is  told  that 
his  house  is  on  fire."  In  the  ante-room  the  dancing  girls  were 
lying  in  strips  of  darkness  and  moonlight.  He  called  Channa, 
and  told  him  to  prepare  his  horse.  Then  he  went  softly  to  the 
threshold  of  his  wife's  chamber,  and  saw  her  by  the  light  of  a 
little  oil  lamp,  sleeping  sweetly,  surrounded  by  flowers,  with 
his  infant  son  in  her  arm.  He  felt  a  great  craving  to  take  up 
the  child  in  one  first  and  last  embrace  before  he  departed,  but 
the  fear  of  waking  his  wife  prevented  him,  and  at  last  he 
turned  away  and  went  out  into  the  bright  Indian  moonshine  to 
Channa  waiting  with  the  horses,  and  mounted  and  stole  away. 

As  he  rode  through  the  night  with  Channa,  it  seemed  to  him 
that  Mara,  the  Tempter  of  Mankind,  filled  the  sky  and  disputed 
with  him.  "Return,"  said  Mara,  "and  be  a  king,  and  I  will 
make  you  the  greatest  of  kings.  Go  on,  and  you  will  fail. 
Never  will  I  cease  to  dog  your  footsteps.  Lust  or  malice  or 
anger  will  betray  you  at  last  in  some  unwary  moment;  sooner 
or  later  you  will  be  mine." 

Very  far  they  rode  that  night,  and  in  the  morning  he  stopped 
outside  the  lands  of  his  clan,  and  dismounted  beside  a  sandy 
river.  There  he  cut  off  his  flowing  locks  with  his  sword,  re- 
moved all  his  ornaments,  and  sent  them  and  his  horse  and  sword 
back  to  his  house  by  Channa.  Then  going  on  he  presently  met 
a  ragged  man  and  exchanged  clothes  with  him,  and  so  having 
divested  himself  of  all  worldly  entanglements,  he  was  free  to 
pursue  his  search  after  wisdom.  He  made  his  way  southward 
to  a  resort  of  hermits  and  teachers  in  a  hilly  spur  running  into 
Bengal  northward  from  the  Vindhya  Mountains,  close  to  the 
town  of  Rajgir.  There  a  number  of  wise  men  lived  in  a  warren 


358 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


BUDDHISM 

AsoJra.'5*capital.J 


of  caves,  going  into  the  town  for  their  simple  supplies  and 
imparting  their  knowledge  by  word  of  mouth  to  such  as  cared 
to  come  to  them. 

This  instruction  must  have  been  very  much  in  the  style  of 
the  Socratic  discussions  that  were  going  on  in  Athens  a  couple 
of  centuries  later.  Gautama  became  versed  in  all  the  meta- 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          359 

physics  of  his  age.     But  his  acute  intelligence  was  dissatisfied 
with  the  solutions  offered  him. 

The  Indian  mind  has  always  been  disposed  to  believe  that 
power  and  knowledge  may  be  obtained  by  extreme  asceticism, 
by  fasting,  sleeplessness,  and  self-torment,  and  these  ideas  Gau- 
tama now  put  to  the  test.  He  betook  himself  with  five  disciple 
companions  to  the  jungle  in  a  gorge  in  the  Vindhya  Mountains, 
and  there  he  gave  himself  up  to  fasting  and  terrible  penances. 
His  fame  spread,  "like  the  sound  of  a  great  bell  hung  in  the 
canopy  of  the  skies."  l  But  it  brought  him  no  sense  of  truth 
achieved.  One  day  he  was  walking  up  and  down,  trying  to 
think  in  spite  of  his  enfeebled  state.  Suddenly  he  staggered 
and  fell  unconscious.  When  he  recovered,  the  preposterousness 
of  these  semi-magic  ways  of  attempting  wisdom  was  plain  to 
him. 

He  amazed  and  horrified  his  five  companions  by  demanding 
ordinary  food  and  refusing  to  continue  his  self-mortifications. 
He  had  realized  that  whatever  truth  a  man  may  reach  is  reached 
best  by  a  nourished  brain  in  a  healthy  body.  Such  a  conception 
was  absolutely  foreign  to  the  ideas  of  the  land  and  age.  His 
disciples  deserted  him,  and  went  off  in  a  melancholy  state  to 
Benares.  The  boom  of  the  great  bell  ceased.  Gautama  the 
wonderful  had  fallen. 

•    For  a  time  Gautama  wandered  alone,  the  loneliest  figure  in 
history,  battling  for  light. 

When  the  mind  grapples  with  a  great  and  intricate  problem, 
it  makes  its  advances,  it  secures  its  positions  step  by  step,  with 
but  little  realization  of  the  gains  it  has  made,  until  suddenly, 
with  an  effect  of  abrupt  illumination,  it  realizes  its  victory.  So 
it  would  seem  it  happened  to  Gautama.  He  had  seated  himself 
under  a  great  tree  by  the  side  of  a  river  to  eat,  when  this  sense 
of  clear  vision  came  to  him.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  saw  life 
plain.  He  is  said  to  have  sat  all  day  and  all  night  in  profound 
thought,  and  then  he  rose  up  to  impart  his  vision  to  the  world. 

§2 

Such  is  the  plain  story  of  Gautama  as  we  gather  it  from  a 
comparison  of  early  writings.  But  common  men  must  have 
their  cheap  marvels  and  wonders. 

*The  Burmese  Chronicle,  quoted  by  Rhys  Davids. 


360  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

It  is  nothing  to  them  that  this  little  planet  should  at  last  pro- 
duce upon  its  surface  a  man  thinking  of  the  past  and  the  future 
and  the  essential  nature  of  existence.  And  so  we  must  have 
this  sort  of  thing  by  some  worthy  Pali  scribe,  making  the  most 
of  it: 

"When  the  conflict  began  between  the  Saviour  of  the  World 
and  the  Prince  of  Evil  a  thousand  appalling  meteors  fell.  .  .  . 
Rivers  flowed  back  towards  their  sources ;  peaks  and  lofty  moun- 
tains where  countless  trees  had  grown  for  ages  rolled  crumbling 
to  the  earth  .  .  .  the  sun  enveloped  itself  in  awful  darkness, 
and  a  host  of  headless  spirits  filled  the  air."  * 

Of  which  phenomena  history  has  preserved  no  authentication. 
Instead  we  have  only  the  figure  of  a  lonely  man  walking  towards 
Benares. 

Extraordinary  attention  has  been  given  to  the  tree  under 
which  Gautama  had  this  sense  of  mental  clarity.  It  was  a 
tree  of  the  fig  genus,  and  from  the  first  it  was  treated  with 
peculiar  veneration.  It  was  called  the  Bo  Tree.  It  has  long 
since  perished,  but  close  at  hand  lives  another  great  tree  which 
may  be  its  descendant,  and  in  Ceylon  there  grows  to  this  day 
a  tree,  the  oldest  historical  tree  in  the  world,  which  we  know 
certainly  to  have  been  planted  as  a  cutting  from  the  Bo  Tree 
in  the  year  245  B.C.  From  that  time  to  this  it  has  been  care- 
fully tended  and  watered;  its  great  branches  are  supported  by 
pillars,  and  the  earth  has  been  terraced  up  about  it  so  that  it 
has  been  able  to  put  out  fresh  roots  continually.  It  helps  us 
to  realize  the  shortness  of  all  human  history  to  see  so  many 
generations  spanned  by  the  endurance  of  one  single  tree.  Gau- 
tama's disciples  unhappily  have  cared  more  for  the  preservation 
of  his  tree  than  of  his  thought,  which  from  the  first  they  mis- 
conceived and  distorted. 

At  Benares  Gautama  sought  out  his  five  pupils,  who  were 
still  leading  the  ascetic  life.  There  is  an  account  of  their  hesi- 
tation to  receive  him  when  they  saw  him  approaching.  He  was 
a  backslider.  But  there  was  some  power  of  personality  in  him 
that  prevailed  over  their  coldness,  and  he  made  them  listen  to 
his  new  convictions.  For  five  days  the  discussion  was  carried 
on.  When  he  had  at  last  convinced  them  that  he  was  now 
enlightened,  they  hailed  him  as  the  Buddha.  There  was  already 
in  those  days  a  belief  in  India  that  at  long  intervals  Wisdom 

1The  Madhurattha  Vilasvni,  quoted  by  Rhys  Davids. 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          361 

returned  to  the  earth  and  was  revealed  to  mankind  through 
a  chosen  person  known  as  the  Buddha.  According  to  Indian 
belief  there  have  been  many  such  Buddhas;  Gautama  Buddha 
is  only  the  latest  one  of  a  series.  But  it  is  doubtful  if  he  him- 
self accepted  that  title  or  recognized  that  theory.  In  his  dis- 
courses he  never  called  himself  the  Buddha. 

He  and  his  recovered  disciples  then  formed  a  sort  of  Academy 
in  the  Deer  Park  at  Benares.  They  made  themselves  huts,  and 
accumulated  other  followers  to  the  number  of  threescore  or 
more.  In  the  rainy  season  they  remained  in  discourse  at  this 
settlement,  and  during  the  dry  weather  they  dispersed  about 
the  country,  each  giving  his  version  of  the  new  teachings.  All 
their  teaching  was  done,  it  would  seem,  by  word  of  mouth.  There 
was  probably  no  writing  yet  in  India  at  all.  We  must  remem- 
ber that  in  the  time  of  Buddha  it  is  doubtful  if  even  the  Iliad 
had  been  committed  to  writing.  Probably  the  Mediterranean 
alphabet,  which  is  the  basis  of  most  Indian  scripts,  had  not  yet 
reached  India.  The  master,  therefore,  worked  out  and  com- 
posed pithy  and  brief  verses,  aphorisms,  and  lists  of  "points," 
and  these  were  expanded  in  the  discourse  of  his  disciples.  It 
greatly  helped  them  to  have  these  points  and  aphorisms  num- 
bered. The  modern  mind  is  apt  to  be  impatient  of  the  tendency 
of  Indian  thought  to  a  numerical  statement  of  things,  the  Eight- 
fold Path,  the  Four  Truths,  and  so  on,  but  this  enumeration 
was  a  mnemonic  necessity  in  an  undocumented  world. 

§  3 

The  fundamental  teaching  of  Gautama,  as  it  is  now  being 
made  plain  to  us  by  the  study  of  original  sources,  is  clear  and 
simple  and  in  the  closest  harmony  with  modern  ideas.  It  is 
beyond  all  dispute  the  achievement  of  one  of  the  most  penetrat- 
ing intelligences  the  world  has  ever  known. 

We  have  what  are  almost  certainly  the  authentic  heads  of 
his  discourse  to  the  five  disciples  which  embodies  his  essential 
doctrine.  All  the  miseries  and  discontents  of  life  he  traces  to 
insatiable  selfishness.  Suffering,  he  teaches,  is  due  to  the 
craving  individuality,  to  the  torment  of  greedy  desire.  Until  a 
man  has  overcome  every  sort  of  personal  craving  his  life  is 
trouble  and  his  end  sorrow.  There  are  three  principal  forms 
the  craving  of  life  takes,  and  all  are  evil.  The  first  is  the  desire 


362  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  gratify  the  senses,  sensuousness.  The  second  is  the  desire 
for  personal  immortality.  The  third  is  the  desire  for  prosperity, 
worldliness.  All  these  must  be  overcome — that  is  to  say,  a  man 
must  no  longer  be  living  for  himself — before  life  can  become 
serene.  But  when  they  are  indeed  overcome  and  no  longer  rule 
a  man's  life,  when  the  first  personal  pronoun  has  vanished  from 
his  private  thoughts,  then  he  has  reached  the  higher  wisdom, 
Nirvana,  serenity  of  soul.  For  Nirvana  does  not  mean,  as  many 
people  wrongly  believe,  extinction,  but  the  extinction  of  the 
futile  personal  aims  that  necessarily  make  life  base  or  pitiful 
or  dreadful. 

Now  here,  surely  we  have  the  completest  analysis  of  the 
problem  of  the  soul's  peace.  Every  religion  that  is  worth  the 
name,  every  philosophy,  warns  us  to  lose  ourselves  in  something 
greater  than  ourselves.  " Whosoever  would  save  his  life,  shall 
lose  it ;"  there  is  exactly  the  same  lesson. 

The  teaching  of  history,  as  we  are  unfolding  it  in  this  book, 
is  strictly  in  accordance  with  this  teaching  of  Buddha.  There 
is,  as  we  are  seeing,  no  social  order,  no  security,  no  peace  or 
happiness,  no  righteous  leadership  or  kingship,  unless  men  lose 
themselves  in  something  greater  than  themselves.  The  study 
of  biological  progress  again  reveals  exactly  the  same  process — 
the  merger  of  the  narrow  globe  of  the  individual  experience  in 
a  wider  being  (compare  what  has  been  said  in  Chaps.  XI  and 
XVI).  To  forget  oneself  in  greater  interests  is  to  escape 
from  a  prison. 

The  self-abnegation  must  be  complete.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  Gautama,  that  dread  of  death,  that  greed  for  an  endless 
continuation  of  his  mean  little  individual  life  which  drove  the 
Egyptian  and  those  who  learnt  from  him  with  propitiations  and 
charms  into  the  temples,  was  as  mortal  and  ugly  and  evil  a 
thing  as  lust  or  avarice  or  hate.  The  religion  of  Gautama  is 
flatly  opposite  to  the  "immortality"  religions.  And  his  teach- 
ing is  set  like  flint  against  asceticism,  as  a  mere  attempt  to  win 
personal  power  by  personal  pains. 

But  when  we  come  to  the  rule  of  life,  the  Aryan  Path,  by 
which  we  are  to  escape  from  the  threefold  base  cravings  that 
dishonour  human  life,  then  the  teaching  is  not  so  clear.  It  is 
not  so  clear  for  one  very  manifest  reason,  Gautama  had  no 
knowledge  nor  vision  of  history;  he  had  no  clear  sense  of  the 
vast  and  many-sided  adventure  of  life  opening  out  in  space  and 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          363 

time.  His  mind  was  confined  within  the  ideas  of  his  age  and 
people,  and  their  minds  were  shaped  into  notions  of  perpetual 
recurrence,  of  world  following  world  and  of  Buddha  following 
Buddha,  a  stagnant  circling  of  the  universe.  The  idea  of  man- 
kind as  a  great  Brotherhood  pursuing  an  endless  destiny  under 
the  God  of  Righteousness,  the  idea  that  was  already  dawning 
upon  the  Semitic  consciousness  in  Babylon  at  this  time,  did  not 
exist  in  his  world.  Yet  his  account  of  the  Eightfold  Path  is, 
nevertheless,  within  these  limitations,  profoundly  wise. 

Let  us  briefly  recapitulate  the  eight  elements  of  the  Aryan 
Path.  First,  Right  Views ;  Gautama  placed  the  stern  examina- 
tion of  views  and  ideas,  the  insistence  upon  truth  as  the  first 
research  of  his  followers.  There  was  to  be  no  clinging  to 
tawdry  superstitions.  He  condemned,  for  instance,  the  preva- 
lent belief  in  the  transmigration  of  souls.  In  a  well-known 
early  Buddhist  dialogue  there  is  a  destructive  analysis  of  the 
idea  of  an  enduring  individual  soul.  Next  to  Right  Views 
came  Right  Aspirations ;  because  nature  abhors  a  vacuum,  and 
since  base  cravings  are  to  be  expelled,  other  desires  must  be 
encouraged — love  for  the  service  of  others,  desire  to  do  and 
secure  justice  and  the  like.  Primitive  and  uncorrupted  Bud- 
dhism aimed  not  at  the  destruction  of  desire,  but  at  the  change 
of  desire.  Devotion  to  science  and  art,  or  to  the  betterment  of 
things  manifestly  falls  into  harmony  with  the  Buddhistic  Right 
Aspirations,  provided  such  aims  are  free  from  jealousy  or 
the  craving  for  fame.  Right  Speech,  Right  Conduct,  and  Right 
Livelihood,  need  no  expansion  here.  Sixthly  in  this  list  came 
Right  Effort,  for  Gautama  had  no  toleration  for  good  intentions 
and  slovenly  application;  the  disciple  had  to  keep  a  keenly 
critical  eye  upon  his  activities.  The  seventh  element  of  the 
path,  Right  Mindfulness,  is  the  constant  guard  against  a  lapse 
into  personal  feeling  or  glory  for  whatever  is  done  or  not  done. 
And,  finally,  comes  Right  Rapture,  which  seems  to  be  aimed 
against  the  pointless  ecstacies  of  the  devout,  such  witless  glory- 
ings,  for  instance,  as  those  that  went  to  the  jingle  of  the  Alex- 
andrian sistrum. 

We  will  not  discuss  here  the  Buddhistic  doctrine  of  Karma, 
because  it  belongs  to  a  world  of  thought  that  is  passing  away. 
The  good  or  evil  of  every  life  was  supposed  to  determine  the 
happiness  or  misery  of  some  subsequent  life,  that  was  in  some 
inexplicable  way  identified  with  its  predecessor.  Nowadays  we 


S64  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

realize  that  a  life  goes  on  in  its  consequences  for  ever,  but  we 
find  no  necessity  to  suppose  that  any  particular  life  resumes 
again.  The  Indian  mind  was  full  of  the  idea  of  cyclic  re- 
currence ;  everything  was  supposed  to  come  round  again.  This 
is  a  very  natural  supposition  for  men  to  make;  so  things  seem 
to  be  until  we  analyze  them.  Modern  science  has  made  clear 
to  us  that  there  is  no  such  exact  recurrence  as  we  are  apt  to 
suppose;  every  day  is  by  an  infinitesimal  quantity  a  little 
longer  than  the  day  before;  no  generation  repeats  the  previous 
generation  precisely;  history  never  repeats  itself;  change,  we 
realize  now,  is  inexhaustible ;  all  things  are  eternally  new.  But 
these  differences  between  our  general  ideas  and  those  Buddha 
must  have  possessed  need  not  in  any  way  prevent  us  from 
appreciating  the  unprecedented  wisdom,  the  goodness,  and  the 
greatness  of  this  plan  of  an  emancipated  life  as  Gautama  laid 
it  down  somewhen  in  the  sixth  century  before  Christ. 

And  if  he  failed  in  theory  to  gather  together  all  the  wills 
of  the  converted  into  the  one  multifarious  activity  of  our  race, 
battling  against  death  and  deadness  in  time  and  space,  he  did 
in  practice  direct  his  own  life  and  that  of  all  his  immediate 
disciples  into  one  progressive  adventure,  which  was  to  preach 
and  spread  the  doctrine  and  methods  of  Nirvana  or  soul- 
serenity  throughout  our  fevered  world.  For  them  at  least  his 
teaching  was  complete  and  full.  But  all  men  cannot  preach  or 
teach ;  doctrine  is  but  one  of  many  of  the  functions  of  life  that 
are  fundamentally  righteous.  To  the  modern  mind  it  seems  at. 
least  equally  acceptable  that  a  man  may,  though  perhaps  against 
greater  difficulties,  cultivate  the  soil,  rule  a  city,  make  roads, 
build  houses,  construct  engines,  or  seek  and  spread  knowledge, 
in  perfect  self-forgetfulness  and  serenity.  As  much  was  in- 
herent in  Gautama's  teaching,  but  the  stress  was  certainly  laid 
upon  the  teaching  itself,  and  upon  withdrawal  from  rather  than 
upon  the  ennoblement  of  the  ordinary  affairs  of  men. 

In  certain  other  respects  this  primitive  Buddhism  differed 
from  any  of  the  religions  we  have  hitherto  considered.  It  was 
primarily  a  religion  of  conduct,  not  a  religion  of  observances 
and  sacrifices.  It  had  no  temples,  and  since  it  had  no  sacrifices, 
it  had  no  sacred  order  of  priests.  Nor  had  it  any  theology.  It 
neither  asserted  nor  denied  the  reality  of  the  innumerable  and 
often  grotesque  gods  who  were  worshipped  in  India  at  that 
time.  It  passed  them  by. 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          363 

§  4 

From  the  very  first  this  new  teaching  was  misconceived.  One 
corruption  was  perhaps  inherent  in  its  teaching.  Because  the 
world  of  men  had  as  yet  no  sense  of  the  continuous  progressive 
effort  of  life,  it  was  very  easy  to  slip  from  the  idea  of  renouncing 
self  to  the  idea  of  renouncing  active  life.  As  Gautama's  own 
experiences  had  shown,  it  is  easier  to  flee  from  this  world  than 
from  self.  His  early  disciples  were  strenuous  thinkers  and 
teachers,  but  the  lapse  into  mere  monastic  seclusion  was  a  very 
easy  one,  particularly  easy  in  the  climate  of  India,  where  an 
extreme  simplicity  of  living  is  convenient  and  attractive,  and 
exertion  more  laborious  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world. 

And  it  was  early  the  fate  of  Gautama,  as  it  has  been  the  fate 
of  most  religious  founders  since  his  days,  -to  be  made  into  a 
wonder  by  his  less  intelligent  disciples  in  their  efforts  to  impress 
the  outer  world.  We  have  already  noted  how  one  devout  fol- 
lower could  not  but  believe  that  the  moment  of  the  master's 
mental  irradiation  must  necessarily  have  been  marked  by  an 
epileptic  fit  of  the  elements.  This  is  one  small  sample  of  the 
vast  accumulation  of  vulgar  marvels  that  presently  sprang  up 
about  the  memory  of  Gautama. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  for  the  great  multitude  of  human 
beings  then  as  now  the  mere  idea  of  an  emancipation  from  self 
is  a  very  difficult  one  to  grasp.  It  is  probable  that  even  among 
the  teachers  Buddha  was  sending  out  from  Benares  there  were 
many  who  did  not  grasp  it  and  still  less  were  able  to  convey  it  to 
their  hearers.  Their  teaching  quite  naturally  took  on  the  aspect 
of  salvation  not  from  oneself — that  idea  was  beyond  them — but 
from  misfortunes  and  sufferings  here  and  hereafter.  In  the 
existing  superstitions  of  the  people,  and  especially  in  the  idea 
of  the  transmigration  of  the  soul  after  death,  though  this  idea 
was  contrary  to  the  Master's  own  teaching,  they  found  stuff  of 
fear  they  could  work  upon.  They  urged  virtue  upon  the  people 
lest  they  should  live  again  in  degraded  or  miserable  forms,  or  fall 
into  some  one  of  the  innumerable  hells  of  torment  with  which 
the  Brahminical  teachers  had  already  familiarized  their  minds. 
They  represented  Buddha  as  the  saviour  from  almost  unlimited 
torment. 

There  seems  to  be  no  limit  to  the  lies  that  honest  but  stupid 
disciples  will  tell  for  the  glory  of  their  master  and  for  what  they 


366 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Harltl 

(painting 
Chinese 
Turkestan, 


regard  as  the  success  of  their  propaganda.  Men  who  would 
scorn  to  tell  a  lie  in  everyday  life  will  become  unscrupulous 
cheats  and  liars  when  they  have  given  themselves  up  to  propa- 
gandist work;  it  is  one  of  the  perplexing  absurdities  of  our 
human  nature.  Such  honest  souls,  for  most  of  them  were  in- 
dubitably honest,  were  presently  telling  their  hearers  of  the 
miracles  that  attended  the  Buddha's  birth — they  no  longer  called 
him  Gautama,  because  that  was  too  familiar  a  name — of  his 

youthful  feats  of 
strength,  of  the  marvels 
of  his  everyday  life, 
winding  up  with  a  sort 
of  illumination  of  his 
body  at  the  moment  of 
death.  Of  course  it  was 
impossible  to  believe 
that  Buddha  was  the 
son  of  a  mortal  father. 
He  was  miraculously 
conceived  through  his 
mother  dreaming  of  a 
beautiful  white  ele- 
phant !  Previously  he 
had  himself  been  a  mar- 
vellous elephant  with 
six  tusks;  he  had  gen- 
erously given  them  all 
to  a  needy  hunter — 
and  even  helped  him  to 
saw  them  off.  And  so 
on. 

Moreover,  a  theology 
grew  up  about  Buddha. 
He  was  discovered  to 
be  a  god.  He  was  one 

of  a  series  of  divine  beings,  the  Buddhas.  There  was  an  un- 
dying "Spirit  of  all  the  Buddhas" ;  there  was  a  great  series 
of  Buddhas  past  and  Buddhas  (or  Buddisatvas)  yet  to  come. 
But  we  cannot  go  further  into  these  complications  of  Asiatic 
theology.  "Under  the  overpowering  influence  of  these  sickly 
imaginations  the  moral  teachings  of  Gautama  have  been  almost 


[after  Toucher] 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          367 

hid  from  view.  The  theories  grew  and  flourished;  each  new 
step,  each  new  hypothesis,  demanded  another;  until  the  whole 
sky  was  filled  with  forgeries  of  the  brain,  and  the  nobler  and 
simpler  lessons  of  the  founder  of  the  religion  were  smothered 
beneath  the  glittering  mass  of  metaphysical  subtleties."  l 

In  the  third  century  B.C.  Buddhism  was  gaining  wealth  and 
power,  and  the  little  groups  of  simple  huts  in  which  the  teachers 
of  the  Order  gathered  in  the  rainy  season  were  giving  place  to 
substantial  monastic  buildings.  To  this  period  belong  the  begin- 
nings of  Buddhistic  art.  Now  if  we  remember  how  recent  was 
the  adventure  of  Alexander,  that  all  the  Punjab  was  still  under 
Seleucid  rule,  that  all  India  abounded  with  Greek  adventurers, 
and  that  there  was  still  quite  open  communication  by  sea  and 
land  with  Alexandria,  it  is  no  great  wonder  to  find  that  this 
early  Buddhist  art  was  strongly  Greek  in  character,  and  that  the 
new  Alexandrian  cult  of  Serapis  and  Isis  was  extraordinarily 
influential  in  its  development. 

The  kingdom  of  Gandhara  on  the  north-west  frontier  near 
Peshawar,  which  flourished  in  the  third  century  B.C.,  was  a  typ- 
ical meeting-place  of  the  Hellenic  and  Indian  worlds.  Here  are 
to  be  found  the  earliest  Buddhist  sculptures,  and  interwoven 
with  them  are  figures  which  are  recognizably  the  figures  of 
Serapis  and  Isis  and  Horus  already  worked  into  the  legendary 
net  that  gathered  about  Buddha.  No  doubt  the  Greek  artists 
who  came  to  Gandhara  were  loth  to  relinquish  a  familiar  theme. 
But  Isis,  we  are  told,  is  no  longer  Isis  but  Hariti,  a  pestilence 
goddess  whom  Buddha  converted  and  made  benevolent.  Foucher 
traces  Isis  from  this  centre  into  China,  but  here  other  influences 
were  also  at  work,  and  the  story  becomes  too  complex  for  us 
to  disentangle  in  this  Outline.2  China  had  a  Taoist  deity,  the 
Holy  Mother,  the  Queen  of  Heaven,  who  took  on  the  name 
(originally  a  male  name)  of  Kuan-yin  and  who  came  to  re- 
semble the  Isis  figure  very  closely.  The  Isis  figures,  we  feel, 
must  have  influenced  the  treatment  of  Kuan-yin.  Like  Isis 
she  was  also  Queen  of  the  Seas,  Stella  Maris.  In  Japan  she 
was  called  Kwannon.  There  seems  to  have  been  a  constant 
exchange  of  the  outer  forms  of  religion  between  east  and  west. 
We  read  in  Hue's  Travels  how  perplexing  he  and  his  fellow 

aRhys  Davids,  Buddhism. 

2  See  K.  F.  Johnston,  Buddhist  China. — L.   C.  B. 


368  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

missionary  found  this  possession  of  a  common  tradition  of  wor- 
ship. "The  cross,"  he  says,  "the  mitre,  the  dalmatica,  the  cope, 
which  the  Grand  Lamas  wear  on  their  journeys,  or  when  they  are 
performing  some  ceremony  out  of  the  temple;  the  service  with 
double  choirs,  the  psalmody,  the  exorcisms,  the  censer,  suspended 
from  five  chains,  which  you  can  open  or  close  at  pleasure;  the 
benedictions  given  by  the  Lamas  by  extending  the  right  hand 
over  the  heads  of  the  faithful ;  the  chaplet,  ecclesiastical  celibacy, 
spiritual  retirement,  the  worship  of  the  saints,  the  fasts,  the 
processions,  the  litanies,  the  holy  water,  all  these  are  analogies 
between  the  Buddhists  and  ourselves."  l 

The  cult  and  doctrine  of  Gautama,  gathering  corruptions  and 
variations  from  Brahminism  and  Hellenism  alike,  was  spread 
throughout  India  by  an  increasing  multitude  of  teachers  in  the 
fourth  and  third  centuries  B.C.  For  some  generations  at  least 
it  retained  much  of  the  moral  beauty  and  something  of  the 
simplicity  of  the  opening  phase.  Many  people  who  have  no 
intellectual  grasp  upon  the  meaning  of  self-abnegation  and  dis- 
interestedness have  nevertheless  the  ability  to  appreciate  a  splen- 
dour in  the  reality  of  these  qualities.  Early  Buddhism  was 
certainly  producing  noble  lives,  and  it  is  not  only  through  rea- 
son that  the  latent  response  to  nobility  is  aroused  in  our  minds. 
It  spread  rather  in  spite  of  than  because  of  the  concessions  that 
it  made  to  vulgar  imaginations.  It  spread  because  many  of 
the  early  Buddhists  were  sweet  and  gentle,  helpful  and  noble 
and  admirable  people,  who  compelled  belief  in  their  sustaining 
faith. 

Quite  early  in  its  career  Buddhism  came  into  conflict  with 
the  growing  pretensions  of  the  Brahmins.  As  we  have  already 
noted,  this  priestly  caste  was  still  only  struggling  to  dominate 
Indian  life  in  the  days  of  Gautama.  They  had  already  great 
advantages.  They  had  the  monopoly  of  tradition  and  religious 
sacrifices.  But  their  power  was  being  challenged  by  the  de- 
velopment of  kingship,  for  the  men  who  became  clan  leaders  and 
kings  were  usually  not  of  the  Brahminical  caste. 

Kingship  received  an  impetus  from  the  Persian  and  Greek 
invasions  of  the  Punjab.  We  have  already  noted  the  name  of 
King  Porus  whom,  in  spite  of  his  elephants,  Alexander  de- 
feated and  turned  into  a  satrap.  There  came  also  to  the  Greek 
camp  upon  the  Indus  a  certain  adventurer  named  Chandra- 

1  Hue's  Travels  in  Tartary,  Thibet,  and  China. 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM 


369 


gupta  Maurya,  whom  the  Greeks  called  Sandracottus,  with  a 
scheme  for  conquering  the  Ganges  country.  The  scheme  was 
not  welcome  to  the  Macedonians,  who  were  in  revolt  against 
marching  any  further  into  India,  and  he  had  to  fly  the  camp. 
He  wandered  among  the  tribes  upon  the  north-west  frontier,  se- 
cured their  support,  and  after  Alexander 
had  departed,  overran  the  Punjab,  ousting 
the  Macedonian  representatives.  He  then 
conquered  the  Ganges  country  (321  B.C.), 
waged  a  successful  war  (£03  B.C.)  against 
Seleucus  (Seleucus  I)  when  the  latter  at- 
tempted to  recover  the  Punjab,  and  con- 
solidated a  great  empire  reaching  across 
all  the  plain  of  northern  India  from  the 
western  to  the  eastern  sea.  And  this  King 
Chandragupta  came  into  much  the  same 
conflict  with  the  growing  power  of  the 
Brahmins,  into  the  conflict  between  crown 
and  priesthood,  that  we  have  already  noted 
as  happening  in  Babylonia  and  Egypt  and 
China.  He  saw  in  the  spreading  doctrine 
of  Buddhism  an  ally  against  the  growth 
of  priestcraft  and  caste.  He  supported 
and  endowed  the  Buddhistic  Order,  and 
encouraged  its  teachings. 

He  was  succeeded  by  his  son,  who  con- 
quered Madras  and  was  in  turn  succeeded  by  Asoka  (264  to 
227  B.C.),  one  of  the  great  monarchs  of  history,  whose  do- 
minions extended  from  Afghanistan  to  Madras.  He  is  the  only 
military  monarch  on  record  who  abandoned  warfare  after  vic- 
tory. He  had  invaded  Kalinga  (255  B.C.),  a  country  along  the 
east  coast  of  Madras,  perhaps  with  some  intention  of  completing 
the  conquest  of  the  tip  of  the  Indian  peninsula.  The  expedi- 
tion was  successful,  but  he  was  disgusted  by  what  he  saw  of 
the  cruelties  and  horrors  of  war.  He  declared,  in  certain  in- 
scriptions that  still  exist,  that  he  would  no  longer  seek  conquest 
by  war,  but  by  religion,  and  the  rest  of  his  life  was  devoted  to 
the  spreading  of  Buddhism  throughout  the  world. 

He  seems  to  have  ruled  his  vast  empire  in  peace  and  with 
great  ability.     He  was  no  mere  religious  fanatic.     But  in  the 


CHINESE     IMAGE 
KUAN-YIN 


370 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


year  of  his  one  and  only  war  he  joined  the  Buddhist  community 
as  a  layman,  and  some  years  later  he  became  a  full  member 
of  the  Order,  and  devoted  himself  to  the  attainment  of  Nirvana 
by  the  Eightfold  Path.  How  entirely  compatible  that  way  of 
living  then  was  with  the  most  useful  and  beneficent  activities  his 
life  shows.  Right  Aspiration,  Right  Effort,  and  Right  Liveli- 


"Map  to  illustrate 
tKc  .spreacL  cf  •" 

BUDDHISM 


Present  extent  of 
Buddhism,. 


.  (after  1?hys Davids 


hood  distinguished  his  career.  He  organized  a  great  digging  &5 
wells  in  India,  and  the  planting  of  trees  for  shade.  He  ap- 
pointed officers  for  the  supervision  of  charitable  works.  He 
founded  hospitals  and  public  gardens.  He  had  gardens  made 
for  the  growing  of  medicinal  herbs.  Had  he  had  an  Aristotle  to 
inspire  him,  he  would  no  doubt  have  endowed  scientific  research 
upon  a  great  scale.  He  created  a  ministry  for  the  care  of  the 
aborigines  and  subject  races.  He  made  provision  for  the  educa- 
tion of  women.  He  made,  he  was  the  first  monarch  to  make, 
an  attempt  to  educate  his  people  into  a  common  view  of  the  ends 
and  way  of  life.  He  made  vast  benefactions  to  the  Buddhist 
teaching  orders,  and  tried  to  stimulate  them  to  a  better  study 
of  their  own  literature.  All  over  the  land  he  set  up  long  inscrip- 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          371 

tions  rehearsing  the  teaching  of  Gautama,  and  it  is  the  simple 
and  human  teaching  and  not  the  preposterous  accretions.  Thir- 
ty-five of  his  inscriptions  survive  to  this  day.  Moreover,  he  sent 
missionaries  to  spread  the  nohle  and  reasonable  teaching  of  his 
master  throughout  the  world,  to  Kashmir,  to  Ceylon,  to  the 
Seleucids,  and  the  Ptolemies.  It  was  one  of  these  missions  which 
carried  that  cutting  of  the  Bo  Tree,  of  which  we  have  already 
told,  to  Ceylon. 

For  eight  and  twenty  years  Asoka  worked  sanely  for  the  real 
needs  of  men.  Amidst  the  tens  of  thousands  of  names  of  mon- 
archs  that  crowd  the  columns  of  history,  their  majesties  and 
graciousnesses  and  serenities  and  royal  highnesses  and  the  like, 
the  name  of  Asoka  shines,  and  shines  almost  alone,  a  star.  From 
the  Volga  to  Japan  his  name  is  still  honoured.  China,  Tibet, 
and  even  India,  though  it  has  left  his  doctrine,  preserve  the 
tradition  of  his  greatness.  More  living  men  cherish  his  memory 
to-day  than  have  ever  heard  the  names  of  Constantino  or 
Charlemagne. 


It  is  thought  that  the  vast  benefactions  of  Asoka  finally  cor- 
rupted Buddhism  by  attracting  to  its  Order  great  numbers  of 
mercenary  and  insincere  adherents,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  its  rapid  extension  throughout  Asia  was  very  largely  due 
to  his  stimulus. 

It  made  its  way  into  Central  Asia  through  Afghanistan  and 
Turkestan,  and  so  reached  China.  Buddhist  teaching  had 
spread  widely  in  China  before  200  B.C.  Buddhism  found  there 
a  popular  and  prevalent  religion,  Taoism,  a  development  of  very 
ancient  and  primitive  magic  and  occult  practices.  It  was  reor- 
ganized as  a  distinctive  cult  by  Chang  Daoling  in  the  days 
of  the  Han  dynasty.  Tao  means  the  Way,  which  corresponds 
closely  with  the  idea  of  the  Aryan  Path.  The  two  religions 
spread  side  by  side  and  underwent  similar  changes,  so  that 
nowadays  their  outward  practice  is  very  similar.  Buddhism 
also  encountered  Confucianism,  which  was  even  less  theological 
and  even  more  a  code  of  personal  conduct.  And  finally  it  en- 
countered the  teachings  of  Lao  Tse,  "anarchist,  evolutionist, 
pacifist  and  moral  philosopher,"  l  which  were  not  so  much  a 

1S.  N.  Fu. 


372  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

religion  as  a  philosophical  rule  of  life.  The  teachings  of  this 
Lao  Tse  were  later  to  become  incorporated  with  the  Taoist  re- 
ligion by  Chen  Tuan,  the  founder  of  modern  Taoism. 

Confucius,  the  founder  of  Confucianism,  like  the  great  south- 
ern teacher  Lao  Tse  and  Gautama,  lived  also  in  the  sixth  cen- 
tury B.C.  His  life  has  some  interesting  parallelisms  with  that 
of  some  of  the  more  political  of  the  Greek  philosophers  of  the 
fifth  and  fourth.  The  sixth  century  B.C.  falls  into  the  period 
assigned  hy  Chinese  historians  to  the  Chow  Dynasty,  but  in  those 
days  the  rule  of  that  dynasty  had  become  little  more  than 
nominal ;  the  emperor  conducted  the  traditional  sacrifices  of  the 
Son  of  Heaven,  and  received  a  certain  formal  respect.  Even 
his  nominal  empire  was  not  a  sixth  part  of  the  China  of  to-day. 
In  Chapter  XIV  we  have  already  glanced  at  the  state  of  affairs 
in  China  at  this  time;  practically  China  was  a  multitude  of 
warring  states  open  to  the  northern  barbarians.  Confucius  was 
a  subject  in  one  of  those  states,  Lu ;  he  was  of  aristocratic  birth, 
but  poor;  and,  after  occupying  various  official  positions,  he  set 
up  a  sort  of  Academy  in  Lu  for  the  discovery  and  imparting 
of  Wisdom.  And  we  also  find  Confucius  travelling  from  state 
to  state  in  China,  seeking  a  prince  who  would  make  him  his 
counsellor  and  become  the  centre  of  a  reformed  world.  Plato, 
two  centuries  later,  in  exactly  the  same  spirit,  went  as  ad- 
viser to  the  tyrant  Dionysius  of  Syracuse,  and  we  have  already 
noted  the  attitudes  of  Aristotle  and  Isocrates  towards  Philip 
of  Macedonia. 

The  teaching  of  Confucius  centred  upon  the  idea  of  a  noble 
life  which  he  embodied  in  a  standard  or  ideal,  the  Aristocratic 
Man.  This  phrase  is  often  translated  into  English  as  the 
Superior  Person,  but  as  "superior"  and  "person,"  like  "re- 
spectable" and  "genteel,"  have  long  become  semi-humorous 
terms  of  abuse,  this  rendering  is  not  fair  to  Confucianism.  He 
did  present  to  his  time  the  ideal  of  a  devoted  public  man.  The 
public  side  was  very  important  to  him.  He  was  far  more 
of  a  constructive  political  thinker  than  Gautama  or  Lao  Tse. 
His  mind  was  full  of  the  condition  of  China,  and  he  sought  to 
call  the  Aristocratic  Man  into  existence  very  largely  in  order 
to  produce  the  noble  state.  One  of  his  sayings  may  be  quoted 
here:  "It  is  impossible  to  withdraw  from  the  world,  and  asso- 
ciate with  birds  and  beasts  that  have  no  affinity  with  us.  With 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM  373 

whom  should  I  associate  hut  with  suffering  men  ?  The  disorder 
that  prevails  is  what  requires  my  efforts.  If  right  principles 
ruled  through  the  kingdom,  there  would  he  no  necessity  for  me 
to  change  its  state." 

The  political  basis  of  his  teaching  seems  to  he  characteristic 
of  Chinese  moral  ideas ;  there  is  a  much  directer  reference  to 
the  State  than  is  the  case  with  most  Indian  and  European  moral 
and  religious  doctrine.  For  a  time  he  was  appointed  magis- 
trate in  Chung-tu,  a  city  of  the  dukedom  of  Lu,  and  here  he 
sought  to  regulate  life  to  an  extraordinary  extent,  to  subdue 
every  relationship  and  action  indeed  to  the  rule  of  an  elaborate 
etiquette.  "Ceremonial  in  every  detail,  such  as  we  are  wont 
to  see  only  in  the  courts  of  rulers  and  the  households  of  high 
dignitaries,  became  obligatory  on  the  people  at  large^  and  all 
matters  of  daily  life  were  subject  to  rigid  rule.  Even  the  food 
which  the  different  classes  of  people  might  eat  was  regulated; 
males  and  females  were  kept  apart  in  the  streets ;  even  the  thick- 
ness of  coffins  and  the  shape  and  situation  of  graves  were  made 
the  subject  of  regulations.1 

This  is  all,  as  people  say,  very  Chinese.  No  other  people 
have  ever  approached  moral  order  and  social  stability  through 
the  channel  of  manners.  Yet  in  China,  at  any  rate,  the  methods 
of  Confucius  have  had  an  enormous  effect,  and  no  nation  in  the 
world  to-day  has  such  a  universal  tradition  of  decorum  and 
self-restraint. 

Later  on  the  influence  of  Confucius  over  his  duke  was  under- 
mined, and  he  withdrew  again  into  private  life.  His  last  days 
were  saddened  by  the  deaths  of  some  of  his  most  promising 
disciples.  "~No  intelligent  ruler,"  he  said,  "arises  to  take  me 
as  his  master,  and  my  time  has  come  to  die."  .  .  . 

But  he  died  to  live.  Says  Hirth,  "There  can  be  no  doubt 
that  Confucius  has  had  a  greater  influence  011  the  development 
of  the  Chinese  national  character  than  many  emperors  taken 
together.  He  is,  therefore,  one  of  the  essential  figures  to  be 
considered  in  connection  with  any  history  of  China.  That  he 
could  influence  his  nation  to  such  a  degree  was,  it  appears  to  me, 
due  more  to  the  peculiarity  of  the  nation  than  to  that  of  his 
own  personality.  Had  he  lived  in  any  other  part  of  the  world, 
his  name  would  perhaps  be  forgotten.  As  we  have  seen,  he  had 

1Hirth's  The  Ancient  History  of  China. 


374 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM  375 

formed  his  character  and  his  personal  views  on  man's  life  from 
a  careful  study  of  documents  closely  connected  with  the  moral 
philosophy  cultivated  hy  former  generations.  What  he  preached 
to  his  contemporaries  was,  therefore,  not  all  new  to  them ;  hut, 
having  himself,  in  the  study  of  old  records,  heard  the  dim  voice 
of  the  sages  of  the  past,  he  became,  as  it  were,  the  megaphone 
phonograph  through  which  were  expressed  to  the  nation  those 
views  which  he  had  derived  from  the  early  development  of  the 
nation  itself.  .  .  .  The  great  influence  of  Confucius's  person- 
ality on  national  life  in  China  was  due  not  only  to  his  writings 
and  his  teachings  as  recorded  by  others,  but  also  to  his  doings. 
His  personal  character,  as  described  by  his  disciples  and  in  the 
accounts  of  later  writers,  some  of  which  may  be  entirely  legen- 
dary, has  become  the  pattern  for  millions  of  those  who  are  bent 
on  imitating  the  outward  manners  of  a  great  man.  .  .  .  What- 
ever he  did  in  public  was  regulated  to  the  minutest  detail  by 
ceremony.  This  was  no  invention  of  his  own,  since  ceremonial 
life  had  been  cultivated  many  centuries  before  Confucius ;  but 
his  authority  and  example  did  much  to  perpetuate  what  he  con- 
sidered desirable  social  practices." 

The  Chinese  speak  of  Buddhism  and  the  doctrines  of  Lao 
Tse  and  Confucius  as  the  Three  Teachings.  Together  they  con- 
stitute the  basis  and  point  of  departure  of  all  later  Chinese 
thought.  Their  thorough  study  is  a  necessary  preliminary  to 
the  establishment  of  any  real  intellectual  and  moral  commu- 
nity between  the  great  people  of  the  East  and  the  Western 
world. 

There  are  certain  things  to  be  remarked  in  common  of  all 
these  three  teachers,  of  whom  Gautama  was  indisputably  the 
greatest  and  profoundest,  whose  doctrines  to  this  day  dominate 
the  thought  of  the  great  majority  of  human  beings ;  there  are 
certain  features  in  which  their  teaching  contrasts  with  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  that  were  soon  to  take  possession  of  the 
Western  world.  Primarily  they  are  personal  and  tolerant  doc- 
trines; they  are  doctrines  of  a  Way,  of  a  Path,  of  a  Nobility, 
and  not  doctrines  of  a  church  or  a  general  rule.  And  they 
offer  nothing  either  for  or  against  the  existence  and  worship 
of  the  current  gods.  The  Athenian  philosophers,  it  is  to  be 
noted,  had  just  the  same  theological  detachment !  Socrates  was 
quite  willing  to  bow  politely  or  sacrifice  formally  to  almost  any 
divinity, — reserving  his  private  thoughts.  This  attitude  is  flatly 


376  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

antagonistic  to  the  state  of  mind  that  was  growing  up  in  the 
Jewish  communities  of  Judea,  Egypt,  and  Babylonia,  in 
which  the  thought  of  the  one  God  was  first  and  foremost,  Neither 
Gautama  nor  Lao  Tse  nor  Confucius  had  any  inkling  of  thin 
idea  of  a  jealous  God,  a  God  who  would  have  "none  other  gods," 
a  God  of  terrible  Truth,  who  would  not  tolerate  any  lurking  be- 
lief in  magic,  witchcraft,  or  old  customs,  or  any  sacrificing  to 
the  god-king  or  any  trifling  with  the  stern  unity  of  things. 

§  6 

The  intolerance  of  the  Jewish  mind  did  keep  its  essential  faith 
clear  and  clean.  The  theological  disregard  of  the  great  Eastern 
teachers,  neither  assenting  nor  denying,  did  on  the  other  hand 
permit  elaborations  of  explanation  and  accumulations  of  ritual 
from  the  very  beginning.  Except  for  Gautama's  insistence 
upon  Right  Views,  which  was  easily  disregarded,  there  was  no 
self -cleansing  element  in  either  Buddhism,  Taoism,  or  Confu- 
cianism. There  was  no  effective  prohibition  of  superstitious 
practices,  spirit  raising,  incantations,  prostrations,  and  sup- 
plementary worships.  At  an  early  stage  a  process  of  encrusta- 
tion began,  and  continued.  The  new  faiths  caught  almost  every 
disease  of  the  corrupt  religions  they  sought  to  replace;  they 
took  over  the  idols  and  the  temples,  the  altars  and  the  censers. 

Tibet  to-day  is  a  Buddhistic  country,  yet  Gautama,  could  he 
return  to  earth,  might  go  from  end  to  end  of  Tibet  seeking  his 
own  teaching  in  vain.  He  would  find  that  most  ancient  type 
of  human  ruler,  a  god-king,  enthroned,  the  Dalai  Lama,  the 
"living  Buddha."  At  Lhassa  he  would  find  a  huge  temple  filled 
with  priests,  abbots,  and  lamas — he  whose  only  buildings  were 
huts  and  who  made  no  priests — and  above  a  high  altar  he  would 
behold  a  huge  golden  idol,  which  he  would  learn  was  called 
"Gautama  Buddha" !  He  would  hear  services  intoned  before 
this  divinity,  and  certain  precepts,  which  would  be  dimly  famil- 
iar to  him,  murmured  as  responses.  Bells,  incense,  prostrations, 
would  play  their  part  in  these  amazing  proceedings.  At  one 
point  in  the  service  a  bell  would  be  rung  and  a  mirror  lifted  up, 
while  the  whole  congregation,  in  an  access  of  reverence,  bowed 
lower.  .  .  . 

About  this  Buddhist  countryside  he  would  discover  a  num- 
ber of  curious  little  mechanisms,  little  wind-wheels  and  water- 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM  377 


O 


378  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

wheels  spinning,  on  which  brief  prayers  were  inscribed.  Every 
time  these  things  spin,  he  would  learn,  it  counts  as  a  prayer. 
"To  whom  ?"  he  would  ask.  Moreover,  there  would  be  a  number 
of  flagstaffs  in  the  land  carrying  beautiful  silk  flags,  silk  flags 
which  bore  the  perplexing  inscription,  "Om  Mani  padme  hum/' 
"the  jewel  is  in  the  lotus."  Whenever  the  flag  flaps,  he  would 
learn,  it  was  a  prayer  also,  very  beneficial  to  the  gentleman  who 
paid  for  the  flag  and  to  the  land  generally.  Gangs  of  workmen, 
employed  by  pious  persons,  would  be  going  about  the  country 
cutting  this  precious  formula  on  cliff  and  stone.  And  this,  he 
would  realize  at  last,  was  what  the  world  had  made  of  his  re- 
ligion !  Beneath  this  gaudy  glitter  was  buried  the  Aryan  Way 
to  serenity  of  soul. 

We  have  already  noted  the  want  of  any  progressive  idea  in 
primitive  Buddhism.  In  that  again  it  contrasted  with  Judaism. 
The  idea  of  a  Promise  gave  to  Judaism  a  quality  no  previous 
or  contemporary  religion  displayed  ;  it  made  Judaism  historical 
and  dramatic.  It  justified  its  fierce  intolerance  because  it 
pointed  to  an  aim.  In  spite  of  the  truth  and  profundity  of  the 
psychological  side  of  Gautama's  teaching,  Buddhism  stagnated 
and  corrupted  for  the  lack  of  that  directive  idea.  Judaism,  it 
must  be  confessed,  in  its  earlier  phases,  entered  but  little  into 
the  souls  of  men  ;  it  let  them  remain  lustful,  avaricious,  worldly 
or  superstitious  ;  but  because  of  its  persuasion  of  a  promise  and 
of  a  divine  leadership  to  serve  divine  ends,  it  remained  in 
comparison  with  Buddhism  bright  and  expectant,  like  a  cared- 
for  sword. 


For  some  time  Buddhism  flourished  in  India.  But  Brahmin- 
ism,  with  its  many  gods  and  its  endless  variety  of  cults,  always 
flourished  by  its  side,  and  the  organization  of  the  Brahmins  grew 
more  powerful,  until  at  last  they  were  able  to  turn  upon  this 
caste-denying  cult  and  oust  it  from  India  altogether.  The  story 
of  that  struggle  is  not  to  be  told  here;  there  were  persecutions 
and  reactions,  but  by  the  eleventh  century,  except  for  Orissa, 
Buddhist  teaching  was  extinct  in  India.  Much  of  its  gen- 
tleness and  charity  had,  however,  become  incorporated  with 
Brahminism. 

Over  great  areas  of  the  world,  as  our  map  has  shown,  it  still 
survives;  and  it  is  quite  possible  that  in  contact  with  western 


THE  RISE  AND  SPREAD  OF  BUDDHISM          379 

science,  and  inspired  by  the  spirit  of  history,  the  original  teach- 
ing of  Gautama,  revived  and  purified,  may  yet  play  a  large  part 
in  the  direction  of  human  destiny. 

But  with  the  loss  of  India  the  Aryan  Way  ceased  to  rule  the 
lives  of  any  Aryan  peoples.  It  is  curious  to  note  that  while  the 
one  great  Aryan  religion  is  now  almost  exclusively  confined  to 
Mongolian  peoples,  the  Aryans  themselves  are  under  the  sway  of 
two  religions,  Christianity  and  Islam,  which  are,  as  we  shall  see, 
essentially  Semitic.  And  both  Buddhism  and  Christianity  wear 
garments  of  ritual  and  formula  that  seem  to  be  derived  through 
Hellenistic  channels  from  that  land  of  temples  and  priestcraft, 
Egypt,  and  from  the  more  primitive  and  fundamental  mentality 
of  the  brown  Hamitic  peoples. 


XXVI 

THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS 

§  1.  The  Beginnings  of  the  Latins.  §  2.  A  New  Sort  of 
State.  §  3.  The  Carthaginian  Republic  of  Rich  Men.  §  4. 
The  First  Punic  War.-  §  5.  Cato  the  Elder  and  the  Spirit 
of  Cato.  §  6.  The  Second  Punic  War.  §  7.  The  Third 
Punic  War.  §  8.  How  the  Punic  War  Undermined  Roman 
Liberty.  §  9.  Comparison  of  the  Roman  Republic  with  a, 
Modern  State. 


IT  is  now  necessary  to  take  up  the  history  of  the  two  great 
republics  of  the  Western  Mediterranean,  Rome  and  Car- 
thage, and  to  tell  how  Rome  succeeded  in  maintaining  for 
some  centuries  an  empire  even  greater  than  that  achieved  by 
the  conquests  of  Alexander.  But  this  new  empire  was,  as  we 
shall  try  to  make  clear,  a  political  structure  differing  very  pro- 
foundly in  its  nature  from  any  of  the  great  Oriental  empires 
that  had  preceded  it.  Great  changes  in  the  texture  of  human 
society  and  in  the  conditions  of  social  interrelations  had  been 
going  on  for  some  centuries.  The  flexibility  and  transferability 
of  money  was  becoming  a  power  and,  like  all  powers  in  inexpert 
hands,  a  danger  in  human  affairs.  It  was  altering  the  relations 
of  rich  men  to  the  state  and  to  their  poorer  fellow  citizens.  This 
new  empire,  the  Roman  empire,  unlike  all  the  preceding  em- 
pires, was  not  the  creation  of  a  great  conqueror.  No  Sargon, 
no  Thothmes,  no  Nebuchadnezzar,  no  Cyrus  nor  Alexander  nor 
Chandragupta,  was  its  fountain  head.  It  was  made  by  a  repub- 
lic. It  grew  by  a  kind  of  necessity  through  new  concentrating 
and  unifying  forces  that  were  steadily  gathering  power  in  human 
affairs. 

But  first  it  is  necessary  to  give  some  idea  of  the  state  of  affairs 
in  Italy  in  the  centuries  immediately  preceding  the  appearance 
of  Rome  in  the  world's  story. 

380 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS 


381 


Before  1200  B.C.,  that  is  to  say  before  the  rise  of  the  Assyrian 
empire,  the  siege  of  Troy,  and  the  final  destruction  of  Cnossos, 
but  after  the  time  of  Amenophis  IV,  Italy,  like  Spain,  was 
probably  still  inhabited  mainly  by  dark  white  people  of  the 
more  fundamental  Iberian  or  Mediterranean  race.  This  ab- 
original population  was  probably  a  thin  and  backward  one. 
But  already  in  Italy,  as  in  Greece,  the  Aryans  were  coming 
southward.  By  1000  B.C.  immigrants  from  the  north  had  set- 
tled over  most  of  the  north  and  centre  of  Italy,  and,  as  in 
Greece,  they  had  intermarried  with  their  darker  predecessors 


WE5TEKN  MEDITERRANEAN,  800-600B.C. 


Greeks. 

Latins  &  other 

Italians. 

Etruscans 


R.  C         A 


and  established  a  group  of  Aryan  languages,  the  Italian  group, 
more  akin  to  the  Keltic  (Gaelic)  than  to  any  other,  of  which  the 
most  interesting  from  the  historical  point  of  view  was  that 
spoken  by  the  Latin  tribes  in  the  plains  south  and  east  of  the 
river  Tiber.  Meanwhile  the  Greeks  had  been  settling  down  in 
Greece,  and  now  they  were  taking  to  the  sea  and  crossing  over 
to  South  Italy  and  Sicily  and  establishing  themselves  there. 
Subsequently  they  established  colonies  along  the  French  Riviera 
and  founded  Marseilles  upon  the  site  of  an  older  Phoenician 
colony.  Another  interesting  people  also  had  come  into  Italy  by 
sea.  These  were  a  brownish  sturdy  people,  to  judge  from  the 


382 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


pictures  they  have  left  of  themselves ;  very  probably  they  were 
a  tribe  of  those  ^Egean  "dark  whites"  who  were  being  driven  out 
of  Greece  and  Asia  Minor  and  the  islands  in  between  by  the 
Greeks.  We  have  already  told  the  tale  of  Cnossos  (Chapter 
XV)  and  of  the  settlement  of  the  kindred  Philistines  in  Pales- 
tine (Chapter  XIX,  §  1).  These  Etruscans,  as  they  were 


EARLY 
LATIUM 


called  in  Italy,  were  known  even  in  ancient  times  to  be  of 
Asiatic  origin,  and  it  is  tempting,  but  probably  unjustifiable,  to 
connect  this  tradition  with  the  JEneid,  the  sham  epic  of  the 
Latin  poet  Virgil,  in  which  the  Latin  civilization  is  ascribed 
to  Trojan  immigrants  from  Asia  Minor.  (But  the  Trojans 
themselves  were  probably  an  Aryan  people  allied  to  the  Phry- 
gians.) These  Etruscan  people  conquered  most  of  Italy  north 
of  the  Tiber  from  the  Aryan  tribes  who  were  scattered  over 
that  country.  Probably  the  Etruscans  ruled  over  a  subjugated 
Italian  population,  so  reversing  the  state  of  affairs  in  Greece^ 
in  which  the  Aryans  were  uppermost. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  383 

Our  map,  which  may  be  taken  to  represent  roughly  the  state 
of  affairs  about  750  B.C.,  also  shows  the  establishments  of  the 
Phoenician  traders,  of  which  Carthage  was  the  chief,  along 
the  shores  of  Africa  and  Spain. 

Of  all  the  peoples  actually  in  Italy,  the  Etruscans  were  by 
far  the  most  civilized.  They  built  sturdy  fortresses  of  the 
Mycaenean  type  of  architecture;  they  had  a  metal  industry; 
they  used  imported  Greek  pottery  of  a  very  fine  type.  The 
Latin  tribes  on  the  other  side  of  the  Tiber  were  by  comparison 
barbaric. 

The  Latins  were  still  a  rude  farming  people.  The  centre  of 
their  worship  was  a  temple  to  the  tribal  god  Jupiter,  upon  the 
Alban  Mount.  There  they  gathered  for  their  chief  festivals 
very  much  after  the  fashion  of  the  early  tribal  gathering  we 
have  already  imagined  at  Avebury.  This  gather  ing- place  was 
not  a  town.  It  was  a  high  place  of  assembly.  There  was  no 
population  permanently  there.  There  were,  however,  twelve 
townships  in  the  Latin  league.  At  one  point  upon  the  Tiber 
there  was  a  ford,  and  here  there  was  a  trade  between  Latins 
and  Etruscans.  At  this  ford  Rome  had  its  beginnings.  Trad- 
ers assembled  there,  and  refugees  from  the  twelve  towns  found 
an  asylum  and  occupation  at  this  trading  centre.  Upon  the 
seven  hills  near  the  ford  a  number  of  settlements  sprang  up, 
which  finally  amalgamated  into  one  city. 

Most  people  have  heard  the  story  of  the  two  brothers  Romulus 
and  Remus,  who  founded  Rome,  and  the  legend  of  how  they 
were  exposed  as  infants  and  sheltered  and  suckled  by  a  wolf. 
Little  value  is  now  attached  to  this  tale  by  modern  historians. 
The  date  753  B.C.  is  given  for  the  founding  of  Rome,  but  there 
are  Etruscan  tombs  beneath  the  Roman  Forum  of  a  much 
earlier  date  than  that,  and  the  so-called  tomb  of  Romulus  bears 
an  indecipherable  Etruscan  inscription. 

The  peninsula  of  Italy  was  not  then  the  smiling  land  of 
vineyards  and  olive  orchards  it  has  since  become.  It  was  still 
a  rough  country  of  marsh  and  forest,  in  which  the  farmers  grazed 
their  cattle  and  made  their  clearings.  Rome,  on  the  boundary 
between  Latin  and  Etruscan,  was  not  in  a  very  strong  position 
for  defence.  At  first  there  were  perhaps  Latin  kings  in  Rome, 
then  it  would  seem  the  city  fell  into  the  hands  of  Etruscan 
rulers  whose  tyrannous  conduct  led  at  last  to  their  expulsion, 
and  Rome  became  a  Latin-speaking  republic.  The  Etruscan 


384  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

kings  were  expelled  from  Rome  in  the  sixth  century  B.C.,  while 
the  successors  of  Nebuchadnezzar  were  ruling  by  the  sufferance 
of  the  Medes  in  Babylon,  while  Confucius  was  seeking  a  king 
to  reform  the  disorders  of  China,  and  while  Gautama  was 
teaching  the  Aryan  Way  to  his  disciples  at  Benares. 


Etruscan  painting  of  a.  CecemordaiL  Burning-  of  tha.  Pcad~" 


Of  the  struggle  between  the  Romans  and  the  Etruscans  we 
cannot  tell  in  any  detail  here.  The  Etruscans  were  the  better 
armed,  the  more  civilized,  and  the  more  numerous,  and  it  would 
probably  have  gone  hard  with  the  Romans  if  they  had  had  to 
fight  them  alone.  But  two  disasters  happened  to  the  Etruscans 
which  so  weakened  them  that  the  Romans  were  able  at  last  to 
master  them  altogether.  The  first  of  these  was  a  war  with 
the  Greeks  of  Syracuse  in  Sicily  which  destroyed  the  Etruscan 
fleet  (474  B.C.)-,  and  the  second  was  a  great  raid  of  the  Gauls 
from  the  north  into  Italy.  These  latter  people  swarmed  into 
N'orth  Italy  and  occupied  the  valley  of  the  Po  towards  the  end 
of  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  as  a  couple  of  centuries  later  their 
kindred  were  to  swarm  down  into  Greece  and  Asia  Minor  and 
settle  in  Galatia.  The  Etruscans  were  thus  caught  between 
hammer  and  anvil,  and  after  a  long  and  intermittent  war  the 
Romans  were  able  to  capture  Veil,  an  Etruscan  fortress,  a  few 
miles  from  Rome,  which  had  hitherto  been  a  great  threat  and 
annoyance  to  them. 

It  is  to  this  period  of  struggle  against  the  Etruscan  monarchs, 
the  Tarquins,  that  Macaulay's  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome,  familiar 
to  every  schoolboy,  refer. 

But  the  invasion  of  the  Gauls  was  one  of  those  convulsions 
of  the  nations  that  leave  nothing  as  it  has  been  before.  They 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  385 

carried  their  raiding  right  down  the  Italian  peninsula,  devastat- 
ing all  Etruria.  They  took  and  sacked  Rome  (390  B.C.). 
According  to  Roman  legends — an  which  doubt  is  thrown — -the 
citadel  on  the  Capitol  held  out,  and  this  also  the  Gauls  would 
have  taken  by  surprise  at  night,  if  certain  geese  had  not  been 
awakened  by  their  stealthy  movements  and  set  up  such  a  cack- 
ling as  to  arouse  the  garrison.  After  that  the  Gauls,  who  were 
ill-equipped  for  siege  operations,  and  perhaps  suffering  from  dis- 
ease in  their  camp,  were  bought  off,  and  departed  to  the  north- 
ward again,  and,  though  they  made  subsequent  raids,  they  never 
again  reached  Rome. 

The  leader  of  the  Gauls  who  sacked  Rome  was  named  Bren- 
nus.  It  is  related  of  him  that  as  the  gold  of  the  ransom  was 
being  weighed,  there  was  some  dispute  about  the  justice  of  the 
counterpoise,  whereupon  he  flung  his  sword  into  the  scale,  saying, 
"Vce  viciisl"  ("Woe  to  the  vanquished!") — a  phrase  that  has 
haunted  the  discussions  of  all  subsequent  ransoms  and  indem- 
nities down  to  the  present  time. 

For  half  a  century  after  this  experience  Rome  was  engaged 
in  a  series  of  wars  to  establish  herself  at  the  head  of  the  Latin 
tribes.  For  the  burning  of  the  chief  city  seems  to  have  stim- 
ulated rather  than  crippled  her  energies.  However  much  she 
had  suffered,  most  of  her  neighbours  seem  to  have  suffered 
more.  By  290  B.C.  Rome  was  the  mistress  city  of  all  Central 
Italy  from  the  Arno  to  south  of  Naples.  She  had  conquered 
the  Etruscans  altogether,  and  her  boundaries  marched  with 
those  of  the  Gauls  to  the  north  and  with  the  regions  of  Italy 
under  Greek  dominion  (Magna  Graecia)  to  the  south.  Along 
the  Gaulish  boundary  she  had  planted  garrisons  and  colonial 
cities,  and  no  doubt  it  was  because  of  that,  line  of  defence  that 
the  raiding  enterprises  of  the  Gauls  were  deflected  eastward 
into  the  Balkans. 

After  what  we  have  already  told  of  the  history  of  Greece 
and  the  constitutions  of  her  cities,  it  will  not  surprise  the  reader 
to  learn  that  the  Greeks  of  Sicily  and  Italy  were  divided  up 
into  a  number  of  separate  city  governments,  of  which  Syracuse 
and  Tarentum  (the  modern  Taranto)  were  the  chief,  and  that 
they  had  no  common  rule  of  direction  or  policy.  But  now, 
alarmed  at  the  spread  of  the  Roman  power,  they  looked  across 
the  Adriatic  for  help,  and  found  it  in  the  ambitions  of  Pyrrhus, 


386 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


the  king  of  Epirus.  Between  the  Romans  and  Pyrrhus  these 
Greeks  of  Magna  Grfecia  were  very  much  in  the  same  position 
that  Greece  proper  had  been  in,  between  the  Macedonians  and 
the  Persians  half  a  century  before. 

The  reader  will  remember  that  Epirus,  the  part  of  Greece 


POWER  a&r  the  SAMIsTI' ;  g  WARS 


[Beginning  of  tin. 

Century..  Compare  with. 

contemporary  map    of 

the.  Break-op  of  Alex- 

amdzr's  Empire  J 


that  is  closest  to  the  heel  of  Italy,  was  the  native  land  of 
Olympias,  the  mother  of  Alexander.  In  the  kaleidoscopic 
changes  of  the  map  that  followed  the  death  of  Alexander, 
Epirus  was  sometimes  swamped  by  Macedonia,  sometimes  in- 
dependent. This  Pyrrhus  was  a  kinsman  of  Alexander  the 
Great,  and  a  monarch  of  ability  and  enterprise,  and  he  seems 
to  have  planned  a  career  of  conquest  in  Italy  and  Sicily.  He 
commanded  an  admirable  army,  against  which  the  compara- 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS 


387 


tively  inexpert  Roman  levies  could  at  first  do  little.  His  army 
included  all  the  established  military  devices  of  the  time,  an 
infantry  phalanx,  Thessalian  cavalry,  and  twenty  fighting  ele- 
phants from  the  east.  He  routed  the  Romans  at  Heraclea  (280 
B.C.),  and,  pressing  after  them,  defeated  them  again  at  Auscu- 


lum  (279  B.C.)  in  their  own  territory.  Then,  instead  of  pursu- 
ing the  Romans  further,  he  made  a  truce  with  them,  turned  his 
attention  to  the  subjugation  of  Sicily,  and  so  brought  the  sea 
power  of  Carthage  into  alliance  against  him.  For  Carthage 
could  not  afford  to  have  a  strong  power  established  so  close  to 
her  as  Sicily.  Rome  in  those  days  seemed  to  the  Carthaginians 
a  far  less  serious  threat  than  the  possibility  of  another  Alexan- 
der the  Great  ruling  Sicily.  A  Carthaginian  fleet  appeared  off 
the  mouth  of  the  Tiber,  therefore,  to  encourage  or  induce  the 


388  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Romans  to  renew  the  struggle,  and  Rome  and  Carthage  were 
definitely  allied  against  the  invader. 

This  interposition  of  Carthage  was  fatal  to  Pyrrhus.  With- 
out any  decisive  battle  his  power  wilted,  and,  after  a  disastrous 
repulse  in  an  attack  upon  the  Roman  camp  of  Beneventum,  he 
had  to  retire  to  Epirus  (275  B.C.). 

It  is  recorded  that  when  Pyrrhus  left  Sicily,  he  said  he  left 
it  to  be  the  battleground  of  Rome  and  Carthage.  He  was 
killed  three  years  later  in  a  battle  in  the  streets  of  Argos.  The 
war  against  Pyrrhus  was  won  by  the  Carthaginian  fleet,  and 
Rome  reaped  a  full  half  of  the  harvest  of  victory.  Sicily  fell 
completely  to  Carthage,  and  Rome  came  down  to  the  toe  and 
heel  of  Italy,  and  looked  across  the  Straits  of  Messina  at  her 
new  rival.  In  eleven  years'  time  (264  B.C.)  the  prophecy  of 
Pyrrhus  was  fulfilled,  and  the  first  war  with  Carthage,  the  first 
of  the  three  Punic1  Wars,  had  begun. 


§2 

But  we  write  "Rome"  and  the  "Romans,"  and  we  have  still 
to  explain  what  manner  of  people  these  were  who  were  playing 
a  role  of  conquest  that  had  hitherto  been  played  only  by  able 
and  aggressive  monarchs. 

Their  state  was,  in  the  fifth  century  B.C.,  a  republic  of  the 
Aryan  type  very  similar  to  a  Greek  aristocratic  republic.  The 
earliest  accounts  of  the  social  life  of  Rome  give  us  a  picture 
of  a  very  primitive  Aryan  community  "In  the  second  half 
of  the  fifth  century  before  Christ,  Rome  was  still  an  aristocratic 
community  of  free  peasants,  occupying  an  area  of  nearly  400 
square  miles,  with  a  population  certainly  not  exceeding  150,000, 
almost  entirely  dispersed  over  the  country-side  and  divided  into 
seventeen  districts  or  rural  tribes.  Most  of  the  families  had  a 
small  holding  and  a  cottage  of  their  own,  where  father  and 
sons  lived  and  worked  together,  growing  corn  for  the  most  part, 
with  here  and  there  a  strip  of  vine  or  olive.  Their  few  head  of 
cattle  were  kept  at  pasture  on  the  neighbouring  common  land ; 
their  clothes  and  simple  implements  of  husbandry  they  made 
for  themselves  at  home.  Only  at  rare  intervals  and  on  special 

1  Latin    Pceni  —  Carthaginians.     Punicus    ( adj. )    =  Carthaginian,   i.e. 
Phoenician. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS 


389 


ROMAN  COIN  STRUCK  TO  COMMEMO- 
RATE THE  VICTORY  OVER  PYRRHUS 
AND  His  ELEPHANTS. 


occasions  would  they  make  their  way  into  the  fortified  town, 
which  was  the  centre  at  once  of  their  religion  and  their  govern- 
ment. Here  were  the  temples  of  the  gods,  the  houses  of  the 
wealthy,  and  the  shops  of  the 
artizans  and  traders,  where 
corn,  oil,  or  wine  could  he 
hartered  in  small  quantities 
for  salt  or  rough  tools  and 
weapons  of  iron."  * 

This  community  followed 
the  usual  tradition  of  a  di- 
vision into  aristocratic  and 
common  citizens,  who  were 
called  in  Rome  patricians 
and  plebeians.  These  were  the  citizens;  the  slave  or  out- 
lander  had  no  more  part  in  the  state  than  he  had  in  Greece. 
But  the  constitution  differed  from  any  Greek  constitution  in  the 
fact  that  a  great  part  of  the  ruling  power  was  gathered  into 
the  hands  of  a  body  called  the  Senate,  which  was  neither  purely 
a  body  of  hereditary  members  nor  directly  an  elected  and  rep- 
resentative one.  It  was  a  nominated  one,  and  in  the  earlier 
period  it  was  nominated  solely  from  among  the  patricians.  It 
existed  before  the  expulsion  of  the  kings,  and  in  the  time  of  the 
kings  it  was  the  king  who  nominated  the  senators.  But  after 
the  expulsion  of  the  kings  (510  B.C.),  the  supreme  government 
was  vested  in  the  hands  of  two  elected  rulers,  the  consuls;  and 
it  was  the  consuls  who  took  over  the  business  of  appointing 
senators.  In  the  early  days  of  the  Republic  only  patricians 
were  eligible  as  consuls  or  senators,  and  the  share  of  the  plebeians 
in  the  government  consisted  merely  in  a  right  to  vote  for  the 
consuls  and  other  public  officials.  Even  for  that  purpose  their 
votes  did  not  have  the  same  value  ag.  those  of  their  patrician 
fellow  citizens.  But  their  votes  had  at  any  rate  sufficient 
weight  to  induce  many  of  the  patrician  candidates  to  profess 
a  more  or  less  sincere  concern  for  plebeian  grievances.  In  the 
early  phases  of  the  Roman  state,  moreover,  the  plebeians  were 
not  only  excluded  from  public  office,  but  from  intermarriage 
with  the  patrician  class.  The  administration  was  evidently 
primarily  a  patrician  affair. 

1  Ferrero,  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome. 


390  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  early  phase  of  Roman  affairs  was  therefore  an  aristocracy 
of  a  very  pronounced  type,  and  the  internal  history  of  Rome 
for  the  two  centuries  and  a  half  between  the  expulsion  of  the 
last  Etruscan  king,  Tarquin  the  Proud,  and  the  beginning  of 
the  first  Punic  War  (264  B.C.),  was  very  largely  a  struggle  for 
mastery  between  those  two  orders,  the  patricians  and  the  plebe- 
ians. It  was,  in  fact,  closely  parallel  with  the  struggle  of 
aristocracy  and  democracy  in  the  city  states  of  Greece,  and, 
as  in  the  case  of  Greece,  there  were  whole  classes  in  the  com- 
munity, slaves,  freed  slaves,  unpropertied  free  men,  outlanders, 
and  the  like,  who  were  entirely  outside  and  beneath 
the  struggle.  We  have  already  noted  the  essential  differ- 
ence of  Greek  democracy  and  what  is  called  democracy  in 
the  world  to-day.  Another  misused  word  is  the  Roman  term 
proletariat,  which  in  modern  jargon  means  all  the  unpropertied 
people  in  a  modem  state.  In  Rome  the  proletarii  were  a  vot- 
ing division  of  fully  qualified  citizens  whose  property  was  less 
than  10,000  copper  asses  (=  £275).  They  were  an  enrolled 
class ;  their  value  to  the  state  consisted  in  their  raising  families 
of  citizens  (proles  =  offspring),  and  from  their  ranks  were 
drawn  the  colonists  who  went  to  form  new  Latin  cities  or  to 
garrison  important  points.  But  the  proletarii  were  quite  dis- 
tinct in  origin  from  slaves  or  freedmen  or  the  miscellaneous 
driftage  of  a  town  slum,  and  it  is  a  great  pity  that  modern  po- 
litical discussion  should  be  confused  by  an  inaccurate  use  of  a 
term  which  has  no  exact  modern  equivalent  and  which  expresses 
nothing  real  in  modern  social  classification. 

The  mass  of  the  details  of  this  struggle  between  patricians 
and  plebeians  we  can  afford  to  ignore  in  this  outline.  It  was 
a  struggle  which  showed  the  Romans  to  be  a  people  of  a 
curiously  shrewd  character,  never  forcing  things  to  a  destruc- 
tive crisis,  but  being  within  the  limits  of  their  discretion  grasp- 
ing hard  dealers.  The  patricians  made  a  mean  use  of  their 
political  advantages  to  grow  rich  through  the  national  conquests 
at  the  expense  not  only  of  the  defeated  enemy,  but  of  the  poorer 
plebeian,  whose  farm  had  been  neglected  and  who  had  fallen 
into  debt  during  his  military  service.  The  plebeians  were  ousted 
from  any  share  in  the  conquered  lands,  which  the  patricians 
divided  up  among  themselves.  The  introduction  of  money 
probably  increased  the  facilities  of  the  usurer  and  the  difficulties 
of  the  borrowing  debtor. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS 


391 


rom  a  "Roman 
bronze!) 


Three  sorts  of  pressure  won  the  plebeians  a  greater  share  in 
the  government  of  the  country  and  the  good  things  that  were 
coming  to  Rome  as  she  grew  powerful.  The  first  of  these  (1) 
was  the  general  strike  of  plebeians.  Twice  they  actually 
marched  right  out  of  Rome,  threatening  to  make  a  new  city 
higher  up  the  Tiber,  and 
twice  this  threat  proved  con- 
clusive. The  second  method 
of  pressure  (2)  was  the  threat 
of  a  tyranny.  Just  as  in 
Attica  (the  little  state  of 
which  Athens  was  the  capi- 
tal), Peisistratus  raised  him- 
self to  power  on  the  support 
of  the  poorer  districts,  so 
there  was  to  be  found  in  most 
periods  of  plebeian  discontent 
some  ambitious  man  ready  to 
figure  as  a  leader  and  wrest 
power  from  the  Senate.  For 
a  long  time  the  Roman  patri- 
cians were  clever  enough  to 
beat  every  such  potential  tyrant  by  giving  in  to  a  certain  extent 
to  the  plebeians.  And  finally  (3)  there  were  patricians  big- 
minded  and  far-seeing  enough  to  insist  upon  the  need  of 
reconciliation  with  the  plebeians. 

Thus  in  509  B.C.,  Valerius  Poplicola  (3),  the  consul,  enacted 
that  whenever  the  life  or  rights  of  any  citizen  were  at  stake, 
there  should  be  an  appeal  from  the  magistrates  to  the  general 
assembly.  This  Lex  Valeria  was  "the  Habeas  Corpus  of 
Rome,"  and  it  freed  the  Roman  plebeians  from  the  worst  dan- 
gers of  class  vindictiveness  in  the  law  courts. 

In  494  B.C.  occurred  a  strike  (1).  "After  the  Latin  war  the 
pressure  of  debt  had  become  excessive,  and  the  plebeians  saw 
with  indignation  their  friends,  who  had  often  served  the  state 
bravely  in  the  legions,  thrown  into  chains  and  reduced  to 
slavery  at  the  demand  of  patrician  creditors.  War  was  raging 
against  the  Volscians;  but  the  legionaries,  on  their  victorious 
return,  refused  any  longer  to  obey  the  consuls,  and  marched, 
though  without  any  disorder,  to  the  Sacred  Mount  beyond  the 
Anio  (up  the  Tiber).  There  they  prepared  to  found  a  new  city, 


392  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

since  the  rights  of  citizens  were  denied  to  them  in  the  old  one. 
The  patricians  were  compelled  to  give  way,  and  the  plebeians, 
returning  to  Rome  from  the  "First  Secession,"  received  the  privi- 
lege of  having  officers  of  their  own,  tribunes  and  sediles."  l 

In  486  B.C.  arose  Spurius  Cassius  (2),  a  consul  who  carried 
an  Agrarian  Law  securing  public  land  for  the  plebeians.  But 
the  next  year  he  was  accused  of  aiming  at  r®yal  power,  and 
condemned  to  death.  His  law  never  came  into  operation. 

There  followed  a  long  struggle  on  the  part  of  the  plebeians 
to  have  the  laws  of  Rome  written  down,  so  that  they  would 
no  longer  have  to  trust  to  patrician  memories.  In  451-450  B.C. 
the  law  of  the  Twelve  Tables  was  published,  the  basis  of  all 
Roman  law. 

But  in  order  that  the  Twelve  Tables  should  be  formulated, 
a  committee  of  ten  (the  decemvirate)  was  appointed  in  the 
place  of  the  ordinary  magistrates.  A  second  decemvirate,  ap- 
pointed in  succession  to  the  first,  attempted  a  sort  of  aristocratic 
counter-revolution  under  Appius  Claudius.  The  plebeians 
withdrew  again  a  second  time  to  the  Sacred  Mount,  and  Appius 
Claudius  committed  suicide  in  prison. 

In  440  came  a  famine,  and  a  second  attempt  to  found  a  pop- 
ular tyranny  upon  the  popular  wrongs,  by  Spurius  Ma3lius,  a 
wealthy  plebeian,  which  ended  in  his  assassination. 

After  the  sack  of  Rome  by  the  Gauls  (390  B.C.),  Marcus 
Manlius,  who  had  been  in  command  of  the  Capitol  when  the 
geese  had  saved  it,  came  forward  as  a  popular  leader.  The 
plebeians  were  suffering  severely  from  the  after-war  usury  and 
profiteering  of  the  patricians,  and  were  incurring  heavy  debts 
in  rebuilding  and  restocking  their  farms.  Manlius  spent  his 
fortune  in  releasing  debtors.  He  was  accused  by  the  patricians 
of  tyrannous  intentions,  condemned,  and  suffered  the  fate  of 
condemned  traitors  in  Rome,  being  flung  from  the  Tarpeian 
Rock,  the  precipitous  edge  of  that  same  Capitoline  Hill  he 
had  defended. 

In  376  B.C.,  Licinius,  who  was  one  of  the  ten  tribunes  for 
the  people,  began  a  long  struggle  with  the  patricians  by  making 
certain  proposals  called  the  Licinian  Rogations,  that  there 
should  be  a  limit  to  the  amount  of  public  land  taken  by  any 
single  citizen,  so  leaving  some  for  everybody,  that  outstanding 
*5.  Wells,  Short  History  of  Rome  to  the  Death  of  Augustus. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  393 

debts  should  be  forgiven  without  interest  upon  the  repayment 
of  the  principal,  and  that  henceforth  one  at  least  of  the  two  con- 
suls should  be  a  plebeian.  This  precipitated  a  ten-year  strug- 
gle. The  plebeian  power  to  stop  business  by  the  veto- of  their 
representatives,  the  tribunes,  was  fully  exercised.  In  cases  of 
national  extremity  it  was  the  custom  to  set  all  other  magistrates 
aside  and  appoint  one  leader,  the  Dictator.  Rome  had  done 
such  a  thing  during  times  of  military  necessity  before,  but  now 
the  patricians  set  up  a  Dictator  in  a  time  of  profound  peace, 
with  the  idea  of  crushing  Licinius  altogether.  They  appointed 
Camillus,  who  had  besieged  and  taken  Veii  from  the  Etruscans. 
But  Camillus  was  a  wiser  man  than  his  supporters ;  he  brought 
about  a  compromise  between  the  two  orders  in  which  most  of 
the  demands  of  the  plebeians  were  conceded  (366  B.C.),  dedi- 
cated a  temple  to  Concord,  and  resigned  his  power. 

Thereafter  the  struggle  between  the  orders  abated.  It  abated 
because,  among  other  influences,  the  social  differences  between 
patricians  and  plebeians  were  diminishing.  Trade  was  coming 
to  Rome  with  increasing  political  power,  and  many  plebeians 
were  growing  rich  and  many  patricians  becoming  relatively 
poco".  Intermarriage  had  been  rendered  possible  by  a  change 
in  the  law,  and  social  intermixture  was  going  on.  While  the 
rich  plebeians  were  becoming,  if  not  aristocratic,  at  least  oligar- 
chic in  habits  and  sympathy,  new  classes  were  springing  up 
in  Rome  with  fresh  interests  and  no  political  standing.  Par- 
ticularly abundant  were  the  freedmen,  slaves  set  free,  for  the 
most  part  artisans,  but  some  of  them  traders,  who  were  grow- 
ing wealthy.  And  the  Senate,  no  longer  a  purely  patrician 
body — since  various  official  positions  were  now  open  to  plebe- 
ians, and  such  plebeian  officials  became  senators — was  becoming 
now  an  assembly  of  all  the  wealthy,  able,  energetic,  and  influen- 
tial men  in  the  state.  The  Roman  power  was  expanding,  and 
as  it  expanded  these  old  class  oppositions  of  the  early  Latin 
community  were  becoming  unmeaning.  They  were  being  re- 
placed by  new  associations  and  new  antagonisms.  Rich  men 
of  all  origins  were  being  drawn  together  into  a  common  interest 
against  the  communistic  ideas  of  the  poor. 

In  390  B.C.  Rome  was  a  miserable  little  city  on  the  borders 
of  Etruria,  being  sacked  by  the  Gauls ;  in  275  B.C.  she  was  ruling 
and  unifying  all  Italy,  from  the  Arno  to  the  Straits  of  Mes- 


394  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

sina.  The  compromise  of  Camillas  (367  B.C.)  had  put  an  end 
to  internal  dissensions,  and  left  her  energies  free  for  expansion. 
And  the  same  queer  combination  of  sagacity  and  aggressive 
selfishness  that  had  distinguished  the  war  of  her  orders  at  home 
and  enabled  her  population  to  worry  out  a  balance  of  power 
without  any  catastrophe,  marks  her  policy  abroad.  She  under- 
stood the  value  of  allies;  she  could  assimilate;  abroad  as  at 
home  she  could  in  those  days  at  least  "give  and  take"  with  a 
certain  fairness  and  sanity.  There  lay  the  peculiar  power  of 
Rome.  By  that  it  was  she  succeeded  where  Athens,  for  example, 
had  conspicuously  failed. 

The  Athenian  democracy  suffered  much  from  that  narrow- 
ness of  "patriotism,"  which  is  the  ruin  of  all  nations.  Athens 
was  disliked  and  envied  by  her  own  empire  because  she  domi- 
nated it  in  a  spirit  of  civic  egotism ;  her  disasters  were  not  felt 
and  shared  as  disasters  by  her  subject-cities.  The  shrewder, 
nobler  Roman  senators  of  the  great  years  of  Rome,  before 
the  first  Punic  War  overstrained  her  moral  strength  and  began 
her  degeneration,  were  not  only  willing  in  the  last  resort  to 
share  their  privileges  with  the  mass  of  their  own  people,  but 
eager  to  incorporate  their  sturdiest  antagonists  upon  terms  of 
equality  with  themselves.  They  extended  their  citizenship 
cautiously  but  steadily.  Some  cities  became  Roman,  with  even 
a  voting  share  in  the  government.  Others  had  self-government 
and  the  right  to  trade  or  marry  in  Rome,  without  full  Roman 
citizenship.  Garrisons  of  full  citizens  were  set  up  at  strategic 
points,  and  colonies  with  variable  privileges  established  amidst 
the  purely  conquered  peoples.  The  need  to  keep  communica- 
tions open  in  this  great  and  growing  mass  of  citizenship  was 
evident  from  the  first.  Printing  and  paper  were  not  yet  avail- 
able for  intercourse,  but  a  system  of  high  roads  followed  the 
Latin  speech  and  the  Roman  rule.  The  first  of  these,  the  Appian 
Way,  ran  from  Rome  ultimately  into  the  heel  of  Italy.  It  was 
begun  by  the  censor  Appius  Claudius  (who  must  not  be  con- 
fused with  the  decemvir  Appius  Claudius  of  a  century  earlier) 
in  312  B.C. 

According  to  a  census  made  in  265  B.C.,  there  were  already  in 
the  Roman  dominions,  that  is  to  say  in  Italy  south  of  the  Arno, 
-300,000  citizens.  They  all  had  a  common  interest  in  the  wel- 
fare of  the  state ;  they  were  all  touched  a  little  with  the  diffused 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  395 

kingship  of  the  republic.  This  was,  we  have  to  note,  an  abso- 
lutely new  thing  in  the  history  of  mankind.  All  considerable 
states  and  kingdoms  and  empires  hitherto  had  been  communities 
by  mere  obedience  to  some  head,  some  monarch,  upon  whose 
moods  and  character  the  public  welfare  was  helplessly  depend- 
ent. No  republic  had  hitherto  succeeded  in  being  anything  more 
than  a  city  state.  The  so-called  Athenian  "empire"  was  simply 
a  city  state  directing  its  allies  and  its  subjugated  cities.  In  a 
few  decades  the  Roman  republic  was  destined  to  extend  its 
citizenship  into  the  valley  of  the  Po,  to  assimilate  the  kindred 
Gauls,  replacing  their  language  by  Latin,  and  to  set  up  a  Latin 
city,  Aquileia,  at  the  very  head  of  the  Adriatic  Sea.  In  89  B.C. 
all  free  inhabitants  of  Italy  became  Roman  citizens ;  in  212  A.D. 
the  citizenship  was  extended  to  all  free  men  in  the  empire. 

This  extraordinary  political  growth  was  manifestly  the  pre- 
cursor of  all  modern  states  of  the  western  type.  It  is  as  inter- 
esting to  the  political  student,  therefore,  as  a  carboniferous 
amphibian  or  an  archceopteryx  to  the  student  of  zoological  de- 
velopment. It  is  the  primitive  type  of  the  now  dominant  order. 
Its  experiences  throw  light  upon  all  subsequent  political  history. 

One  natural  result  of  this  growth  of  a  democracy  of  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  citizens  scattered  over  the  greater  part  of 
Italy  was  the  growth  in  power  of  the  Senate.  There  had  been 
in  the  development  of  the  Roman  constitution  a  variety  of 
forms  of  the  popular  assembly,  the  plebeian  assembly,  the 
assembly  by  tribes,  the  assembly  by  centuries,  and  the  like,  into 
which  variety  we  cannot  enter  here  with  any  fullness ;  but  the 
idea  was  established  that  with  the  popular  assembly  lay  the 
power  of  initiating  laws.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  there  was  a  sort 
of  parallel  government  in  this  system.  The  assembly  by  tribes 
or  by  centuries  was  an  assembly  of  the  whole  citizen  body, 
patrician  and  plebeian  together;  the  assembly  of  the  plebeians 
was  of  course  an  assembly  only  of  the  plebeian  class.  Each  as- 
sembly had  its  own  officials ;  the  former,  the  consuls,  etc. ;  the 
latter,  the  tribunes.  While  Rome  was  a  little  state,  twenty 
miles  square,  it  was  possible  to  assemble  something  like  a  repre- 
sentative gathering  of  the  people,  but  it  will  be  manifest  that 
with  the  means  of  communication  existing  in  Italy  at  that  time, 
it  was  now  impossible  for  the  great  bulk  of  the  citizens  even 
to  keep  themselves  informed  of  what  was  going  on  at  Rome, 


396  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

much  less  to  take  any  effective  part  in  political  life  there. 
Aristotle  in  his  Politics  had  already  pointed  out  the  virtual 
disenfranchisement  of  voters  who  lived  out  of  the  city  and  were 
preoccupied  with  agricultural  pursuits,  and  this  sort  of  disen- 
franchisement by  mechanical  difficulties  applied  to  the  vast 
majority  of  Eoman  citizens.  With  the  growth  of  Eome  an 
unanticipated  weakness  crept  into  political  life  through  these 
causes,  and  the  popular  assembly  became  more  and  more  a 
gathering  of  political  hacks  and  the  city  riffraff,  and  less  and 
less  a  representation  of  the  ordinary  worthy  citizens.  The 
popular  assembly  came  nearest  to  power  and  dignity  in  the 
fourth  century  B.C.  From  that  period  it  steadily  declined  in 
influence,  and  the  new  Senate,  which  was  no  longer  a  patrician 
body,  with  a  homogeneous  and  on  the  whole  a  noble  tradition, 
but  a  body  of  rich  men,  ex-magistrates,  powerful  officials,  bold 
adventurers  and  the  like,  pervaded  by  a  strong  disposition  to 
return  to  the  idea  of  hereditary  qualification,  became  for  three 
centuries  the  ruling  power  in  the  Roman  world. 

There  are  two  devices  since  known  to  the  world  which  might 
have  enabled  the  popular  government  of  Rome  to  go  on  de- 
veloping beyond  its  climax  in  the  days  of  Appius  Claudius  the 
Censor,  at  the  close  of  the  fourth  century  B.C.,  but  neither  of 
them  occurred  to  the  Roman  mind.  The  first  of  these  devices 
was  a  proper  use  of  print.  In  our  account  of  early  Alexandria 
we  have  already  remarked  upon  the  strange  fact  that  printed 
books  did  not  come  into  the  world  in  the  fourth  or  third  cen- 
tury B.C.  This  account  of  Roman  affairs  forces  us  to  repeat 
that  remark.  To  the  modern  mind  it  is  clear  that  a  widespread 
popular  government  demands,  as  a  necessary  condition  for 
health,  a  steady  supply  of  correct  information  upon  public 
affairs  to  all  the  citizens  and  a  maintenance  of  interest.  The 
popular  governments  in  the  modern  states  that  have  sprung 
up  on  either  side  of  the  Atlantic  during  the  last  two  centuries 
have  been  possible  only  through  the  more  or  less  honest  and 
thorough  ventilation  of  public  affairs  through  the  press.  But 
in  Italy  the  only  way  in  which  the  government  at  Rome  could 
communicate  with  any  body  of  its  citizens  elsewhere  was  by 
sending  a  herald,  and  with  the  individual  citizen  it  could  hold 
no  communication  by  any  means  at  all. 

The  second  device,  for  which  the  English  are  chiefly  respon- 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  397 

sible  in  the  history  of  mankind,  which  the  Romans  never  used, 
was  the  almost  equally  obvious  one  of  representative  govern- 
ment. For  the  old  Popular  Assembly  (in  its  threefold  form)  it 
would  have  been  possible  to  have  substituted  a  gathering  of 
delegates.  Later  on  in  history,  the  English  did,  as  the  state 
grew,  realize  this  necessity.  Certain  men,  the  Knights  of  the 
Shire,  were  called  up  to  Westminster  to  speak  and  vote  for 
local  feeling,  and  were  more  or  less  formally  elected  for  that 
end.  The  Roman  situation  seems  to  a  modern  mind  to  have 
called  aloud  for  such  a  modification.  It  was  never  made. 

The  method  of  assembling  the  comitia  tinbuia  (one  of  the 
three  main  forms  of  the  Popular  Assembly)  was  by  the  proc- 
lamation of  a  herald,  who  was  necessarily  inaudible  to  most  of 
Italy,  seventeen  days  before  the  date  of  the  gathering.  The 
augurs,  the  priests  of  divination  whom  Rome  had  inherited  from 
the  Etruscans,  examined  the  entrails  of  sacrificial  beasts  on  the 
night  before  the  actual  assembly,  and  if  they  thought  fit  to  say 
that  these  gory  portents  were  unfavourable,  the  comitia  tributa 
dispersed.  But  if  the  augurs  reported  that  the  livers  were 
propitious,  there  was  a  great  blowing  of  horns  from  the  Capitol 
and  from  the  walls  of  the  city,  and  the  assembly  went  on.  It 
was  held  in  the  open  air,  either  in  the  little  Forum  beneath  the 
Capitol  or  in  a  still  smaller  recess  opening  out  of  the  Forum, 
or  in  the  military  exercising  ground,  the  Campus  Martius,  now 
the  most  crowded  part  of  modern  Rome,  but  then  an  open  space. 
Business  began  at  dawn  with  prayer.  There  were  no  seats, 
and  this  probably  helped  to  reconcile  the  citizen  to  the  rule  that 
everything  ended  at  sunset. 

After  the  opening  prayer  came  a  discussion  of  the  measures 
to  be  considered  by  the  assembly,  and  the  proposals  before  the 
meeting  were  read  out.  Is  it  not  astonishing  that  there  were  no 
printed  copies  distributed  ?  If  any  copies  were  handed  about, 
they  must  have  been  in  manuscript,  and  each  copy  must  have 
been  liable  to  errors  and  deliberate  falsification.  K"o  questions 
seem  to  have  been  allowed,  but  private  individuals  might  ad- 
dress the  gathering  with  the  permission  of  the  presiding  magis- 
trate. 

The  multitude  then  proceeded  to  go  into  enclosures  like  cattle- 
pens  according  to  their  tribes,  and  each  tribe  voted  upon  the 
measure  under  consideration.  The  decision  was  then  taken 


398  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

not  by  the  majority  of  the  citizens,  but  by  the  majority  of  tribes, 
and  it  was  announced  by  the  heralds. 

The  Popular  Assembly  by  centuries,  comitia  centuriata,  was 
very  similar  in  its  character,  except  that  instead  of  thirty-five 
tribes  there  were,  in  the  third  century  B.C.,  373  centuries,  and 
there  was  a  sacrifice  as  well  as  prayer  to  begin  with.  The  cen- 
turies, originally  military  (like  the  "hundreds"  of  primitive 
English  local  government),  had  long  since  lost  any  connection 
with  the  number  one  hundred.  Some  contained  only  a  few 
people;  some  very  many.  There  were  eighteen  centuries  of 
knights  (equites),  who  were  originally  men  in  a  position  to 
maintain  a  horse  and  serve  in  the  cavalry,  though  later  the 
Roman  knighthood,  like  knighthood  in  England,  became  a  vul- 
gar distinction  of  no  military,  mental,  or  moral  significance. 
(These  equites  became  a  very  important  class  as  Rome  traded 
and  grew  rich ;  for  a  time  they  were  the  real  moving  class  in  the 
community.  There  was  as  little  chivalry  left  among  them  at 
last  as  there  is  in  the  "honours  list"  knights  of  England  of 
to-day.  The  senators  from  about  200  B.C.  were  excluded  from 
trade.  The  equites  became,  therefore,  the  great  business  men, 
negotiator  esf  and  as  publicani  they  farmed  the  taxes.)  There 
were,  in  addition,  eighty  ( !)  centuries  of  wealthy  men  (worth 
over  100,000  asses),  twenty-two  of  men  worth  over  75,000  asses, 
and  so  on.  There  were  two  centuries  each  of  mechanics  and 
musicians,  and  the  proletarii  made  up  one  century.  The  deci- 
sion in  the  comitia  centuriata  was  by  the  majority  of  centuries. 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  with  the  growth  of  the  Roman  state 
and  the  complication  of  its  business,  power  shifted  back  from 
such  a  Popular  Assembly  to  the  Senate,  which  was  a  compara- 
tively compact  body  varying  between  three  hundred  as  a  mini- 
mum, and,  at  the  utmost,  nine  hundred  members  (to  which 
it  was  raised  by  Caesar),  men  who  had  to  do  with  affairs  and 
big  business,  who  knew  each  other  more  or  less,  and  had  a 
tradition  of  government  and  policy  ?  The  power  of  nominating 
and  calling  up  the  senators  vested  in  the  Republic  first  with  the 
consuls,  and  when,  some  time  after,  "censors"  were  created,  and 
many  of  the  powers  of  the  consuls  had  been  transferred  to 
them,  they  were?  also  given  this  power.  Appius  Claudius,  one 
of  the  first  of  the  censors  to  exercise  it,  enrolled  freedmen  in 
the  tribes  and  called  sons  of  freedmen  to  the  Senate.  But  this 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  899 

was  a  shocking  arrangement  to  the  conservative  instincts  of  the 
time ;  the  consuls  would  not  recognize  his  Senate,  and  the  next 
censors  (304  B.C.)  set  aside  his  invitations.  His  attempt,  how- 
ever, serves  to  show  how  far  the  Senate  had  progressed  from 
its  original  condition  as  a  purely  patrician  body.  Like  the  con- 
temporary British  House  of  Lords,  it  had  become  a  gathering 
of  big  business  men,  energetic  politicians,  successful  adven- 
turers, great  landowners,  and  the  like ;  its  patrician  dignity  was 
a  picturesque  sham;  but,  unlike  the  British  House  of  Lords, 
it  was  unchecked  legally  by  anything  but  the  inefficient  Popular 
Assembly  we  have  already  described,  and  by  the  tribunes  elected 
by  the  plebeian  assembly.  Its  legal  control  over  the  consuls 
and  proconsuls  was  not  great;  it  had  little  executive  power; 
but  in  its  prestige  and  experience  lay  its  strength  and  influence. 
The  interests  of  its  members  were  naturally  antagonistic  to 
the  interests  of  the  general  body  of  citizens,  but  for  some  genera- 
tions that  great  mass  of  ordinary  men  was  impotent  to  express 
its  dissent  from  the  proceedings  of  this  oligarchy.  Direct  pop- 
ular government  of  a  state  larger  than  a  city  state  had  already 
failed  therefore  in  Italy,  because  as  yet  there  was  no  public 
education,  no  press,  and  no  representative  system ;  it  had  failed 
through  these  mere  mechanical  difficulties,  before  the  first  Punic 
War.  But  its  appearance  is  of  enormous  interest,  as  the  first 
appearance  of  a  set  of  problems  with  which  the  whole  political 
intelligence  of  the  world  wrestles  at  the  present  time. 

The  Senate  met  usually  in  a  Senate  House  in  the  Forum, 
but  on  special  occasions  it  would  be  called  to  meet  in  this  or 
that  temple ;  and  when  it  had  to  deal  with  foreign  ambassadors 
or  its  own  generals  (who  were  not  allowed  to  enter  the  city 
while  in  command  of  troops),  it  assembled  in  the  Campus 
Martius  outside  the  walls. 

§0 
3 

It  has  been  necessary  to  deal  rather  fully  with  the  political 
structure  of  the  Roman  republic  because  of  its  immense  im- 
portance to  this  day.  The  constitution  of  Carthage  need  not 
detain  us  long. 

Italy  under  Rome  was  a  republican  country;  Carthage  was 
that  much  older  thing,  a  republican  city.  She  had  an  "em- 
pire," as  Athens  had  an  "empire,"  of  tributary  states  which 


400 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


did  not  love  her,  and  she  had  a  great  and  naturally  disloyal 
industrial  slave  population. 

In  the  city  there  were  two  elected  "kings,"  as  Aristotle  calls 
them,  the  suffetes,  who  were  really  equivalent  to  the  Roman 

censors ;  their  Sem- 
itic name  was  the 
same  as  that  used 
for  the  Jewish 
judges.  There  was 
an  impotent  public 
assembly  and  a  sen- 
ate of  leading  per- 
sonages ;  but  two 
committees  of  this 
senate,  nominally 
elected,  but  elected 
by  easily  controlled 
methods,  the  Hun- 
dred and  Four  and 
the  Thirty,  really 
constituted  a  close 
oligarchy  of  the  rich- 
est and  most  influen- 
tial men.  They  told  as  little  as  they  could  to  their  allies  and 
fellow  citizens,  and  consulted  them  as  little  as  possible.  They 
pursued  schemes  in  which  the  welfare  of  Carthage  was  no 
doubt  subordinated  to  the  advantage  of  their  own  group.  They 
were  hostile  to  new  men  or  novel  measures,  and  confident  that 
a  sea  ascendancy  that  had  lasted  two  centuries  must  be  in  the 
very  nature  of  things. 

§4 

It  would  be  interesting,  and  not  altogether  idle,  to  speculate 
what  might  have  happened  to  mankind  if  Rome  and  Carthage 
could  have  settled  their  differences  and  made  a  permanent 
alliance  in  the  Western  world.  If  Alexander  the  Great  had 
lived,  he  might  have  come  westward  and  driven  these  two  pow- 
ers into  such  a  fusion  of  interests.  But  that  would  not  have 
suited  the  private  schemes  and  splendours  of  the  Carthaginian 
oligarchy,  and  the  new  Senate  of  greater  Rome  was  now  grow- 
ing fond  of  the  taste  of  plunder  and  casting  covetous  eyes  across 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  401 

the  Straits  of  Messina  upon  the  Carthaginian  possessions  in 
Sicily.  ^  They  were  covetous,  but  they  were  afraid  of  the 
Carthaginian  sea-power.  Roman  popular  "patriotism,"  how- 
ever, was  also  jealous  and  fearful  of  these  Carthaginians,  and 
less  inclined  to  count  the  cost  of  a  conflict.  The  alliance 
Pyrrhus  had  forced  upon  Rome  and  Carthage  held  good  for 
eleven  years,  but  Rome  was  ripe  for  what  is  cabled  in  modern 
political  jargon  an  "offensive  defensive"  war.  The  occasion 
arose  in  264  B.C. 

At  that  time  Sicily  was  not  completely  in  Carthaginian  hands. 
The  eastward  end  was  still  under  the  power  of  the  Greek  king 
of  Syracuse,  Hiero,  a  successor  of  that  Dionysius  to  whom 
Plato  had  gone  as  resident  court  philosopher.  A  band  of 
mercenaries  who  had  been  in  the  service  of  Syracuse  seized 
upon  Messina  (289  B.C.),  and  raided  the  trade  of  Syracuse  so 
that  at  last  Hiero  was  forced  to  take  measures  to  suppress  them 
(270  B.C.).  Thereupon  Carthage,  which  was  also  vitally  con- 
cerned in  the  suppression  of  piracy,  came  to  his  aid,  and  put 
in  a  Carthaginian  garrison  at  Messina.  This  was  an  alto- 
gether justifiable  proceeding.  Now  that  Tyre  had  been  de- 
stroyed, the  only  capable  guardian  of  sea  law  in  the  Mediter- 
ranean was  Carthage,  and  the  suppression  of  piracy  was  her 
task  by  habit  and  tradition. 

The  pirates  of  Messina  appealed  to  Rome,  and  the  accumu- 
lating jealousy  and  fear  of  Carthage  decided  the  Roman  people 
to  help  them.  An  expedition  was  dispatched  to  Messina  under 
the  consul  Appius  Claudius  (the  third  Appius  Claudius  we 
have  had  to  mention  in  this  history). 

So  began  the  first  of  the  most  wasteful  and  disastrous  series 
of  wars  that  has  ever  darkened  the  history  of  mankind.  But 
this  is  how  one  historian,  soaked  with  the  fantastic  political 
ideas  of  our  times,  is  pleased  to  write  of  this  evil  expedition. 
"The  Romans  knew  they  were  entering  on  war  with  Carthage ; 
but  the  political  instincts  of  the  people  were  right,  for  a  Car- 
thaginian garrison  on  the  Sicilian  Straits  would  have  been  a 
dangerous  menace  to  the  peace  of  Italy."  So  they  protected 
the  peaee  of  Italy  from  this  "menace"  by  a  war  that  lasted 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century.  They  wrecked  their  own  slowly 
acquired  political  raoraZ.in  the  process. 

The  Romans  captured  Messina,  and  Hiero  deserted  from 
the  Carjhaginians  to  the  Romans.  Then  for  some  time  the 


402  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

struggle  centred  upon  the  town  Agrigentum.  This  the  Romans 
besieged,  and  a  period  of  trench  warfare  ensued.  Both  sides 
suffered  greatly  from  plague  and  irregular  supplies;  the 
Eomans  lost  30,000  men;  but  in  the  end  (261  B.C.)  the  Car- 
thaginians evacuated  the  place  and  retired  to  their  fortified 
towns  on  the  western  coast  of  the  island  of  which  Lilybseum 
was  the  chief.  These  they  could  supply  easily  from  the  African 
mainland,  and,  as  long  as  .their  sea  ascendancy  held,  they  could 
exhaust  any  Roman  effort  against  them. 

And  now  a  new  and  very  extraordinary  phase  of  the  war 
began.  The  Romans  came  out  upon  the  sea,  and  to  the  aston- 
ishment of  the  Carthaginians  and  themselves  defeated  the 
Carthaginian  fleet.  Since  the  days  of  Salamis  there  had  been 
a  considerable  development  of  naval  architecture.  Then  the 
ruling  type  of  battleship  was  a  trireme,  a  galley  with  three 
banks  (rows)  of  oars;  now  the  leading  Carthaginian  battleship 
was  a  quinquereme,  a  much  bigger  galley  with  five  banks  of 
oars,  which  could  ram  jr  shear  the  oars  of  any  feebler  vessel. 
The  Romans  had  come  into  the  war  with  no  such  shipping.  NOW 
they  set  to  work  to  build  quinqueremes,  being  helped,  it  is  said, 
in  their  designing  by  one  of  these  Carthaginian  vessels  coming 
ashore.  In  two  months  they  built  a  hundred  quinqueremes  and 
thirty  triremes.  But  they  had  no  skilled  navigators,  no  experi- 
enced oarsmen,  and  these  deficiencies  they  remedied  partly 
with  the  assistance  of  their  Greek  allies  and  partly  by  the  in- 
vention of  new  tactics.  Instead  of  relying  upon  ramming  or 
breaking  the  oars  of  the  adversary,  which  demanded  more  sea- 
manship than  they  possessed,  they  decided  to  board  the  enemy, 
and  they  constructed  a  sort  of  long  draw-bridge  on  their  ships, 
held  up  to  a  mast  by  a  pulley  and  with  grappling-hooks  and 
spikes  at  the  end.  They  also  loaded  their  galleys  with  soldiers. 
Then  as  the  Carthaginian  rammed  or  swept  alongside,  this 
corpus,  as  it  was  called,  could  be  let  down  and  the  boarders 
could  swarm  aboard  him. 

Simple  as  this  device  was,  it  proved  a  complete  success.  It 
changed  the  course  of  the  war  and  the  fate  of  the  world.  The 
small  amount  of  invention  needed  to  counteract  the  corvus 
was  not  apparently  within  the  compass  of  the  Carthaginian 
rulers.  At  the  battle  of  Mylse  (260  B.C.)  the  Romans  gained 
their  fir«t  naval  victory  and  captured  or  destroyed  fifty  vessels. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  403 

At  the  great  battle  of  Ecnomus  (256  B.C.),  "probably  the 
greatest  naval  engagement  of  antiquity/'  1  in  which  seven  or 
eight  hundred  big  ships  were  engaged,  the  Carthaginians 
showed  that  they  had  learnt  nothing  from  their  former  dis- 
aster. According  to  rule  they  outmanoeuvred  and  defeated  the 
Romans,  but  the  corvus  again  defeated  them.  The  Romans 
sank  thirty  vessels  and  captured  sixty-four. 

Thereafter  the  war  continued  with  violent  fluctuations  of 
fortune,  but  with  a  continuous  demonstration  of  the  greater 
energy,  solidarity,  and  initiative  of  the  Romans.  After 
Ecnomus  the  Romans  invaded  Africa  by  sea,  and  sent  an  in- 
sufficiently supported  army,  which  after  many  successes  and 
the  capture  of  Tunis  (within  ten  miles  of  Carthage)  was  com- 
pletely defeated.  They  lost  their  sea  ascendancy  through  a 
storm,  and  regained  it  by  building  a  second  fleet  of  two  hun- 
dred and  twenty  ships  within  three  months.  They  captured 
Palermo,  and  defeated  a  great  Carthaginian  army  there  (251 
B.C.),  capturing  one  hundred  and  four  elephants,  and  making 
such  a  triumphal  procession  into  Rome  as  that  city  had  never 
seen  before.  They  made  an  unsuccessful  siege  of  Lilybseum, 
the  chief  surviving  Carthaginian  stronghold  in  Sicily.  They 
lost  their  second  fleet  in  a  great  naval  battle  at  Drepanum  (249 
B.C.),  losing  one  hundred  and  eighty  out  of  two  hundred  and 
ten  vessels ;  and  a  third  fleet  of  one  hundred  and  twenty  battle- 
ships and  eight  hundred  transports  was  lost  in  the  same  year 
partly  in  battle  and  partly  in  a  storm. 

For  seven  years  a  sort  of  war  went  on  between  the  nearly 
exhausted  combatants,  a  war  of  raids  and  feeble  sieges,  during 
which  the  Carthaginians  had  the  best  of  it  at  sea.  Then  by  a 
last  supreme  effort  Rome  launched  a  fourth  fleet  of  two  hun- 
dred keels,  and  defeated  the  last  strength  of  the  Carthaginians 
at  the  battle  of  the  J^gatian  Isles  (241  B.C.),  after  which  Car- 
thage (240  B.C.)  sued  for  peace. 

By  the  terms  of  this  peace,  all  Sicily,  except  for  the  do- 
minions of  Hiero  of  Syracuse,  became  an  "estate"  of  the  Roman 
people.  There  was  no  such  process  of  assimilation  as  had  been 
practised  in  Italy ;  Sicily  became  a  conquered  province,  paying 
tribute  and  yielding  profit  like  the  provinces  of  the  older  em- 
pires. And,  in  addition,  Carthage  paid  a  war  indemnity  of 
3,200  talents  (=£788,000). 

»J.  Wells,  op.  tit. 


404 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


§  5 

For  twenty-two  years  there  was  peace  between  Rome  and 
Carthage.  It  was  peace  without  prosperity.  Both  combatants 
were  suffering  from  the  want  and  disorganization  that  follow 
naturally  and  necessarily  upon  all  great  wars.  The  territories 
of  Carthage  seethed  with  violent  disorder;  the  returning  sol- 
diers could  not  get  their  pay,  and  mutinied  and  looted ;  the 
land  went  uncultivated.  We  read  of  horrible  cruelties  in  the 
suppression  of  these  troubles  by  Hamilcar,  the  Carthaginian 

general;  of  men 
being  crucified 
by  the  thousand. 
Sardinia  and 
Corsica  revolted. 
The  "peace  of 
Italy"  was 
scarcely  happier. 
The  Gauls  rose 
and  marched 
south;  they  were 
defeated,  and 
40,000  of  them 

killed  at  Telamon.  It  is  manifest  that  Italy  was  incomplete 
until  it  reached  the  Alps.  Roman  colonies  were  planted  in 
the  valley  of  the  Po,  and  the  great  northward  artery,  the  Via 
Flaminia,  was  begun.  But  it  shows  the  moral  and  intellectual 
degradation  of  this  post-war  period  that  when  the  Gauls  were 
threatening  Rome,  human  sacrifices  were  proposed  and  carried 
out.  The  old  Carthaginian  sea  law  was  broken  up — it  may 
have  been  selfish  and  monopolistic,  but  it  was  at  least  orderly 
— the  Adriatic  swarmed  with  Illyrian  pirates,  and  as  the  result 
of  a  quarrel  arising  out  of  this  state  of  affairs,  Illyria,  after 
two  wars,  had  to  be  annexed  as  a  second  "province."  By  send- 
ing expeditions  to  annex  Sardinia  and  Corsica,  which  were 
Carthaginian  provinces  in  revolt,  the  Romans  prepared  the  way 
for  the  Second  Punic  War. 

The  First  Punic  War  had  tested  and  demonstrated  the  rela- 
tive strength  of  Rome  and  Carthage.  With  a  little  more  wis- 
dom on  either  side,  with  a  little  more  magnanimity  on  the  part 
of  Rome,  there  need  never  have  been  a  renewal  of  the  struggle. 
But  Rome  was  an  ungracious  conqueror.  She  seized  Corsica 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  405 

and  Sardinia  on  no  just  grounds,  she  increased  the  indemnity 
by  1,200  talents,  she  set  a  limit,  the  Ebro,  to  Carthaginian  de- 
velopments in  Spain.  There  was  a  strong  party  in  Carthage, 
led  by  Hanno,  for  the  propitiation  of  Home ;  but  it  was  natural 
that  many  Carthaginians  should  come  to  regard  their  national 
adversary  with  a  despairing  hatred. 

Hatred  is  one  of  the  passions  that  can  master  a  life,  and 
there  is  a  type  of  temperament  very  prone  to  it,  ready  to  see 
life  in  terms  of  vindictive  melodrama,  ready  to  find  stimulus 
and  satisfaction  in  frightful  demonstrations  of  " justice"  and 
revenge.  The  fears  and  jealousies  of  the  squatting-place  and 
the  cave  still  bear  their  dark  blossoms  in  our  lives ;  we  are  not 
four  hundred  generations  yet  from  the  old  Stone  Age.  Great 
wars,  as  all  Europe  knows,  give  this  "hating"  temperament  the 
utmost  scope,  and  the  greed  and  pride  and  cruelty  that  the  First 
Punic  War  had  released  were  now  producing  a  rich  crop  of 
anti-foreign  monomania.  The  outstanding  figure  upon  the 
side  of  Carthage  was  a  great  general  and  administrator,  Hamil- 
car  Barca,  who  now  set  himself  to  circumvent  and  shatter 
Rome.  He  was  the  father-in-law  of  Hasdrubal  and  the  father 
of  a  boy  Hannibal,  destined  to  be  the  most  dreaded  enemy  that 
ever  scared  the  Roman  Senate.  The  most  obvious  course  be- 
fore Carthage  was  the  reconstruction  of  its  fleet  and  naval 
administration,  and  the  recovery  of  sea  power,  but  this,  it 
would  seem,  Hamilcar  could  not  effect.  As  an  alternative  he 
resolved  to  organize  Spain  as  the  base  of  a  land  attack  upon 
Italy.  He  went  to  Spain  as  governor  in  236  B.C.,  and  Hannibal 
related  afterwards  that  his  father  then — he  was  a  boy  of  eleven 
—made  him  vow  deathless  hostility  to  the  Roman  power. 

This  quasi-insane  concentration  of  the  gifts  and  lives  of  the 
Barca  family  upon  revenge  is  but  one  instance  of  the  narrow- 
ing and  embitterment  of  life  that  the  stresses  and  universal 
sense  of  insecurity  of  this  great  struggle  produced  in  the  minds 
of  men.  A  quarter  of  a  century  of  war  had  left  the  whole 
western  world  miserable  and  harsh.  While  the  eleven-year-old 
Hannibal  was  taking  his  vow  of  undying  hatred,  there  was  run- 
ning about  a  farmhouse  of  Tusculum  a  small  but  probably  very 
disagreeable  child  of  two  named  Marcus  Porcius  Cato.  This 
boy  lived  to  be  eighty-five  years  old,  and  his  ruling  passion 
seems  to  have  been  hatred  for  any  human  happiness  but  his 
own.  He  was  a  good  soldier,  and  had  a  successful  political 


406  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

career.  He  held  a  command  in  Spain,  and  distinguished  him- 
self by  his  cruelties.  He  posed  as  a  champion  of  religion  and 
public  morality,  and  under  this  convenient  cloak  carried  on  a 
lifelong  war  against  everything  that  was  young,  gracious,  or 
pleasant.  Whoever  roused  his  jealousy  incurred  his  moral  dis- 
approval. He  was  energetic  in  the  support  and  administration 
of  all  laws  against  dress,  against  the  personal  adornment  of 
women,  against  entertainments  and  free  discussion.  He  was 
so  fortunate  as  to  be  made  censor,  which  gave  him  great  power 
over  the  private  lives  of  public  people.  He  was  thus  able  to 
ruin  public  opponents  through  private  scandals.  He  expelled 
Manlius  from  the  Senate  for  giving  his  wife  a  kiss  in  the  day- 
time in  the  sight  of  their  daughter.  He  persecuted  Greek 
literature,  about  which,  until  late  in  life,  he  was  totally  igno- 
rant. Then  he  read  and  admired  Demosthenes.  He  wrote  in 
Latin  upon  agriculture  and  the  ancient  and  lost  virtues  of 
Rome.  From  these  writings  much  light  is  thrown  upon  his 
qualities.  One  of  his  maxims  was  that  when  a  slave  was  not 
sleeping  he  should  be  working.  Another  was  that  old  oxen 
and  slaves  should  be  sold  off.  He  left  the  war  horse  that  had 
carried  him  through  his  Spanish  campaigns  behind  him  when 
he  returned  to  Italy  in  order  to  save  freight.  He  hated  other 
people's  gardens,  and  cut  off  the  supply  of  water  for  garden 
use  in  Rome.  After  entertaining  company,  when  dinner  was 
over  he  would  go  out  to  correct  any  negligence  in  the  service 
with  a  leather  thong.  He  admired  his  own  virtues  very  greatly, 
and  insisted  upon  them  in  his  writings.  There  was  a  battle  at 
Thermopylae  against  Antiochus  the  Great,  of  which  he  wrote, 
"those  who  saw  him  charging  the  enemy,  routing  and  pursuing 
them,  declared  that  Cato  owed  less  to  the  people  of  Rome,  than1 
the  people  of  Rome  owed  to  Cato."  1  In  his  old  age  Cato  be- 
came lascivious  and  misconducted  himself  with  a  woman  slave. 
Finally,  when  his  son  protested  against  this  disorder  of  their 
joint  household,  he  married  a  young  wife,  the  daughter  of 
his  secretary,  who  was  not  in  a  position  to  refuse  his  offer. 
(What  became  of  the  woman  slave  is  not  told.  Probably  he 
sold  her.)  This  compendium  of  all  the  old  Roman  virtues 
died  at  an  advanced  age,  respected  and  feared.  Almost  his 
last  public  act  was  to  urge  on  the  Third  Punic  War  and  the 
final  destruction  of  Carthage.  He  had  gone  to  Carthage  as  a 

Plutarch,  Life  of  Cato. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  407 

commissioner  to  settle  certain  differences  between  Carthage 
and  Numidia,  and  he  had  been  shocked  and  horrified  to  find 
some  evidences  of  prosperity  and  even  of  happiness  in  that 
country. 

From  the  time  of  that  visit  onward  Cato  concluded  every 
speech  he  made  in  the  Senate  by  croaking  out  "Dele-nda  est 
Carthago"  ("Carthage  must  be  destroyed"). 

Such  was  the  type  of  man  that  rose  to  prominence  in  Home 
during  the  Punic  struggle,  such  was  the  protagonist  of  Hanni- 
bal and  the  Carthaginian  revanche,  and  by  him  and  by  Hannibal 
we  may  judge  the  tone  and  quality  of  the  age. 

The  two  groat  western  powers,  and  Rome  perhaps  more 
than  Carthage,  were  strained  mentally  and  morally  by  the 
stresses  of  the  First  War.  The  evil  side  of  life  was  uppermost. 
The  history  of  the  Second  and  Third  Punic  Wars  (219  to  201 
and  149  to  146  B.C.),  it  is  plain,  is  not  the  history  of  perfectly 
sane  peoples.  It  is  nonsense  for  historians  to  write  of  the 
"political  instincts''  of  the  Romans  or  Carthaginians.  Quite 
other  instincts  were  loose.  The  red  eyes  of  the  ancestral  ape 
had  come  back  into  the  world.  It  was  a  time  when  reasonable 
men  were  howled  down  or  murdered;  the  true  spirit  of  the 
age  is  shown  in  the  eager  examination  for  signs  and  portents 
of  the  still  quivering  livers  of  those  human  victims  who  were 
sacrificed  in  Rome  during  the  panic  before  the  battle  of  'Tela- 
mon.  The  western  world  was  indeed  black  with  homicidal 
monomania.  Two  great  peoples,  both  very  necessary  to  the 
world's  development,  fell  foul  of  one  another,  and  at  last  Rome 
succeeded  in  murdering  Carthage. 

§  6 

We  can  only  tell  very  briefly  here  of  the  particulars  of  the 
Second  and  Third  Punic  Wars.  We  have  told  how  Hamilcar 
began  to  organize  Spain,  and  how  the  Romans  forbade  him 
to  cross  the  Ebro.  He  died  in  228  B.C.,  and  was  followed  by 
his  son-in-law  Hasdrubal,  who  was  assassinated  in  221  B.C.  and 
succeeded  by  Hannibal,  who  was  now  twenty-six.  The  actual 
war  was  precipitated  by  the  Romans  making  a  breach  of  their 
own  regulations,  and  interfering  with  affairs  south  of  the  Ebro. 
Whereupon  Hannibal  marched  straight  through  the  south  of 
Gaul,  and  crossed  the  Alps  (218  B.C.)  into  Italy. 


408  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  history  of  the  next  fifteen  years  is  the  story  of  the  most 
brilliant  and  futile  raid  in  history.  For  fifteen  years  Hannibal 
held  out  in  Italy,  victorious  and  unconquered.  The  Roman 
generals  were  no  match  for  the  Carthaginian,  and  whenever 
they  met  him  they  were  beaten.  But  one  Roman  general,  P. 
Cornelius  Scipio,  had  the  strategic  sense  to  take  a  course  that 
robbed  all  Hannibal's  victories  of  fruit.  At  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  he  had  been  sent  by  sea  to  Marseilles  to  intercept 
Hannibal ;  he  arrived  three  days  late,  and,  instead  of  pursuing 
him,  he  sent  on  his  army  into  Spain  to  cut  up  Hannibal's  sup- 
plies and  reinforcements.  Throughout  all  the  subsequent  war 
there  remained  this  Roman  army  of  Spain  between  Hannibal 
and  his  base.  He  was  left  "in  the  air,"  incapable  of  conducting 
sieges  or  establishing  conquests. 

Whenever  he  met  the  Romans  in  open  fight  he  beat  them. 
He  gained  two  great  victories  in  North  Italy,  and  won  over 
the  Gauls  to  his  side.  He  pressed  south  into  Etruria,  and  am- 
bushed, surrounded,  and  completely  destroyed  a  Roman  army 
at  Lake  Trasimene.  In  216  B.C.  he  was  assailed  by  a  vastly 
superior  Roman  force  under  Yarro  at  Canna3,  and  destroyed 
it  utterly.  Fifty  thousand  men  are  said  to  have  been  killed 
and  ten  thousand  prisoners  taken.  He  was,  however,  unable  to 
push  on  and  capture  Rome  because  he  had  no  siege  equipment. 

But  Cannae  produced  other  fruits.  A  large  part  of  Southern 
Italy  came  over  to  Hannibal,  including  Capua,  the  city  next 
in  size  to  Rome,  and  the  Macedonians  allied  themselves  with 
him.  Moreover,  Hiero  of  Syracuse,  the  faithful  ally  of  Rome, 
was  now  dead,  and  his  successor  Hieronymus  turned  over  to 
the  Carthaginians.  The  Romans  carried  on  the  war,  however, 
with  great  toughness  and  resolution ;  they  refused  to  treat  with 
Hannibal  after  Canna?,  they  pressed  a  slow  but  finally  suc- 
cessful blockade  and  siege  of  Capua,  and  a  Roman  army  set 
itself  to  reduce  Syracuse.  The  siege  of  Syracuse  is  chiefly 
memorable  for  the  brilliant  inventions  of  the  philosopher  Archi- 
medes, which  long  held  the  Romans  at  bay.  We  have  already 
named  this  Archimedes  as  one  of  the  pupils  and  correspondents 
of  the  school  of  the  Alexandrian  Museum.  He  was  killed 
in  the  final  storm  of  the  town.  Tarentum  (209  B.C.),  Hanni- 
bal's chief  port  and  means  of  supply  from  Carthage,  at  last  fol- 
lowed Syracuse  (212  B.C.)  and  Capua  (211  B.C.),  and  his  com- 
munications became  irregular. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  409 

Spain  also  was  wrested  bit  by  bit  from  the  Carthaginian 
grip.  When  at  last  reinforcements  for  Hannibal  under  his 
brother  Hasdrubal  (not  to  be  confused  with  his  brother-in- 
law  of  the  same  name  who  was  assassinated)  struggled  through 
into  Italy,  they  were  destroyed  at  the  battle  of  the  Metaurus 
(207  B.C.),  and  the  first  news  that  came  to  Hannibal  of  the 
disaster  was  the  hacked-off  head  of  his  brother  thrown  into  his 
camp. 

Thereafter  Hannibal  was  blockaded  into  Calabria,  the  heel 
of  Italy.  He  had  no  forces  for  further  operations  of  any  magni- 
tude, and  he  returned  at  last  to  Carthage  in  time  to  command 
the  Carthaginians  in  the  last  battle  of  the  war. 

This  last  battle,  the  battle  of  Zama  (202  B.C.),  was  fought 
close  to  Carthage. 

It  was  the  first  defeat  Hannibal  experienced  and  so  it  is 
well  to  give  a  little  attention  to  the  personality  of  his  con- 
queror, Scipio  Africanus  the  Elder,  who  stands  out  in  history 
as  a  very  fine  gentleman  indeed,  a  great  soldier  and  a  generous 
man.  We  have  already  mentioned  a  certain  P.  Cornelius  Scipio 
who  struck  at  Hannibal's  base  in  Spain ;  this  was  his  son ;  until 
after  Zama  this  son  bore  the  same  name  of  P.  Cornelius  Scipio, 
and  then  the  surname  of  Africanus  was  given  him.  (The 
younger  Scipio  Africanus,  Scipio  Africanus  Minor,  who  was 
later  to  end  the  Third  Punic  War,  was  the  adopted  son  of  the 
son  of  this  first  Scipio  Africanus  the  Elder. )  Scipio  Africanus 
was  everything  that  aroused  the  distrust,  hatred,  and  opposi- 
tion of  old-fashioned  Romans  of  the  school  of  Cato.  He  was 
young,  he  was  happy  and  able,  he  spent  money  freely,  he  was 
well  versed  in  Greek  literature,  and  inclined  rather  to  Phrygian 
novelties  in  religion  than  to  the  sterner  divinities  of  Rome. 
And  he  did  not  believe  in  the  extreme  discretion  that  then  ruled 
Roman  strategy. 

After  the  early  defeats  of  the  Second  Punic  War,  Roman 
military  operations  were  dominated  by  the  personality  of  a 
general,  Fabius,  who  raised  the  necessity  of  avoiding  battle 
with  Hannibal  into  a  kind  of  sacred  principle.  For  ten  years 
"Fabian  tactics"  prevailed  in  Italy.  The  Romans  blockaded, 
cut  up  convoys,  attacked  stragglers,  and  ran  away  whenever 
Hannibal  appeared.  ~No  doubt  it  was  wise  for  a  time  after  their 
first  defeats  to  do  this  sort  of  thing,  but  the  business  of  the 
stronger  power,  and  Rome  was  the  stronger  power  throughout 


410  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  Second  Punic  War,  is  not  to  tolerate  an  interminable  war, 
but  to  repair  losses,  discover  able  generals,  train  better  armies, 
and  destroy  the  enemy  power.  Decision  is  one  of  the  duties 
of  strength. 

To  such  men  as  young  Scipio,  the  sly,  ineffective  artfulness 
of  Fabianism,  which  was  causing  both  Italy  and  Carthage  to 
bleed  slowly  to  death,  was  detestable.  He  clamoured  for  an 
attack  upon  Carthage  itself. 

"But  Fabius,  on  this  occasion,  filled  the  city  with  alarms, 
as  if  the  commonwealth  was  going  to  be  brought  into  the  most 
extreme  danger  by  a  rash  and  indiscreet  young  man;  in  short, 
he  scrupled  not  to  do  or  say  anything  he  thought  likely  to  dis- 
suade his  countrymen  from  embracing  the  proposal.  With  the 
Senate  he  carried  his  point.  But  the  people  believed  that  his 
opposition  to  Scipio  proceeded  either  from  envy  of  his  success, 
or  from  a  secret  fear  that  if  this  young  hero  should  perform 
some  signal  exploit,  put  an  end  to  the  war,  or  even  remove  it 
out  of  Italy,  his  own  slow  proceedings  through  the  course  of 
so  many  years  might  be  imputed  to  indolence  or  timidity.  .  .  . 
He  applied  to  Crassus,  the  colleague  of  Scipio,  and  endeavoured 
to  persuade  him  not  to  yield  that  province  to  Scipio,  but,  if 
he  thought  it  proper  to  conduct  the  war  in  that  manner,  to  go 
himself  against  Carthage.  Nay,  he  even  hindered  the  raising 
of  money  for  that  expedition,  so  that  Scipio  was  obliged  to  find 
the  supplies  as  he  could.  .  .  .  He  endeavoured  to  prevent  the 
young  men  who  offered  to  go  as  volunteers  from  giving  in  their 
names,  and  loudly  declared,  both  in  the  Senate  and  Forum, 
'That  Scipio  did  not  only  himself  avoid  Hannibal,  but  intended 
to  carry  away  with  him  the  remaining  strength  of  Italy,  per- 
suading the  young  men  to  abandon  their  parents,  their  wives, 
and  native  city,  while  an  unsubdued  and  potent  enemy  was 
still  at  their  doors.'  With  these  assertions  he  so  terrified  the 
people,  that  they  allowed  Scipio  to  take  with  him  only  the 
legions  that  were  in  Sicily,  and  three  hundred  of  those  men 
who  had  served  him  with  so  much  fidelity  in  Spain.  .  .  .  After 
Scipio  was  gone  over  into  Africa,  an  account  was  soon  brought 
to  Rome  of  his  glorious  and  wonderful  achievements.  This 
account  was  followed  by  rich  spoils,  which  confirmed  it.  A 
Xumidian  king  was  taken  prisoner;  two  camps  were  burned 
and  destroyed ;  and  in  them  a  vast  number  of  men,  arms,  and 
horses;  and  the  Carthaginians  sent  orders  to  Hannibal  to  quit 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  411 

his  fruitless  hopes  in  Italy,  and  return  home  to  defend  his 
own  country.  Whilst  every  tongue  was  applauding  these  ex- 
ploits of  Scipio,  Fabius  proposed  that  his  successor  should  be 
appointed,  without  any  shadow  of  reason  for  it,  except  what 
this  well-known  maxim  implies:  viz.,  'That  it  is  dangerous  to 
trust  affairs  of  such  importance  to  the  fortune  of  one  man, 
because  it  is  not  likely  that  he  will  be  always  successful.'  .  .  . 
Nay,  even  when  Hannibal  embarked  his  army  and  quitted 
Italy,  Fabius  ceased  not  to  disturb  the  general  joy  and  to  damp 
the  spirits  of  Rome,  for  he  took  the  liberty  to  affirm,  'That  the 
commonwealth  was  now  come  to  her  last  and  worst  trial;  that 
she  had  the  most  reason  to  dread  the  efforts  of  Hannibal  when 
he  should  arrive  in  Africa,  and  attack  her  sons  under  the  walls 
of  Carthage;  that  Scipio  would  have  to  do  with  an  army  yet 
warm  with  the  blood  of  so  many  Roman  generals,  dictators, 
and  consuls.'  The  city  was  alarmed  with  these  declamations, 
and  though  the  war  was  removed  into  Africa,  the  danger  seemed 
to  approach  nearer  Rome  than  ever." 

Before  the  battle  of  Zama  there  were  a  brief  truce  and 
negotiations,  which  broke  down  through  the  fault  of  the  Car- 
thaginians. As  with  the  battle  of  Arbela,  so  the  exact  day  of 
the  battle  of  Zama  can  be  fixed  by  an  eclipse,  which  in  this 
case  occurred  during  the  fighting.  The  Romans  had  been 
joined  by  the  Numidians,  the  hinterland  people  of  Carthage, 
under  their  king  Massinissa,  and  this  gave  them — for  the  first 
time  in  any  battle  against  Hannibal — a  great  superiority  of 
cavalry.  Hannibal's  cavalry  wings  were  driven  off,  while  at 
the  same  time  the  sounder  discipline  of  Scipio's  infantry  en- 
abled them  to  open  lanes  for  the  charge  of  the  Carthaginian 
war  elephants  without  being  thrown  into  confusion.  Hannibal 
attempted  to  extend  his  infantry  line  to  envelop  the  Roman  in- 
fantry mass,  but  while  at  CannaB  all  the  advantage  of  training 
and  therefore  of  manoeuvring  power  had  been  on  his  side,  and 
he  had  been  able  to  surround  and  massacre  a  crowd  of  infantry, 
he  now  found  against  him  an  infantry  line  better  than  his  own. 
His  own  line  broke  as  it  extended,  the  Roman  legion  charged 
home,  and  the  day  was  lost.  The  Roman  cavalry  came  back 
from  the  pursuit  of  Hannibal's  horse  to  turn  what  was  already 
a  defeat  into  a  disastrous  rout. 

Carthage  submitted  without  any  further  struggle.  The 
terms  were  severe,  but  they  left  it  possible  for  her  to  hope  for 


4,12  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

an  honourable  future.  She  had  to  abandon  Spain  to  Rome, 
to  give  up  all  her  war  fleet  except  ten  vessels,  to  pay  10,000 
talents  (£2,400,000),  and,  what  was  the  most  difficult  condi- 
tion of  all,  to  agree  not  to  wage  war  without  the  permission  of 
Rome.  Finally  a  condition  was  added  that  Hannibal,  as  the 
great  enemy  of  Rome,  should  be  surrendered.  But  he  saved  his 
countrymen  from  this  humiliation  by  flying  to  Asia. 

These  were  exorbitant  conditions,  with  which  Rome  should 
have  been  content.  But  there  are  nations  so  cowardly  that  they 
dare  not  merely  conquer  their  enemies ;  they  must  mak  siccar 
and  destroy  them.  The  generation  of  Romans  that  saw  great- 
ness and  virtue  in  a  man  like  Cato  the  Censor,  necessarily 
made  their  country  a  mean  ally  and  a  cowardly  victor. 

§7 

The  history  of  Rome  for  the  fifty-six  years  that  elapsed  be- 
tween the  battle  of  Zama  and  the  last  act  of  the  tragedy,  the 
Third  Punic  War,  tells  of  a  hard  ungracious  expansion  of 
power  abroad  and  of  a  slow  destruction,  by  the  usury  and  greed 
of  the  rich,  of  the  free  agricultural  population  at  home. 

The  spirit  of  the  nation  had  become  harsh  and  base;  there 
was  no  further  extension  of  citizenship,  no  more  generous  at- 
tempts at  the  assimilation  of  congenial  foreign  populations. 
Spain  was  administered  badly  and  settled  slowly  and  with  great 
difficulty.  Complicated  interventions  led  to  the  reduction  of 
Illyria  and  Macedonia  to  the  position  of  tribute-paying  prov- 
inces; Rome,  it  was  evident,  was  going  to  "tax  the  foreigner" 
now  and  release  her  home  population  from  taxation.  After 
168  B.C.  the  old  land  tax  was  no  longer  levied  in  Italy,  and  the 
only  revenue  derived  from  Italy  was  from  the  state  domains 
and  through  a  tax  on  imports  from  overseas.  The  revenues 
from  the  province  of  "Asia"  defrayed  the  expenses  of  the 
Roman  state.  At  home  men  of  the  Cato  type  were  acquiring 
farms  by  loans  and  foreclosure,  often  the  farms  of  men 
impoverished  by  war  service;  they  were  driving  the 
free  citizens  off  their  land,  and  running  their  farms  with 
the  pitilessly  driven  slave  labour  that  was  made  cheap  and 
abundant.  Such  men  regarded  alien  populations  abroad  merely 
as  unimported  slaves.  Sicily  was  handed  over  to  the  greedy 
enterprise  of  tax-farmers.  Corn  could  be  grown  there  by  rich 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  413 

men  using  slaves,  and  imported  very  profitably  into  Rome,  and 
so  the  home  land  could  be  turned  over  to  cattle  and  sheep  feed- 
ing. Consequently  a  drift  of  the  uprooted  Italian  population 
to  the  towns,  and  particularly  to  Rome,  began. 

Of  the  first  conflicts  of  the  spreading  power  of  Rome  with 
the  Seleucids,  and  how  she  formed  an  alliance  with  Egypt,  we 
can  tell  little  here,  nor  of  the  tortuous  fluctuations  of  the  Greek 
cities  under  the  shadow  of  her  advance  until  they  fell  into 
actual  subjugation.  A  map  must  suffice  to  show  the  extension 
of  her  empire  at  this  time. 

The  general  grim  baseness  of  the  age  was  not  without  its 
protesting  voices.  We  have  already  told  how  the  wasting  dis- 
ease of  the  Second  Punic  War,  a  disease  of  the  state  which  was 
producing  avaricious  rich  men  exactly  as  diseases  of  the  body 
will  sometimes  produce  great  pustules,  was  ended  by  the  vigour 
of  Scipio  Africanus.  When  it  had  seemed  doubtful  whether 
the  Senate  would  let  him  go  as  the  Roman  general,  he  had 
threatened  an  appeal  to  the  people.  Thereafter  he  was  a 
marked  man  for  the  senatorial  gang,  who  were  steadily  chang- 
ing Italy  from  a  land  of  free  cultivators  to  a  land  of  slave- 
worked  cattle  ranches;  they  attempted  to  ruin  him  before  ever 
he  reached  Africa;  they  gave  him  forces  insufficient,  as  they 
hoped,  for  victory;  and  after  the  war  they  barred  him  strictly 
from  office.  Interest  and  his  natural  malice  alike  prompted 
Cato  to  attack  him. 

Scipio  Africanus  the  Elder  seems  to  have  been  of  a  generous 
and  impatient  temperament,  and  indisposed  to  exploit  the  popu- 
lar discontent  with  current  tendencies  and  his  own  very  great 
popularity  to  his  own  advantage.  He  went  as  subordinate  to 
his  brother  Lucius  Scipio,  when  the  latter  commanded  the  first 
Roman  army  to  pass  into  Asia.  At  Magnesia  in  Lydia  a  great 
composite  army  under  Antiochus  III,  the  Seleucid  monarch, 
suffered  the  fate  (190  B.C.)  of  the  very  similar  Persian  armies 
of  a  hundred  and  forty  years  before.  This  victory  drew  down 
upon  Lucius  Scipio  the  hostility  of  the  Senate,  and  he  was 
accused  of  misappropriating  moneys  received  from  Antiochus. 
This  filled  Africanus  with  honest  rage.  As  Lucius  stood  up 
in  the  Senate  with  his  accounts  in  his  hands  ready  for  the 
badgering  of  his  accusers,  Africanus  snatched  the  documents 
from  him,  tore  them  up,  and  flung  the  fragments  down.  His 
brother,  he  said,  had  paid  into  the  treasury  200,000  sestertia 


414 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  415 

(=  £2,000,000).  Was  he  now  to  be  pestered  and  tripped  up 
upon  this  or  that  item  ?  When,  later  on,  Lucius  was  prosecuted 
and  condemned,  Africanus  rescued  him  by  force.  Being  im- 
peached, he  reminded  the  people  that  the  day  was  the  anni- 
versary of  the  battle  of  Zama,  and  defied  the  authorities  amidst 
the  plaudits  of  the  crowd. 

The  Roman  people  seem  to  have  liked  and  supported  Scipio 
Africanus,  and,  after  an  interval  of  two  thousand  years,  men 
must  like  him  still.  He  was  able  to  throw  torn  paper  in  the 
face  of  the  Senate,  and  when  Lucius  was  attacked  again,  one 
of  the  tribunes  of  the  people  interposed  his  veto  and  quashed 
the  proceedings.  But  Scipio  Africanus  lacked  that  harder 
alloy  which  makes  men  great  democratic  leaders.  He  was  no 
Caesar.  He  had  none  of  the  qualities  that  subdue  a  man  to 
the  base  necessities  of  political  life.  After  these  events  he 
retired  in  disgust  from  Rome  to  his  estates,  and  there  he  died 
in  the  year  183  B.C. 

In  the  same  year  died  Hannibal.  He  poisoned  himself  in 
despair.  The  steadfast  fear  of  the  Roman  Senate  had  hunted 
him  from  court  to  court.  In  spite  of  the  indignant  protests  of 
Scipio,  Rome  in  the  peace  negotiations  had  demanded  his  sur- 
render from  Carthage,  and  she  continued  to  make  this  demand 
of  every  power  that  sheltered  him.  When  peace  was  made  with 
Antiochus  III,  this  was  one  of  the  conditions.  He  was  run  to 
earth  at  last  in  Bithynia;  the  king  of  Bithynia  detained  him 
in  order  to  send  him  to  Rome,  but  he  had  long  carried  the 
poison  he  needed  in  a  ring,  and  by  this  he  died. 

It  adds  to  the  honour  of  the  name  of  Scipio  that  it  was  an- 
other Scipio,  Scipio  ISTasica,  who  parodied  Cato's  Delenda  est 
Carthago  by  ending  all  his  speeches  in  the  Senate  with  "Car- 
thage must  stand."  He  had  the  wisdom  to  see  that  the  exist- 
ence and  stimulus  of  Carthage  contributed  to  the  general  pros- 
perity of  Rome. 

Yet  it  was  the  second  Scipio  Africanus,  grandson  by  adoption 
of  Scipio  Africanus  the  Elder,  who  took  and  destroyed  Car- 
thage. The  sole  offence  of  the  Carthaginians,  which  brought 
about  the  third  and  last  Punic  War,  was  that  they  continued 
to  trade  and  prosper.  Their  trade  was  not  a  trade  that  com- 
peted with  that  of  Rome ;  when  Carthage  was  destroyed,  much 
of  her  trade  died  with  her,  and  North  Africa  entered  upon  a 
phase  of  economic  retrogression;  but  her  prosperity  aroused 


41C  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

that  passion  of  envy  which  was  evidently  more  powerful  even 
than  avarice  in  the  "old  Roman"  type.  The  rich  Equestrian 
order  resented  any  wealth  in  the  world  but  its  own.  Rome 
provoked  the  war  by  encouraging  the  Numidians  to  encroach 
upon  Carthage  until  the  Carthaginians  were  goaded  to  fight  in 
despair.  Rome  then  pounced  upon  Carthage,  and  declared 
she  had  broken  the  treaty!  She  had  made  war  without 
permission. 

The  Carthaginians  sent  the  hostages  Rome  demanded,  they 
surrendered  their  arms,  they  prepared  to  surrender  territory. 
But  submission  only  increased  the  arrogance  of  Rome  and  the 
pitiless  greed  of  the  rich  Equestrian  order  which  swayed  her 
counsels.  She  now  demanded  that  Carthage  should  be  aban- 
doned, and  the  population  removed  to  a  spot  at  least  ten  miles 
from  the  sea.  This  demand  they  made  to  a  population  that  sub- 
sisted almost  entirely  by  overseas  trade! 

This  preposterous  order  roused  the  Carthaginians  to  despair. 
They  recalled  their  exiles  and  prepared  for  resistance.  The 
military  efficiency  of  the  Romans  had  been  steadily  declining 
through  a  half-century  of  narrow-minded  and  base-spirited  gov- 
ernment, and  the  first  attacks  upon  the  town  in  149  B.C.  almost 
ended  in  disaster.  Young  Scipio,  during  these  operations,  dis- 
tinguished himself  in  a  minor  capacity.  The  next  year  was  also 
a  year  of  failure  for  the  incompetents  of  the  Senate.  That 
august  body  then  passed  from  a  bullying  mood  to  one  of  ex- 
treme panic.  The  Roman  populace  was  even  more  seriously 
scared.  Young  Scipio,  chiefly  on  account  of  his  name,  although 
he  was  under  the  proper  age,  and  in  other  respects  not  qualified 
for  the  office,  was  made  consul,  and  bundled  off  to  Africa  to 
save  his  precious  country. 

There  followed  the  most  obstinate  and  dreadful  of  sieges. 
Scipio  built  a  mole  across  the  harbour,  and  cut  off  all  supplies 
by  land  or  sea.  The  Carthaginians  suffered  horribly  from 
famine;  but  they  held  out  until  the  town  was  stormed.  The 
street  fighting  lasted  for  six  days,  and  when  at  last  the  citadel 
capitulated,  there  were  fifty  thousand  Carthaginians  left  alive 
out  of  an  estimated  population  of  half  a  million.  These  sur- 
vivors went  into  slavery,  the  whole  city  was  burnt,  the  ruins 
were  ploughed  to  express  final  destruction,  and  a  curse  was 
invoked  with  great  solemnities  upon  anyone  who  might  attempt 
to  rebuild  it. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  417 

In  the  same  year  (146  B.C.)  the  Roman  Senate  and  Eques- 
trians also  murdered  another  great  city  that  seemed  to  limit 
their  trade  monopolies,  Corinth.  They  had  a  justification,  for 
Corinth  had  been  in  arms  against  them,  but  it  was  an  inade- 
quate justification. 

§  8 

We  must  note  here,  in  a  brief  section,  a  change  in  the  mili- 
tary system  of  Rome,  after  the  Second  Punic  War,  that  was  of 
enormous  importance  in  her  later  development.  Up  to  that 
period  the  Roman  armies  had  been  levies  of  free  citizens. 
Fighting  power  and  voting  power  were  closely  connected ;  the 
public  assembly  by  centuries  followed  the  paraphernalia  of  a 
military  mobilization,  and  marched,  headed  by  the  Equestrian 
centuries,  to  the  Campus  Martius.  The  system  was  very  like 
that  of  the  Boers  before  the  last  war  in  South  Africa.  The 
ordinary  Roman  citizen,  like  the  ordinary  Boer,  was  a  farmer ; 
at  the  summons  of  his  country  he  went  "on  commando."  The 
Boers  were,  indeed,  in  many  respects,  the  last  survivors  of 
Aryanism.  They  fought  extraordinarily  well,  but  at  the  back 
of  their  minds  was  an  anxious  desire  to  go  back  to  their  farms. 
For  prolonged  operations,  such  as  the  siege  of  Veii,  the  Romans 
reinforced  and  relieved  their  troops  in  relays;  the  Boers  did 
much  the  same  at  the  siege  of  Ladysmith. 

The  necessity  for  subjugating  Spain  after  the  Second  Punic 
War  involved  a  need  for  armies  of  a  different  type.  Spain 
was  too  far  off  for  periodic  reliefs,  and  the  war  demanded  a 
more  thorough  training  than  was  possible  with  these  on  and  off 
soldiers.  Accordingly  men  were  enlisted  for  longer  terms  and 
paid.  So  the  paid  soldier  first  appeared  in  Roman  affairs. 
And  to  pay  was  added  booty.  Cato  distributed  silver  treasure 
among  his  command  in  Spain ;  and  it  is  also  on  record  that  he 
attacked  Scipio  Africanus  for  distributing  booty  among  his 
troops  in  Sicily.  The  introduction  of  military  pay  led  on  to  a 
professional  army,  and  this,  a  century  later,  to  the  disarma- 
ment of  the  ordinary  Roman  citizen,  who  was  now  drifting  in 
an?  impoverished  state  into  Rome  and  the  larger  towns.  The 
great  wars  had  been  won,  the  foundations  of  the  empire  had 
been  well  and  truly  laid  by  the  embattled  farmers  of  Rome 


418  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

before  200  B.C.  In  the  process  the  embattled  fanners  of  Rome 
had  already  largely  disappeared.  The  change  that  began  after 
the  Second  Punic  War  was  completed  towards  the  close  of 
the  century  in  the  reorganization  of  the  army  by  Marius,  as 
we  will  tell  in  its  place.  After  his  time  we  shall  begin  to  write 
of  "the  army/'  and  then  of  "the  legions/'  and  we  shall  find 
we  are  dealing  with  a  new  kind  of  army  altogether,  no  longer 
held  together  in  the  solidarity  of  a  common  citizenship.  As 
that  tie  fails,  the  legions  discover  another  in  esprit  de  corps, 
in  their  common  difference  from  and  their  common  interest 
against  the  general  community.  They  begin  to  develop  a 
warmer  interest  in  their  personal  leaders,  who  secure  them  pay 
and  plunder.  Before  the  Punic  Wars  it  was  the  tendency  of 
ambitious  men  in  Eome  to  court  the  plebeians ;  after  that  time 
they  began  to  court  the  legions. 

§» 

The  history  of  the  Roman  Republic  thus  far,  is  in  many 
respects  much  more  modern  in  flavour,  especially  to  the  Ameri- 
can or  Western  European  reader,  than  anything  that  has  pre- 
ceded it.  For  the  first  time  we  have  something  like  a  self-gov- 
erning "nation,"  something  larger  than  a  mere  city  state, 
seeking  to  control  its  own  destinies.  For  the  first  time  we 
have  a  wide  countryside  under  one  conception  of  law.  We  get 
in  the  Senate  and  the  popular  assembly  a  conflict  of  groups  and 
personalities,  an  argumentative  process  of  control,  far  more 
stable  and  enduring  than  any  autocracy  can  be,  and  far  more 
flexible  and  adaptable  than  any  priesthood.  For  the  first  time 
also  we  encounter  social  conflicts  comparable  to  our  own. 
Money  has  superseded  barter,  and  financial  capital  has  become 
fluid  and  free ;  not  perhaps  so  fluid  and  free  as  it  is  to-day,  but 
much  more  so  than  it  had  ever  been  before.  The  Punic  Wars 
were  wars  of  peoples,  such  as  were  no  other  wars  we  have  yet 
recorded.  Indubitably  the  broad  lines  of  our  present  world, 
the  main  ideas,  the  chief  oppositions,  were  appearing  in  those 
days. 

But,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out,  certain  of  the  elem^n- 
tary  facilities  and  some  of  the  current  political  ideas  of  our 
time  were  still  wanting  in  the  Rome  of  the  Punic  Wars.  There 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  419 

were  no  newspapers,1  and  there  was  practically  no  use  of 
elected  representatives  in  the  popular  assemblies.  And  an- 
other deficiency,  very  understandable  to  us  nowadays,  but  quite 
beyond  the  scope  of  anyone  then,  was  the  absence  of  any  general 
elementary  political  education  at  all.  The  plebeians  of  Rome 
had  shown  some  glimmering  of  the  idea  that  without  knowledge 
votes  cannot  make  men  free,  when  they  had  insisted  upon  the 
publication  of  the  law  of  the  Twelve  Tables;  but  they  had 
never  been  able,  it  was  beyond  the  possibilities  of  the  time,  to 
imagine  any  further  extension  of  knowledge  to  the  bulk  of  the 
people.  It  is  only  nowadays  that  men  are  beginning  to  under- 
stand fully  the  political  significance  of  the  maxim  that  "knowl- 
edge is  power."  Two  British  Trade  Unions,  for  example,  have 
recently  set  up  a  Labour  College  to  meet  the  special  needs  of 
able  working-men  in  history,  political  and  social  science,  and 
the  like.  But  education  in  republican  Rome  was  the  freak  of 
the  individual  parent,  and  the  privilege  of  wealth  and  leisure. 
It  was  mainly  in  the  hands  of  Greeks,  who  were  in  many  cases 
slaves.  There  was  a  thin  small  stream  of  very  fine  learning 
and  very  fine  thinking  up  to  the  first  century  of  the  monarchy, 
let  Lucretius  and  Cicero  witness,  but  it  did  not  spread  into  the 
mass  of  the  people.  The  ordinary  Roman  was  not  only  blankly 
ignorant  of  the  history  of  mankind,  but  also  of  the  conditions 
of  foreign  peoples ;  he  had  no  knowledge  of  economic  laws  nor 
of  social  possibilities.  Even  his  own  interests  he  did  not 
clearly  understand. 

Of  course,  in  the  little  city  states  of  Greece  and  in  that  early 
Roman  state  of  four  hundred  square  miles,  men  acquired  by 
talk  and  observation  a  sufficient  knowledge  for  the  ordinary 
duties  of  citizenship,  but  by  the  beginning  of  the  Punic  Wars 
the  business  was  already  too  big  and  complicated  for  illiterate 
men.  Yet  nobody  seems  to  have  observed  the  gap  that  was 

1  Julius  Csesar  (60  B.C.)  caused  the  proceedings  of  the  Senate  to  be  pub- 
lished by  having  them  written  up  upon  bulletin  boards,  in  albo  (upon 
the  white).  It  had  been  the  custom  to  publish  the  annual  edict  of  the 
praetor  in  this  fashion.  There  were  professional  letter-writers  who  sent 
news  by  special  courier  to  rich  country  correspondents,  and  these  would 
copy  down  the  stuff  upon  the  Album  (white  board).  Cicero,  while  he 
was  governor  in  Cilicia,  got  the  current  news  from  such  a  professional 
correspondent.  He  complains  in  one  letter  that  it  was  not  what  he 
wanted;  the  expert  was  too  full  of  the  chariot  races  and  other  sporting 
intelligence,  and  failed  to  give  any  view  of  the  political  situation.  Ob- 
viously this  news-letter  system  was  available  only  for  public  men  in  pros- 
perous circumstances. 


420  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

opening  between  the  citizen  and  his  state,  and  so  there  is  no 
record  at  all  of  any  attempt  to  enlarge  the  citizen  by  instruc- 
tion to  meet  his  enlarged  duties.  Prom  the  second  century  B.C. 
and  onward  everyone  is  remarking  upon  the  ignorance  of  the 
common  citizen  and  his  lack  of  political  wisdom,  everything  is 
suffering  from  the  lack  of  political  solidarity  due  to  this  igno- 
rance, but  no  one  goes  on  to  what  we  should  now  consider  the 
inevitable  corollary,  no  one  proposes  to  destroy  the  ignorance 
complained  of.  There  existed  no  means  whatever  for  the  in- 
struction of  the  masses  of  the  people  in  a  common  political  and 
social  ideal.  It  was  only  with  the  development  of  the  great 
propagandist  religions  in  the  Eoman  world,  of  which  Chris- 
tianity was  the  chief  and  the  survivor,  that  the  possibility  of 
such  a  systematic  instruction  of  great  masses  of  people  became 
apparent  in  the  world.  That  very  great  political  genius,  the 
Emperor  Constantine  the  Great,  six  centuries  later,  was  the 
first  to  apprehend  and  to  attempt  to  use  this  possibility  for  the 
preservation  and  the  mental  and  moral  knitting-together  of  the 
world  community  over  which  he  ruled. 

But  it  is  not  only  in  these  deficiencies  of  news  and  of  educa- 
tion and  of  the  expedient  of  representative  government  that 
this  political  system  of  Rome  differed  from  our  own.  True, 
it  was  far  more  like  a  modern  civilized  state  than  any  other 
state  we  have  considered  hitherto,  but  in  some  matters  it  was 
strangely  primordial  and  "sub-civilized."  Every  now  and  then 
the  reader  of  Roman  history,  reading  it  in  terms  of  debates 
and  measures,  policies  and  campaigns,  capital  and  labour, 
comes  upon  something  that  gives  him  much  the  same  shock 
he  would  feel  if  he  went  down  to  an  unknown  caller  in  his 
house  and  extended  his  hand  to  meet  the  misshapen,  hairy  paw 
of  Homo  N eandertlialensis  and  looked  up  to  see  a  chinless, 
bestial  face.  We  have  noted  the  occurrence  of  human  sacrifice 
in  the  third  century  B.C.,  and  much  that  we  learn  of  the  religion 
of  republican  Rome  carries  us  far  back  beyond  the  days  of 
decent  gods,  to  the  age  of  shamanism  and  magic.  We  talk  of  a 
legislative  gathering,  and  the  mind  flies  to  Westminster;  but 
how  should  we  feel  if  we  went  to  see  the  beginning  of  a  session 
of  the  House  of  Lords,  and  discovered  the  Lord  Chancellor, 
with  bloody  fingers,  portentously  fiddling  about  among  the 
entrails  of  a  newly  killed  sheep  ?  The  mind  would  recoil  from 
Westminster  to  the  customs  of  Benin.  And  the  slavery  of 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  421 

Rome  was  a  savage  slavery,  altogether  viler  than  the  slavery  of 
Babylon.  We  have  had  a  glimpse  of  the  virtuous  Cato  among 
his  slaves  in  the  second  century  B.C.  Moreover,  in  the  third 
century  B.C.,  when  King  Asoka  was  ruling  India  in  light  and 
gentleness,  the  Romans  were  reviving  an  Etruscan  sport,  the 
setting  on  of  slaves  to  fight  for  their  lives.  One  is  reminded 
of  West  Africa  again  in  the  origin  of  this  amusement ;  it  grew 
out  of  the  prehistoric  custom  of  a  massacre  of  captives  at  the 


(from,  a  waZI-pain&ig'  at  Pompezi) 


burial  of  a  chief.  There  was  a  religious  touch  about  this  sport ; 
the  slaves  with  hooks,  who  dragged  the  dead  bodies  out  of  the 
arena,  wore  masks  to  represent  the  infernal  ferryman-god, 
Charon.  In  264  B.C.,  the  very  year  in  which  Asoka  began  to 
reign  and  the  First  Punic  War  began,  the  first  recorded  gladia- 
torial combat  took  place  in  the  forum  at  Rome,  to  celebrate 
the  funeral  of  a  member  of  the  old  Roman  family  of  Brutus. 
This  was  a  modest  display  of  three  couples,  but  soon  gladiators 
were  fighting  by  the  hundred.  The  taste  for  these  combats 
grew  rapidly,  and  the  wars  supplied  an  abundance  of  captives. 
The  old  Roman  moralists,  who  were  so  severe  upon  kissing  and 
women's  ornaments  and  Greek  philosophy,  had  nothing  but 
good  to  say  for  this  new  development.  So  long  as  pain  was 
inflicted,  Roman  morality,  it  would  seem,  was  satisfied. 

If  republican  Rome  was  the  first  of  modern  self-governing 
national  communities,  she  was  certainly  the  "Neanderthal" 
form  of  them. 

In  the  course  of  the  next  two  or  three  centuries  the  gladia- 
torial shows  of  Rome  grew  to  immense  proportions.  To  begin 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

with,  while  wars  were  frequent,  the  gladiators  were  prisoners 
of  war.  They  came  with  their  characteristic  national  weapons, 
tattooed  Britons,  Moors,  Scythians,  negroes,  and  the  like,  and 
there  was  perhaps  some  military  value  in  these  exhibitions. 
Then  criminals  of  the  lower  classes  condemned  to  death  were 
also  used.  The  ancient  world  did  not  understand  that  a  crimi- 
nal condemned  to  death  still  has  rights,  and  at  any  rate  the  use 
of  a  criminal  as  a  gladiator  was  not  so  bad  as  his  use  as  "mate- 
rial" for  the  vivisectors  of  the  Museum  at  Alexandria.  But 
as  the  profits  of  this  sort  of  show  business  grew  and  the  demand 
for  victims  increased,  ordinary  slaves  were  sold  to  the  trainers 
of  gladiators,  and  any  slave  who  had  aroused  his  owner's  spite 
might  find  himself  in  an  establishment  for  letting  out  gladia- 
tors. And  dissipated  young  men  who  had  squandered  their 
property,  and  lads  of  spirit  would  go  voluntarily  into  the  trade 
for  a  stated  time,  trusting  to  their  prowess  to  survive.  As  the 
business  developed,  a  new  use  was  found  for  gladiators  as 
armed  retainers;  rich  men  would  buy  a  band,  and  employ  it 
as  a  bodyguard  or  hire  it  out  for  profit  at  the  shows.  The 
festivities  of  a  show  began  with  a  ceremonial  procession 
(pompa)  and  a  sham  fight  (prcelusio}.  The  real  fighting  was 
heralded  by  trumpets.  Gladiators  who  objected  to  fight  for  any 
reason  were  driven  on  by  whips  and  hot  irons.  A  wounded 
man  would  sometimes  call  for  pity  by  holding  up  his  forefinger. 
The  spectators  would  then  either  wave  their  handkerchiefs  in 
token  of  mercy,  or  condemn  him  to  death  by  holding  out  their 
clenched  fists  with  the  thumbs  down.1  The  slain  and  nearly 
dead  were  dragged  out  to  a  particular  place,  the  spoliarium, 
where  they  were  stripped  of  their  arms  and  possessions,  and 
those  who  had  not  already  expired  were  killed. 

This  organization  of  murder  as  a  sport  and  show  serves  to 
measure  the  great  gap  in  moral  standards  between  the  Roman 
community  and  our  own.  No  doubt  cruelties  and  outrages 
upon  human  dignity  as  monstrous  as  this  still  go  on  in  the 
world,  but  they  do  not  go  on  in  the  name  of  the  law  and  without 
a  single  dissentient  voice.  For  it  is  true  that  until  the  time 
of  Seneca  (first  century  A.D.)  there  is  no  record  of  t any  plain 
protest  against  this  business.  The  conscience  of  mankind  was 

1  Authorities  differ  here.  Mayor  says  thumbs  up  (to  the  breast)  meant 
death  and  thumbs  down  meant  "Lower  that  sword."  The  popular  per- 
suasion is  that  thumbs  down  meant  death. 


THE  TWO  WESTERN  REPUBLICS  423 

weaker  and  less  intelligent  then  than  now.  Presently  a  new 
power  was  to  come  into  the  human  conscience  through  the 
spread  of  Christianity.  The  spirit  of  Jesus  in  Christianity 
became  the  great  antagonist  in  the  later  Eoman  state  of  these 
cruel  shows  and  of  slavery,  and,  as  Christianity  spread,  these 
two  evil  things  dwindled  and  disappeared.1 

1  "A  little  more  needs  to  be  said  on  this  matter.  The  Greeks  cited  gladia- 
torial shows  as  a  reason  for  regarding  the  Romans  as  Barbaroi,  and  there 
were  riots  when  some  Roman  proconsul  tried  to  introduce  them  in  Corinth. 
Among  Romans,  the  better  people  evidently  disliked  them,  but  a  sort  of 
shyness  prevented  them  from  frankly  denouncing  them  as  cruel.  For 
instance,  Cicero,  when  he  had  to  attend  the  Circus,  took  his  tablets  and 
his  secretary  with  him,  and  didn't  look.  He  expresses  particular  disgust 
at  the  killing  of  an  elephant;  and  somebody  in  Tacitus  (Drusus,  Ann.  1. 
76)  was  unpopular  because  he  was  too  fond  of  gladiatorial  bloodshed — 
'quamquam  vili  sanguine  nimis  gaudens'  ('rejoicing  too  much  in  blood, 
worthless  blood  though  it  was').  The  games  were  unhesitatingly  con- 
demned by  Greek  philosophy,  and  at  different  times  two  Cynics  and  one 
Christian  gave  their  lives  in  the  arena,  protesting  against  them,  before 
they  were  abolished. 

"I  do  not  think  Christianity  had  any  such  relation  to  slavery  as  is 
here  stated.  St.  Paul's  action  in  sending  back  a  slave  to  his  master,  and 
his  injunction,  'Slaves,  obey  your  masters,'  were  regularly  quoted  on  the 
pro-slavery  side,  down  to  the  nineteenth  century;  on  the  other  hand,  both 
the  popular  philosophies  and  the  Mystery  religions  were  against  slavery 
in  their  whole  tendency,  and  Christianity  of  course  in  time  became  the  chief 
representative  of  these  movements.  Probably  the  best  test  is  the  number 
of  slaves  who  occupied  posts  of  honour  in  the  religious  and  philosophic 
systems,  like  Epictetus,  for  instance,  or  the  many  slaves  who  hold  offices 
in  the  Mithraic  Inscriptions.  I  do  not  happen  to  know  if  any  slaves 
were  made  Christian  bishops,  but  by  analogy  I  should  think  it  likely  that 
some  were.  In  all  the  Mystery  religions,  as  soon  as  you  entered  the 
community,  and  had  communion  with  God.  earthly  distinctions  shrivelled 
away."— G.  M. 


XXVII 

FROM   TIBEBIUS   GRACCHUS   TO   THE    GOD 
EMPEROR  IX  ROME 

1.  The  Science  of  Thwarting  the  Common  Man.  §  2, 
Finance  in  the  Roman  State.  §  3.  The  Last  Years  of  Re- 
publican Polictics.  §  4.  The  Era  of  the  Adventurer  Gen- 
erals. §  5.  The  End  of  the  Republic.  §  6.  The  Coming  of 
the  Princeps.  §  7.  Why  the  Roman  Republic  Failed. 


WE  have  already  twice  likened  the  self-governing  com- 
munity of  Rome  to  a  "Neanderthal"  variety  of  the 
modern  "democratic"  civilized  state,  and  we  shall 
recur  again  to  this  comparison.  In  form  the  two  things,  the 
first  great  primitive  essay  and  its  later  relations,  are  extraordi- 
narily similar;  in  spirit  they  differ  very  profoundly.  Roman 
political  and  social  life,  and  particularly  Roman  political  and 
social  life  in  the  century  between  the  fall  of  Carthage  and  the 
rise  of  Caesar  and  Csesarism,  has  a  very  marked  general  re- 
semblance to  the  political  and  social  life  in  such  countries  as 
the  United  States  of  America  or  the  British  Empire  to-day. 
The  resemblance  is  intensified  by  the  common  use,  with  a  cer- 
tain inaccuracy  in  every  case,  of  such  terms  as  "senate,"  "democ- 
racy," "proletariat,"  and  the  like.  But.  everything  in  the 
Roman  state  was  earlier,  cruder,  and  clumsier;  the  injustices 
were  more  glaring,  the  conflicts  harsher.  There  was  compara- 
tively little  knowledge  and  few  general  ideas.  Aristotle's  sci- 
entific works  were  only  beginning  to  be  read  in  Rome  in  the 
first  century  B.C.  ;  Ferrero,1  it  is  true,  makes  Caasar  familiar 
with  the  Politics  of  Aristotle,  and  ascribes  to  him  the  dream 
of  making  a  "Periclean  Rome,"  but  in  d@ing  so,  Ferrero  seems 
to  be  indulging  in  one  of  those  lapses  into  picturesque  romanc- 

*  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  bk.  i.  ch.  xi. 
424 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         425 

ing  which  are  at  once  the  joy  and  the  snare  of  all  historical 
writers. 

Attention  has  already  heen  drawn  to  the  profound  difference 
between  Koman  and  modern  conditions  due  to  the  absence  of  a 
press,  of  any  popular  education  or  of  the  representative  idea 
in  the  popular  assembly.  Our  world  to-day  is  still  far  from 
solving  the  problem  of  representation  and  from  producing  a 
public  assembly  which  will  really  summarize,  crystallize,  and 
express  the  thought  and  will  of  the  community ;  our  elections 
are  still  largely  an  ingenious  mockery  of  the  common  voter  who 
finds  himsef  helpless  in  the  face  of  party  organizations  which 
reduce  his  free  choice  of  a  representative  to  the  less  unpalatable 
of  two  political  hacks,  but,  even  so,  his  vote,  in  comparison 
with  the  vote  of  an  ordinary  honest  Roman  citizen,  is  an  effec- 
tive instrument.  Too  many  of  our  histories  dealing  with  this 
period  of  Roman  history  write  of  "the  popular  party,"  and  of 
the  votes  of  the  people  and  so  forth,  as  though  such  things 
were  as  much  working  realities  as  they  are  to-day.  But  the 
senators  and  politicians  of  Rome  saw  to  it  that  such  things 
never  did  exist  as  clean  and  wholesome  realities.  These  modern 
phrases  are  very  misleading  unless  they  are  carefully  qualified. 

We  have  already  described  the  gatherings  of  the  popular 
comitia ;  but  that  clumsy  assembly  in  sheep  pens  does  not  con- 
vey the  full  extent  to  which  the  gerrymandering  of  popular 
representation  could  be  carried  in  Rome.  Whenever  there  was 
a  new  enfranchisement  of  citizens  in  Italy,  there  would  be  the 
most  elaborate  trickery  and  counter-trickery  to  enrol  the  new 
voters  into  as  few  or  as  many  of  the  thirty  eld  "tribes"  as  possi- 
ble, or  to  put  them  into  as  few  as  possible  new  tribes.  Since 
the  vote  was  taken  by  tribes,  it  is  obvious  that  however  great 
the  number  of  new  additions  made,  if  they  were  all  got  to- 
gether into  one  tribe,  their  opinion  would  only  count  for  one 
tribal  vote,  and  similarly  if  they  were  crowded  into  just  a  few 
tribes,  old  or  new.  On  the  other  hand,  if  they  were  put  into 
too  many  tribes  their  effect  in  any  particular  tribe  might  be 
inconsiderable.  Here  was  the  sort  of  work  to  fascinate  every 
smart  knave  in  politics.  The  comitia  tributa  could  be  worked 
at  times  so  as  to  vote  right  counter  to  the  general  feeling  of 
the  people.  And  as  we  have  already  noted,  the  great  mass  of 
voters  in  Italy  were  also  disenfranchised  by  distance.  About 
the  middle  period  of  the  Carthaginian  wars  there  were  upwards 


426  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  300,000  Roman  citizens;  about  100  B.C.  there  were  more 
than  900,000,  but  in  effect  the  voting  of  the  popular  assembly 
was  confined  to  a  few  score  thousand  resident  in  and  near 
Rome,  and  mostly  men  of  a  base  type.  And  the  Roman  voters 
were  "organized''  to  an  extent  that  makes  the  Tammany  ma- 
chine of  New  York  seem  artless  and  honest.  They  belonged 
to  clubs,  collegia  sodaUcia-,  having  usually  some  elegant  re- 
ligious pretensions;  and  the  rising  politician  working  his  way 
to  office  went  first  to  the  usurers  and  then  with  the  borrowed 
money  to  these  clubs.  If  the  outside  voters  were  moved  enough 
by  any  question  to  swarm  into  the  city,  it  was  always  possible 
to  put  off  the  voting  by  declaring  the  omens  unfavourable.  If 
they  came  in  unarmed,  they  could  be  intimidated;  if  they 
brought  in  arms,  then  the  cry  was  raised  that  there  was  a  plot 
to  overthrow  the  republic,  and  a  massacre  would  be  organized. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  all  Italy,  all  the  empire  was 
festering  with  discomfort,  anxiety,  and  discontent  in  the  cen- 
tury after  the  destruction  of  Carthage;  a  few  men  were  grow- 
ing very  rich,  and  the  majority  of  people  found  themselves 
entangled  in  an  inexplicable  net  of  uncertain  prices,  jumpy 
markets,  and  debts ;  but  yet  there  was  no  way  at  all  of  stating 
and  clearing  up  the  general  dissatisfaction.  There  is  no  record 
of  a  single  attempt  to  make  the  popular  assembly  a  straightfor- 
ward and  workable  public  organ.  Beneath  the  superficial  ap- 
pearances of  public  affairs  struggled  a  mute  giant  of  public 
opinion  and  public  will,  who  sometimes  made  some  great  po- 
litical effort  a  rush  to  vote  or  such  like,  and  sometimes  broke 
into  actual  violence.  So  long  as  there  was  no  actual  violence, 
the  Senate  and  the  financiers  kept  on  in  their  own  disastrous 
way.  Only  when  they  were  badly  frightened  would  governing 
cliques  or  parties  desist  from  some  nefarious  policy  and  heed 
the  common  good.  The  real  method  of  popular  expression  in 
Italy  in  those  days  was  not  the  comitia  inbuta,  but  the  strike 
and  insurrection,  the  righteous  and  necessary  methods  of  all 
cheated  or  suppressed  peoples.  We  have  seen  in  our  own  days 
in  Great  Britain  a  decline  in  the  prestige  of  parliamentary 
government  and  a  drift  towards  unconstitutional  methods  on 
the  part  of  the  masses  through  exactly  the  same  cause,  through 
the  incurable  disposition  of  politicians  to  gerrymander  the  elec- 
toral machine  until  the  community  is  driven  to  explosion. 

For  insurrectionary  purposes  a  discontented  population  needs 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         427 

a  leader,  and  the  political  history  of  the  concluding  century  of 
Roman  republicanism  is  a  history  of  insurrectionary  leaders 
and  counter-revolutionary  leaders.  Most  of  the  former  are 
manifestly  unscrupulous  adventurers  who  try  to  utilize  the 
public  necessity  and  unhappiness  for  their  own  advancement. 
Many  of  the  historians  of  this  period  betray  a  disposition  to 
take  sides,  and  are  either  aristocratic  in  tone  or  fiercely  demo- 
cratic; but,  indeed,  neither  side  in  these  complex  and  intricate 
disputes  has  a  record  of  high  aims  or  clean  hands.  The  Senate 
and  the  rich  Equestrians  were  vulgar  and  greedy  spirits,  hostile 
and  contemptuous  towards  the  poor  mob;  and  the  populace 
was  ignorant,  unstable,  and  at  least  equally  greedy.  The 
Scipios  in  all  this  record  shine  by  comparison,  a  group  of  gentle- 
men. To  the  motives  of  one  or  the  other  figures  of  the  time, 
to  Tiberius  Gracchus,  for  example,  we  may  perhaps  extend 
the  benefit  of  the  doubt  But  for  the  rest,  they  do  but  demon- 
strate how  clever  and  cunning  men  may  be,  how  subtle  in  con- 
tention, how  brilliant  in  pretence,  and  how  utterly  wanting  in 
wisdom  or  grace  of  spirit.  "A  shambling,  hairy,  brutish,  but 
probably  very  cunning  creature  with  a  big  brain  behind;"  so 
someone,  I  think  it  was  Sir  Harry  Johnston,  has  described 
Homo  NeandertJialensis. 

To  this  day  we  must  still  use  similar  terms  to  describe  the 
soul  of  the  politician.  The  statesman  has  still  to  oust  the 
politician  from  his  lairs  and  weapon  heaps.  History  has  still 
to  become  a  record  of  human  dignity. 

§2 

Another  respect  in  which  the  Roman  system  was  a  crude 
anticipation  of  our  own,  and  different  from  any  preceding 
political  system  we  have  considered,  was  that  it  was  a  cash 
and  credit-using  system.  Money  had  been  in  the  world  as  yet 
for  only  a  few  centuries.  But  its  use  had  been  growing;  it 
was  providing  a  fluid  medium  for  trade  and  enterprise,  and 
changing  economic  conditions  profoundly.  In  republican  Rome, 
the  financier  and  the  "money"  interest  began  to  play  a  part 
recognizably  similar  to  their  roles  to-day. 

We  have  already  noted — in  our  account  of  Herodotus — that 
a  first  effect  of  money  was  to  give  freedom  of  movement  and 
leisure  to  a  number  of  people  who  could  not  otherwise  have 


428  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

enjoyed  these  privileges.  And  that  is  the  peculiar  value  of 
money  to  mankind.  Instead  of  a  worker  or  helper  being  paid 
in  kind  and  in  such  a  way  that  he  is  tied  as  much  in  his  en- 
joyment as  in  his  labour,  money  leaves  him  free  to  do  as  he 
pleases  amidst  a  wide  choice  of  purchasable  aids,  eases,  and 
indulgences.  He  may  eat  his  money  or  drink  it  or  give  it  to  a 
temple  or  spend  it  in  learning  something  or  save  it  against 
some  unforeseen  occasion.  That  is  the  good  of  money,  the  free- 
dom of  its  universal  convertibility.  But  the  freedom  money 
gives  the  poor  man  is  nothing  to  the  freedom  money  has  given 
the  rich  man.  With  money  rich  men  ceased  to  be  tied  to 
lands,  houses,  stores,  flocks  and  herds.  They  could  change  the 
nature  and  locality  of  their  possessions  with  an  unheard-of 
freedom.  In  the  third  and  second  century  B.C.,  this  release, 
this  untethering  of  wealth,  began  to  tell  upon  the  general  eco- 
nomic life  of  the  Roman  and  Hellenized  world.  People  began 
to  buy  land  and  the  like  not  for  use,  but  to  sell  again  at  a  profit ; 
people  borrowed  to  buy,  speculation  developed.  No  doubt  there 
were  bankers  in  the  Babylon  of  1000  B.C.,  but  they  lent 
in  a  far  more  limited  and  solid  way,  bars  of  metal  and  stocks 
of  goods.  That  earlier  world  was  a  world  of  barter  and  pay- 
ment in  kind,  and  it  went  slowly — and  much  more  staidly  and 
stably — for  that  reason.  In  that  state  the  vast  realm  of  China 
has  remained  almost  down  to  the  present  time. 

The  big  cities  before  Rome  were  trading  and  manufacturing 
cities.  Such  were  Corinth  and  Carthage  and  Syracuse.  But 
Rome  never  produced  a  very  considerable  industrial  popula- 
tion, and  her  warehouses  never  rivalled  those  of  Alexandria. 
The  little  port  of  Ostia  was  always  big  enough  for  her  needs. 
Rome  was  a  political  and  financial  capital,  and  in  the  latter 
respect,  at  least,  she  was  a  new  sort  of  city.  She  imported 
profits  and  tribute,  and  very  little  went  out  from  her  in  return. 
The  wharves  of  Ostia  were  chiefly  busy  unloading  corn  from 
Sicily  and  Africa  and  loot  from  all  the  world. 

After  the  fall  of  Carthage  the  Roman  imagination  went  wild 
with  the  hitherto  unknown  possibilities  of  finance.  Money, 
like  most  other  inventions,  had  "happened"  to  mankind,  and 
men  had  still  to  develop — to-day  they  have  still  to  perfect— 
the  science  and  morality  of  money.  One  sees  the  thing  "catch- 
ing on"  in  the  recorded  life  and  the  writings  of  Cato  the  Censor. 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR          429 

In  his  early  days  he  was  bitterly  virtuous  against  usury;  in 
his  later  he  was  devising  ingenious  schemes  for  safe  usury. 

In  this  curiously  interesting  century  of  Roman  history  we 
find  man  after  man  asking,  "What  has  happened  to  Rome?" 
Various  answers  are  made — a  decline  in  religion,  a  decline  from 
the  virtues  of  the  Roman  forefathers,  Greek  "intellectual 
poison,"  and  the  like.  We  who  can  look  at  the  problem  with  a 
large  perspective,  can  see  that  what  had  happened  to  Rome 
was  "money" — the  new  freedoms  and  chances  and  opportunities 
that  money  opened  out.  Money  floated  the  Romans  off  the 
firm  ground,  everyone  was  getting  hold  of  money,  the  majority 
by  the  simple  expedient  of  running  into  debt ;  the  eastward  ex- 
pansion of  the  empire  was  very  largely  a  hunt  for  treasure  in 
strong  rooms  and  temples  to  keep  pace  with  the  hunger  of  the 
new  need.  The  Equestrian  order,  in  particular,  became  the 
money  power.  Everyone  was  developing  property.  Farmers 
were  giving  up  corn  and  cattle,  borrowing  money,  buying 
slaves,  and  starting  the  more  intensive  cultivation  of  oil  and 
wine.  Money  was  young  in  human  experience  and  wild,  no- 
body had  it  under  control.  It  fluctuated  greatly.  It  was  now 
abundant  and  now  scarce.  Men  made  sly  and  crude  schemes 
to  corner  it,  to  hoard  it,  to  send  up  prices  by  releasing  hoarded 
metals.  A  small  body  of  very  shrewd  men  was  growing  im- 
mensely rich.  Many  patricians  were  growing  poor  and  irritated 
and  unscrupulous.  Among  the  middle  sort  of  peoples  there  was 
much  hope,  much  adventure,  and  much  more  disappointment. 
The  growing  mass  of  the  expropriated  was  permeated  by  that 
vague,  baffled,  and  hopeless  sense  of  being  inexplicably  bested, 
which  is  the  preparatory  condition  for  all  great  revolutionary 
movements. 

§  3 

The  first  conspicuous  leader  to  appeal  to  the  gathering  revolu- 
tionary feeling  in  Italy  was  Tiberius  Gracchus.  He  looks  more 
like  an  honest  man  than  any  other  figure  in  this  period  of 
history,  unless  it  be  Scipio  Africanus  the  Elder.  At  first 
Tiberius  Gracchus  was  a  moderate  reformer  of  a  rather  reac- 
tionary type.  He  wished  to  restore  the  yeoman  class  to  prop- 
erty, very  largely  because  he  believed  that  class  to  be  the  back- 
bone of  the  army,  and  his  military  experience  in  Spain  before 


430  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  after  the  destruction  of  Carthage  had  impressed  upon  him 
the  declining  efficiency  of  the  legions.  He  was  what  we  should 
call  nowadays  a  "Back-to-the-land"  man.  He  did  not  under- 
stand and  few  people  understand  to-day,  how  much  easier  it  is 
to  shift  population  from  the  land  into  the  towns,  than  to  return 
it  to  the  laborious  and  simple  routines  of  agricultural  life.  He 
wanted  to  revive  the  Licinian  laws,  which  had  been  established 
when  Camillus  built  his  temple  of  Concord  nearly  two  centuries 
and  a  half  before  (see  Chap,  xxvi,  §  2),  so  far  as  they  broke  up 
great  estates  and  restrained  slave  labour. 

These  Licinian  laws  had  repeatedly  been  revived  and  re- 
peatedly lapsed  to  a  dead  letter  again.  It  was  only  when  the 
big  proprietors  in  the  Senate  opposed  this  proposal  that  Tibe- 
rius Gracchus  turned  to  the  people  and  began  a  furious  agitation 
for  popular  government.  He  created  a  commission  to  inquire 
into  the  title  of  all  landowners.  In  the  midst  of  his  activities 
occurred  one  of  the  most  extraordinary  incidents  in  history. 
Attains,  the  king  of  the  rich  country  of  Pergamum  in  Asia 
Minor,  died  (133  B.C.),  and  left  his  kingdom  to  the  Roman 
people. 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  understand  the  motives  of  this  bequest. 
Pergamum  was  a  country  allied  to  Rome,  and  so  moderately 
secure  from  aggression;  and  the  natural  consequence  of  such 
a  will  was  to  provoke  a  violent  scramble  among  the  senatorial 
gangs  and  a  dispute  between  them  and  the  people  for  the  spoils 
of  the  new  acquisition.  Practically  Attains  handed  over  his 
country  to  be  looted.  There  were  of  course  many  Italian  busi- 
ness people  established  in  the  country  and  a  strong  party  of 
native  rich  men  in  close  relations  with  Rome.  To  them,  no 
doubt,  a  coalescence  with  the  Roman  system  would  have  been 
acceptable.  Josephus  bears  witness  to  such  a  desire  for  an- 
nexation among  the  rich  men  of  Syria,  a  desire  running  counter 
to  the  wishes  of  both  king  and  people.  This  Pergamum  bequest, 
astonishing  in  itself,  had  the  still  more  astonishing  result  of 
producing  imitations  in  other  quarters.  In  96  B.C.  Ptolemy 
Apion  bequeathed  Cyrenaica,  in  North  Africa,  to  the  Roman 
people;  in  81  B.C.  Alexander  II,  King  of  Egypt,  followed  suit 
with  Egypt,  a  legacy  too  big  for  the  courage  if  not  for  the 
appetite  of  the  Senators,  and  they  declined  it;  in  74  B.C. 
Nicomedes,  King  of  Bithynia,  demised  Bithynia.  Of  these 
latter  testamentary  freaks  we  will  say  no  more  here.  But  it 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR,        431 

will  be  manifest  how  great  an  opportunity  was  given  Tiberius 
Gracchus  by  the  bequest  of  Attalus,  of  accusing  the  rich  of 
greed  and  of  proposing  to  decree  the  treasures  of  Attalus  to 
the  commonalty.  He  proposed  to  use  this  new  wealth  to  provide 
seed,  stock,  and  agricultural  implements  for  the  resettlement 
of  the  land. 

His  movement  was  speedily  entangled  in  the  complexities  of 
the  Eoman  electoral  system — without  a  simple  and  straight- 
forward electoral  method,  all  popular  movements  in  all  ages 
necessarily  become  entangled  and  maddened  in  constitutional 
intricacies,  and  almost  as  necessarily  lead  to  bloodshed.  It  was 
needed,  if  his  work  was  to  go  on,  that  Tiberius  Gracchus  should 
continue  to  be  tribune,  and  it  was  illegal  for  him  to  be  tribune 
twice  in  succession.  He  overstepped  the  bounds  of  legality,  and 
stood  for  the  tribuneship  a  second  time;  the  peasants  who 
came  in  from  the  countryside  to  vote  for  him  came  in  armed; 
the  cry  that  he  was  aiming  at  a  tyranny,  the  cry  that  had  long 
ago  destroyed  Mselius  and  Manlius,  was  raised  in  the  Senate, 
the  friends  of  "law  and  order"  went  to  the  Capitol  in  state,  ac- 
companied by  a  rabble  of  dependents  armed  with  staves  and 
bludgeons;  there  was  a  conflict,  or  rather  a  massacre  of  the 
revolutionaries,  in  which  nearly  three  hundred  people  were 
killed,  and  Tiberius  Gracchus  was  beaten  to  death  with  the 
fragments  of  a  broken  bench  by  two  Senators. 

Thereupon  the  Senators  attempted  a  sort  of  counter-revolu- 
tion, and  proscribed  many  of  the  followers  of  Tiberius  Gracchus ; 
but  the  state  of  public  opinion  was  so  sullen  and  threatening 
that  this  movement  was  dropped  and  Scipio  Nasica,  who  was 
implicated  in  the  death  of  Tiberius,  though  he  occupied  the 
position  of  pontifex  maximus  and  should  have  remained  in 
Rome  for  the  public  sacrifices  which  were  the  duties  of  that 
official,  went  abroad  to  avoid  trouble. 

The  uneasiness  of  Italy  next  roused  Scipio  Africanus  the 
Younger  to  propose  the  enfranchisement  of  all  Italy.  But  he 
died  suddenly  before  he  could  carry  the  proposal  into  effect. 

Then  followed  the  ambiguous  career  of  Caius  Gracchus,  the 
brother  of  Tiberius,  who  followed  some  tortuous  "policy"  that 
still  exercises  the  mind  of  historians.  He  increased  the  burthens 
of  taxation  laid  upon  the  provinces,  it  is  supposed  with  the  idea 
of  setting  the  modern  financiers  (the  Equites)  against  the  sena- 
torial landowners.  He  gave  the  former  the  newly  bequeathed 


432  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

taxes  of  Asia  to  farm,  and,  what  is  worse,  he  gave  them  control 
of  the  special  courts  set  up  to  prevent  extortion.  He  started 
enormous  public  works  and  particularly  the  construction  of 
new  roads,  and  he  is  accused  of  making  a  political  use  of  the 
contracts.  He  revived  the  proposal  to  enfranchise  Italy.  He 
increased  the  distribution  of  subsidized  cheap  corn  to  the  Roman 
citizens.  .  .  .  Here  we  cannot  attempt  to  disentangle  his 
schemes,  much  less  to  judge  him.  But  that  his  policy  was  offen- 
sive to  the  groups  that  controlled  the  Senate  there  can  be  no 
doubt  whatever.  He  was  massacred  by  the  champions  of  "law 
and  order/7  with  about  three  thousands  of  his  followers,  in 
the  streets  of  Rome  in  121  B.C.  His  decapitated  head  was 
carried  to  the  Senate  on  the  point  of  a  pike. 

(A  reward  of  its  weight  in  gold,  says  Plutarch,  had  been 
offered  for  this  trophy :  and  its  captor,  acting  in  the  true  spirit 
of  a  champion  of  "big  business,"  filled  the  brain-case  with  lead 
on  its  way  to  the  scales.) 

"In  spite  of  these  prompt  firm  measures  the  Senate  was  not 
to  enjoy  the  benefits  of  peace  and  the  advantages  of  a  control 
of  the  imperial  resources  for  long.  Within  ten  years  the  people 
were  in  revolt  again. 

In  118  B.C.  the  throne  of  Numidia,  the  semi-barbaric  king- 
dom that  had  arisen  in  North  Africa  upon  the  ruins  of  the 
civilized  Carthaginian  power,  was  seized  by  a  certain  able 
Jugurtha,  who  had  served  with  the  Roman  armies  in  Spain,  and 
had  a  knowledge  of  the  Roman  character.  He  provoked  the 
military  intervention  of  Rome.  But  the  Romans  found  that 
their  military  power,  under  a  Senate  of  financiers  and  land- 
lords, was  very  different  from  what  it  had  been  even  in  the  days 
of  the  younger  Scipio  Africanus.  " Jugurtha  bought  over  the 
Commissioners  sent  out  to  watch  him,  the  Senators  charged 
with  their  prosecution,  and  the  generals  in  command  against 
him."  l  There  is  a  mistaken  Roman  proverb :  "pecunia  non 
olet"  (money  does  not  stink),  for  the  money  of  Jugurtha  stank 
even  in  Rome.  There  was  an  angry  agitation;  and  a  capable 
soldier  of  lowly  origin,  Marius,  was  carried  to  the  consulship 
(107  B.C.)  on  the  wave  of  popular  indignation.  Marius  made 
no  attempt  on  the  model  of  the  Gracchi  to  restore  the  backbone 
of  the  army  by  rehabilitating  the  yeoman  class.  He  was  a 
professional  soldier  with  a  high  standard  of  efficiency  and  a 

1  Ferrero. 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         433 

disposition  to  take  short  cuts.  He  simply  raised  troops  from 
among  the  poor,  whether  countrymen  or  townsmen,  paid  them 
•well,  disciplined  them  thoroughly,  and  (106  B.C.)  ended  the 
seven  years'  war  with  Jugurtha  by  bringing  that  chieftain  in 
chains  to  Rome.  It  did  not  occur  to  anybody  that  incidentally 
Marius  had  also  created  a  professional  army  with  no  interest 
to  hold  it  together  but  its  pay.  He  then  held  on  to  the  consul- 
ship more  or  less  illegally  for  several  years,  and  in  102  and  101 
B.C.  repelled  a  threatening  move  of  the  Germans  (who  thus 
appear  in  our  history  for  the  first  time),  who  were  raiding 
through  Gaul  towards  Italy.  He  gained  two  victories ;  one  on 
Italian  soil.  He  was  hailed  as  the  saviour  of  his  country,  a 
second  Camillus  (100  B.C.). 

The  social  tensions  of  the  time  mocked  that  comparison  with 
Camillus.  The  Senate  benefited  by  the  greater  energy  in  for- 
eign affairs  and  the  increased  military  efficiency  that  Marius 
had  introduced,  but  the  sullen,  shapeless  discontent  of  the  mass 
of  the  people  was  still  seeking  some  effective  outlet.  The  rich 
grew  richer  and  the  poor  poorer.  It  was  impossible  to  stifle 
the  consequences  of  that  process  for  ever  by  political  trickery. 
The  Italian  people  were  still  unenfranchised.  Two  extreme 
democratic  leaders,  Saturninus  and  Glaucia,  were  assassinated, 
but  that  familiar  senatorial  remedy  failed  to  assuage  the  popu- 
lace on  this  occasion.  In  92  B.C.  an  aristocratic  official,  Eutilius 
Rufus,  who  had  tried  to  restrain  the  exactions  of  the  financiers 
in  Asia  Minor,  was  condemned  on  a  charge  of  corruption  so 
manifestly  trumped  up  that  it  deceived  no  one;  and  in  91  B.C., 
Livius  Drusus,  a  newly  elected  tribune  of  the  people,  who  was 
making  capital  out  of  the  trial  of  Rutilius  Rufus,  was  assassi- 
nated. He  had  proposed  a  general  enfranchisement  of  the 
Italians,  and  he  had  foreshadowed  not  only  another  land  law, 
but  a  general  abolition  of  debts.  Yet  for  all  this  vigour  on 
the  part  of  the  senatorial  usurers,  landgrabbers,  and  forestallers, 
the  hungry  and  the  anxious  were  still  insurgent.  The  murder 
of  Drusus  was  the  last  drop  in  the  popular  cup ;  Italy  blazed  into 
a  desperate  insurrection. 

There  followed  two  years  of  bitter  civil  war,  the  Social  War. 
It  was  a  war  between  the  idea  of  a  united  Italy  and  the  idea  of 
the  rule  of  the  Roman  Senate.  It  was  not  a  "social"  war  in 
the  modern  sense,  but  a  war  between  Rome  and  her  Italian 
allies  (allies  —  Socii).  "Roman  generals,  trained  in  the  tradi- 


434  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tions  of  colonial  warfare,  marched  ruthlessly  up  and  down  Italy, 
burning  farms,  sacking  towns,  and  carrying  off  men,  women, 
and  children,  to  sell  them  in  the  open  market  or  work  them 
in  gangs  upon  their  estates."  l  Marius  and  an  aristocratic  gen- 
eral, Sulla,  who  had  been  with  him  in  Africa  and  who  was 
his  bitter  rival,  both  commanded  on  the  side  of  Rome.  But 
though  the  insurgents  experienced  defeats  and  looting,  neither 
of  these  generals  brought  the  war  to  an  end.  It  was  ended  in 
a  manner  (89  B.C.)  by  the  practical  surrender  of  the  Roman 
Senate  to  the  idea  of  reform.  The  spirit  was  taken  out  of  the 
insurrection  by  the  concession  of  their  demands  "in  principle" ; 
and  then  as  soon  as  the  rebels  had  dispersed,  the  usual  cheating 
of  the  new  voters,  by  such  methods  as  we  have  explained  in  §  1 
of  this  chapter,  was  resumed. 

By  the  next  year  (88  B.C.)  the  old  round  had  begun  again.  It 
was  mixed  up  with  the  personal  intrigues  of  Marius  and  Sulla 
against  each  other ;  but  the  struggle  had  taken  on  another  com- 
plexion through  the  army  reforms  of  Marius,  which  had  created 
a  new  type  of  legionary,  a  landless  professional  soldier  with  no 
interest  in  life  but  pay  and  plunder,  and  with  no  feeling  of  loy- 
alty except  to  a  successful  general.  A  popular  tribune,  Sul- 
picius,  was  bringing  forward  some  new  laws  affecting  debt,  and 
the  consuls  were  dodging  the  storm  by  declaring  a  suspension 
of  public  business.  Then  came  the  usual  resort  to  violence,  and 
the  followers  of  Sulpicius  drove  the  consuls  from  the  forum. 
But  here  it  is  that  the  new  forces  which  the  new  army  had 
made  possible  came  into  play.  King  Mithridates  of  Pontus, 
the  Hellenized  king  of  the  southern  shores  of  the  Black  Sea 
east  of  Bithynia,  was  pressing  Rome  into  war.  One  of  the 
proposed  laws  of  Sulpicius  was  that  Marius  should  command 
the  armies  sent  against  this  Mithridates.  Whereupon  Sulla 
marched  the  army  he  had  commanded  throughout  the  Social 
War  to  Rome,  Marius  and  Sulpicius  fled,  and  a  new  age,  an 
age  of  military  pronunciamentos,  began. 

Of  how  Sulla  had  himself  made  commander  against  Mithri- 
dates and  departed,  and  of  how  legions  friendly  to  Marius  then 
seized  power,  how  Marius  returned  to  Italy  and  enjoyed  a 
thorough  massacre  of  his  political  opponents  and  died,  sated, 
of  fever,  we  cannot  tell  in  any  detail.  But  one  measure  dur- 
ing the  Marian  reign  of  terror  did  much  to  relieve  the  social 

1  Ferrero. 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         435 

tension,  and  that  was  the  abolition  of  three-quarters  of  all  out- 
standing debts.  Nor  can  we  tell  here  how  Sulla  made  a  dis- 
creditable peace  with  Mithridates  (who  had  massacred  a 
hundred  thousand  Italians  in  Asia  Minor)  in  order  to  bring  his 
legions  back  to  Rome,  defeat  the  Marians  at  the  battle  of  the 
Colline  Gate  of  Home,  and  reverse  the  arrangements  of  Marius. 
Sulla  restored  law  and  order  by  the  proscription  and  execu- 
tion of  over  five  thousand  people.  He  desolated  large  parts  of 
Italy,  restored  the  Senate  to  power,  repealed  many  of  the 
recent  laws,  though  he  was  unable  to  restore  the  cancelled 
burden  of  debt,  and  then,  feeling  bored  by  politics  and  having 
amassed  great  riches,  he  retired  with  an  air  of  dignity  into 
private  life,  gave  himself  up  to  abominable  vices,  and  so  pres- 
ently died,  eaten  up  with  some  disgusting  disease  produced 
by  debauchery.1 

§4 

Political  life  in  Italy  was  not  so  much  tranquillized  as 
stunned  by  the  massacres  and  confiscations  of  Marius  and  Sulla. 
The  scale  upon  which  this  history  is  planned  will  not  permit  us 
to  tell  here  of  the  great  adventurers  who,  relying  more  and 
more  on  the  support  of  the  legions,  presently  began  to  scheme 
and  intrigue  again  for  dictatorial  power  in  Rome.  In  73  B.C. 
all  Italy  was  terrified  by  a  rising  of  the  slaves,  and  particularly 
of  the  gladiators,  led  by  a  gladiator  from  Thessaly,  Spartacus. 
He  and  seventy  others  had  fled  out  from  a  gladiatorial  "farm" 
at  Capua.  Similar  risings  had  already  occurred  in  Sicily. 
The  forces  under  Spartacus  necessarily  became  a  miscellaneous 
band  drawn  from  eas«t  and  west,  without  any  common  idea 
except  the  idea  of  dispersing  and  getting  home ;  nevertheless,  he 
held  out  in  southern  Italy  for  two  years,  using  the  then  ap- 
parently extinct  crater  of  Vesuvius  for  a  time  as  a  natural 
fortress.  The  Italians,  for  all  their  love  of  gladiatorial  display, 
failed  to  appreciate  this  conversion  of  the  whole  country  into 
an  arena,  this  bringing  of  the  gladiatorial  sword  to  the  door, 
and  when  at  last  Spartacus  was  overthrown,  their  terror  changed 
to  frantic  cruelty,  six  thousand  of  his  captured  followers  were 

1  Plutarch.  To  which,  however,  G.  M.  adds  the  following  note:  "It  is 
generally  believed  that  Sulla  died  through  bursting  a  blood-vessel  in  a  fit 
of  temper.  The  story  of  abominable  vices  seems  to  be  only  the  regular 
slander  of  the  Roman  mob  against  anyone  who  did  not  live  in  public." 


430  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

crucified — long  miles  of  nailed  and  drooping  victims — along 
the  Appian  Way. 

Here  we  cannot  deal  at  any  length  with  Lucullus,  who  in- 
vaded Pontus  and  fought  Mithridates,  and  brought  the  culti- 
vated cherry-tree  to  Europe;  nor  can  we  tell  how  ingeniously 
Pompey  the  Great  stole  the  triumph  and  most  of  the  prestige 
Lucullus  had  won  in  Armenia  beyond  Pontus.  Lucullus,  like 
Sulla,  retired  into  an  opulent  private  life,  but  with  more  ele- 
gance and  with  a  more  gracious  end.  We  cannot  relate  in  any 
detail  how  Julius  Caesar  accumulated  reputation  in  the  west, 
by  conquering  Gaul,  defeating  the  German  tribes  upon  the 
Rhine,  and  pushing  a  punitive  raid  across  the  Straits  of  Dover 
into  Britain.  More  and  more  important  grow  the  legions; 
less  and  less  significant  are  the  Senate  and  the  assemblies  of 
Rome.  But  there  is  a  certain  grim  humour  about  the  story 
of  Crassus  that  we  cannot  altogether  neglect. 

This  Crassus  was  a  great  money-lender  and  forestaller.  He 
was  a  typical  man  of  the  new  Equestrian  type,  the  social  equiva- 
lent of  a  modern  munition  profiteer.  He  first  grew  rich  by 
buying  up  the  property  of  those  proscribed  by  Sulla.  His 
earliest  exploits  in  the  field  were  against  Spartacus,  whom 
finally  he  crushed  by  great  payments  and  exertions  after  a 
prolonged  and  expensive  campaign.  He  then,  as  the  outcome  of 
complicated  bargains,  secured  the  command  in  the  east  and 
prepared  to  emulate  the  glories  of  Lucullus,  who  had  pushed  east 
from  Pergamum  and  Bithynia  into  Pontus,  and  of  Pompey, 
who  had  completed  the  looting  of  Armenia. 

His  experiences  serve  to  demonstrate  the  gross  ignorance 
with  which  the  Romans  were  conducting  their  affairs  at  that 
time.  He  crossed  the  Euphrates,  expecting  to  find  in  Persia 
another  Hellenized  kingdom  like  Pontus.  But,  as  we  have 
already  intimated,  the  great  reservoirs  of  nomadic  peoples  that 
stretched  round  from  the  Danube  across  Russia  into  Central 
Asia,  had  been  raining  back  into  the  lands  between  the  Caspian 
Sea  and  the  Indus  that  Alexander  had  conquered  for  Hellenism. 
Crassus  found  himself  against  the  "Scythian"  again;  against 
mobile  tribes  of  horsemen  led  by  a  monarch  in  Median  costume.1 
The  particular  variety  of  " Scythian"  he  encountered  was  called 
the  Parthian.  It  is  possible  that  in  the  Parthians  a  Mongo- 
lian (Turanian)  element  was  now  mingled  with  the  Aryan 

1  Plutarch. 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         437 

strain;  but  the  campaign  of  Crassus  beyond  the  Euphrates  is 
curiously  like  the  campaign  of  Darius  beyond  the  Danube ;  there 
is  the  same  heavy  thrusting  of  an  infantry  force  against  elu- 
sive light  horsemen.  But  Crassus  was  less  quick  than  Darius 
to  realize  the  need  of  withdrawal,  and  the  Parthians  were  bet- 
ter bowmen  than  the  Scythians  Darius  met.  They  seem  to 
have  had  some  sort  of  noisy  projectile  of  unusual  strength  and 
force,  something  different  from  an  ordinary  arrow.1  The  cam- 
paign culminated  in  that  two  days'  massacre  of  the  hot,  thirsty, 
hungry,  and  weary  Roman  legions  which  is  known  as  the 
battle  of  Carrha3  (53  B.C.).  They  toiled  through  the  sand,  charg- 
ing an  enemy  who  always  evaded  their  charge  and  rode  round 
them  and  shot  them  to  pieces.  Twenty  thousand  of  them  were 
killed,  and  ten  thousand  marched  on  eastward  as  prisoners  into 
slavery  in  Iran. 

What  became  of  Crassus  is  not  clearly  known.  There  is  a 
story,  probably  invented  for  our  moral  benefit  and  suggested 
by  his  usuries,  that  he  fell  alive  into  the  hands  of  the  Parthians 
and  was  killed  by  having  molten  gold  poured  down  his  throat. 

But  this  disaster  has  a  very  great  significance  indeed  to  our 
general  history  of  mankind.  It  serves  to  remind  us  that  from 
the  Rhine  to  the  Euphrates,  all  along  to  the  north  of  the  Alps 
and  Danube  and  Black  Sea,  stretched  one  continuous  cloud 
of  nomadic  and  semi-nomadic  peoples,  whom  the  statescraft 
of  imperial  Rome  was  never  able  to  pacify  and  civilize,  nor 
her  military  science  subdue.  We  have  already  called  atten- 
tion to  a  map  showing  how  the  Second  Babylonian  Empire, 
the  Chaldean  Empire,  lay  like  a  lamb  in  the  embrace  of  the 
Median  power.  In  exactly  the  same  way  the  Roman  Empire 
lay  like  a  lamb  in  the  embrace  of  this  great  crescent  of  outer 
barbarians.  Not  only  was  Rome  never  able  to  thrust  back 
or  assimilate  that  superincumbent  crescent,  but  she  was  never 
able  to  organize  the  Mediterranean  Sea  into  a  secure  and 

1  The  bow  was  probably  the  composite  bow,  so-called  because  it  is  made 
of  several  plates  (five  or  so)  of  horn,  like  the  springs  of  a  carriage:  it 
discharges  a  high-speed  arrow  with  a  twang.  This  was  the  bow  the  Mon- 
gols used.  This  short  composite  bow  (it  was  not  a  long  bow)  was  quite 
old  in  human  experience.  It  was  the  bow  of  Odysseus;  the  Assyrians  had 
it  in  a  modified  form.  It  went  out  in  Greece,  but  it  survived  as 
the  Mongol  bow.  It  was  quite  short,  very  stiff  to  pull,  with  a  flat 
trajectory,  a  remarkable  range,  and  a  great  noise  (cp.  Homer's 
reference  to  the  twang  of  the  bow).  It  went  out  in  the  Mediterranean 
because  the  climate  was  not  good  for  it,  and  because  there  were  insuffi- 
cient animals  to  supply  the  horn. — J.  L.  M. 


458 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         439 

orderly  system  of  communication  between  one  part  of  her  em- 
pire and  another.  Quite  unknown  as  yet  to  Rome,  the  Mon- 
golian tribes  from  North-eastern  Asia,  the  Huns  and  their 
kin,  walled  back  and  driven  out  from  China  by  the  Tsi  and 
Han  dynasties,  were  drifting  and  pressing  westward,  mixing 
with  the  Parthians,  the  Scythians,  the  Teutons  and  the  like, 
or  driving  them  before  them. 

Never  at  any  time  did  the  Romans  succeed  in  pushing  their 
empire  beyond  Mesopotamia,  and  upon  Mesopotamia  their  hold 
was  never  very  secure.  Before  the  close  of  the  republic  that 
power  of  assimilation  which  had  been  the  secret  of  their  success 
was  giving  way  to  "patriotic"  exclusiveness  and  "patriotic" 
greed.  Rome  plundered  and  destroyed  Asia  Minor  and  Baby- 
lonia, which  were  the  necessary  basis  for  an  eastward  extension 
to  India,  just  as  she  had  destroyed  and  looted  Carthage  and 
so  had  no  foothold  for  extension  into  Africa,  and  just  as  she  had 
destroyed  Corinth  and  so  cut  herself  off  from  an  easy  way  into 
the  heart  of  Greece.  Western  European  writers,  impressed 
by  the  fact  that  later  on  Rome  Romanized  and  civilized  Gaul 
and  South  Britain  and  restored  the  scene  of  her  earlier  devasta- 
tions in  Spain  to  prosperity,  are  apt  to  ignore  that  over  far 
greater  areas  to  the  south  and  east  her  influence  was  to  weaken 
and  so  restore  to  barbarism  the  far  wider  conquests  of  Hellenic 
civilization. 

§  5 

But  among  the  politicians  of  Italy  in  the  first  century  B.C. 
there  were  no  maps  of  Germany  and  Russia,  Africa  and  Cen- 
tral Asia,  and  no  sufficient  intelligence  to  study  them  had  they 
existed.  Rome  never  developed  the  fine  curiosities  that  sent 
Hanno  and  the  sailors  of  Pharaoh  Necho  down  the  coasts  of 
Africa.  When,  in  the  first  century  B.C.,  the  emissaries  of  the 
Han  dynasty  reached  the  eastern  shores  of  the  Caspian  Sea,  they 
found  only  stories  of  a  civilization  that  had  receded.  The 
memory  of  Alexander  still  lived  in  these  lands,  but  of  Rome 
men  only  knew  that  Pompey  had  come  to  the  western  shores 
of  the  Caspian  and  gone  away  again,  and  that  Crassus  had 
been  destroyed.  Rome  was  pre-occupied  at  home.  What  men- 
tal energy  remained  over  in  the  Roman  citizen  from  the  at- 
tempt to  grow  personally  rich  and  keep  personally  safe  was 


440  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

intent  upon  the  stratagems  and  strokes  and  counter-strokes  of 
the  various  adventurers  who  were  now  manifestly  grappling  for 
the  supreme  power. 

It  is  the  custom  of  historians  to  treat  these  struggles  with 
extreme  respect.  In  particular  the  figure  of  Julius  Caesar 
is  set  up  as  if  it  were  a  star  of  supreme  brightness  and  impor- 
tance in  the  history  of  mankind.  Yet  a  dispassionate  considera- 
tion of  the  known  facts  fails  altogether  to  justify  this  demi- 
god theory  of  Ca?sar.  Not  even  that  precipitate  wrecker  of 
splendid  possibilities,  Alexander  the  Great,  has  been  so  magni- 
fied and  dressed  up  for  the  admiration  of  careless  and  uncritical 
readers.  There  is  a  type  of  scholar  who,  to  be  plain,  sits  and 
invents  marvellous  world  policies  for  the  more  conspicuous 
figures  in  history  with  the  merest  scraps  of  justification  or  with 
no  justification  at  all.  We  are  told  that  Alexander  planned 
the  conquest  of  Carthage  and  Rome  and  the  complete  subjuga- 
tion of  India  and  that  only  his  death  shattered  these  schemes. 
What  we  know  for  certain  is  that  he  conquered  the  Persian 
Empire,  and  never  went  far  beyond  its  boundaries ;  and  that 
when  he  was  supposed  to  be  making  these  vast  and  noble  plans, 
he  was  in  fact  indulging  in  such  monstrous  antics  as  his  mourn- 
ing for  his  favourite  Hephaestion,  and  as  his  main  occupation  he 
was  drinking  himself  to  death.  So,  too,  Julius  Caesar  is  cred- 
ited with  the  intention  of  doing  just  that  one  not  impossible 
thing  which  would  have  secured  the  Roman  Empire  from  its 
ultimate  collapse — namely,  the  systematic  conquest  and  civiliza- 
tion of  Europe  as  far  as  the  Baltic  and  the  Dnieper.  He  was 
to  have  marched  upon  Germany,  says  Plutarch,  through  Par- 
thia  and  Scythia,  round  the  north  of  the  Caspian  and  Black  Seas. 
Yet  the  fact  we  have  to  reconcile  with  this  wise  and  magnificent 
project  is  that  at  the  crest  of  his  power,  Caesar,  already  a  bald, 
middle-aged  man,  past  the  graces  and  hot  impulses  of  youthful 
love,  spent  the  better  part  of  a  year  in  Egypt,  feasting  and 
entertaining  himself  in  amorous  pleasantries  with  the  Egyptian 
queen,  Cleopatra.  And  afterwards  he  brought  her  with  him  to 
Rome,  where  her  influence  over  him  was  bitterly  resented. 
Such  complications  with  a  woman  mark  the  elderly  sensualist 
or  sentimentalist — he  was  fifty-four  at  the  commencement  of 
the  affaire — rather  than  the  master-ruler  of  men. 

On  the  side  of  the  superman  idea  of  Caesar,  we  have  to  count 
a  bust  in  the  Naples  Museum.  It  represents  a  fine  and  in- 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         441 

tellectual  face,  very  noble  in  its  expression,  and  we  can  couple 
with  that  the  story  that  his  head,  even  at  birth,  was  unusually 
large  and  finely  formed.  But  there  is  really  no  satisfying 
evidence  that  this  well-known  bust  does  represent  Caesar,  and 
it  is  hard  to  reconcile  its  austere  serenity  with  the  reputation 
for  violent  impulse  and  disorderliness  that  clung  to  him.  Other 
busts  of  a  quite  different  man  are  also,  with  more  probability, 
ascribed  to  him. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  he  was  a  dissolute  and  extrava- 
gant young  man — the  scandals  cluster  thick  about  his  sojourn 
in  Bithynia,  whither  he  fled  from  Sulla;  he  was  the  associate 
of  the  reprobate  Clodius  and  the  conspirator  Catiline,  and 
there  is  nothing  in  his  political  career  to  suggest  any  aim 
higher  or  remoter  than  his  own  advancement  to  power,  and  all 
the  personal  glory  and  indulgence  that  power  makes  possible. 
We  will  not  attempt  to  tell  here  of  the  turns  and  devices  of  his 
career.  Although  he  was  of  an  old  patrician  family,  he  came 
into  politics  as  the  brilliant  darling  of  the  people.  He  spent 
great  sums  and  incurred  heavy  debts  to  provide  public  festivals 
on  the  most  lavish  scale.  He  opposed  the  tradition  of  Sulla,  and 
cherished  the  memory  of  Marius,  who  was  his  uncle  by  mar- 
riage. For  a  time  he  worked  in  conjunction  with  Crassus  and 
Pompey,  but  after  the  death  of  Crassus  he  and  Pompey  came 
into  conflict.  By  49  B.C.  he  and  Pompey,  with  their  legions, 
he  from  the  west  and  Pompey  from  the  east,  were  fighting 
openly  for  predominance  in  the  Eoman  state.  He  had  broken 
the  law  by  bringing  his  legions  across  the  Rubicon,  which  was 
the  boundary  between  his  command  and  Italy  proper.  At  the 
battle  of  Pharsalos  in  Thessaly  (48  B.C.),  Pompey  was  routed, 
and,  fleeing  to  Egypt,  was  murdered,  leaving  Csesai  more 
master  of  the  Roman  world  than  ever  Sulla  had  been. 

He  was  then  created  dictator  for  ten  years  in  46  B.C.,  and 
early  in  45  B.C.  he  was  made  dictator  for  life.  This  was  mon- 
archy ;  if  not  hereditary  monarchy,  it  was  at  least  electoral  life 
monarchy.  It  was  unlimited  opportunity  to  do  his  best  for  the 
world.  And  by  the  spirit  and  quality  of  his  use  of  this  dicta- 
torial power  during  these  four  years  we  are  bound  to  judge 
him.  A  certain  reorganization  of  local  administration  he  ef- 
fected, and  he  seems  to  have  taken  up  what  was  a  fairly  obvi- 
ous necessity  of  the  times,  a  project  for  the  restoration  of  the 
two  murdered  seaports  of  Corinth  and  Carthage,  whose  destruc- 


442 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


tion  had  wrecked  the  sea-life  of  the  Mediterranean.  But  much 
more  evident  was  the  influence  of  Cleopatra  and  Egypt  upon 
his  mind.  Like  Alexander  before  him,  his  head  seems  to  have 
been  turned  by  the  king-god  tradition,  assisted  no  doubt  in  his 
case  by  the  adulation  of  that  charming  hereditary  goddess, 
Cleopatra.  We  find  evidence  of  exactly  that  same  conflict  upon 
the  score  of  divine  pretensions,  between  him  and  his  personal 
friends,  that  we  have  already  recorded  in  the  case  of  Alexander. 
So  far  as  the  Hellenized  east  was  concerned,  the  paying  of  divine 

honours  to  rulers 
was  a  familiar  idea; 
but  it  was  still  re- 
pulsive to  the  linger- 
ing Aryanism  of 
Rome. 

Antony,  who  had 
been  his  second  in 
command  at  Phar- 
salos,  was  one  of  the 
chief  of  his  flat- 
terers. Plutarch  de- 
scribes a  scene  at  the 
public  games  in 
which  Antony  tried 
to  force  a  crown 
upon  Caeear,  which 
Caesar,  after  a  little 
coyness  and  in  face 
of  the  manifested 
displeasure  of  the 
crowd,  refused.  But 
he  had  adopted  the 
ivory  sceptre  and  throne,  which  were  the  traditional  insignia 
of  the  ancient  kings  of  Rome.  His  image  was  carried  amidst 
that  of  the  gods  in  the  opening  pompa  of  the  arena,  and  his 
statue  was  set  up  in  a  temple  with  an  inscription,  "To  the 
Unconquerable  God !"  Priests  even  were  appointed  for  his 
godhead.  These  things  are  not  the  symptoms  of  great-minded- 
ness,  but  of  a  common  man's  megalomania.  Caesar's  record 
of  vulgar  scheming  for  the  tawdriest  mockeries  of  personal 
worship  is  a  silly  and  shameful  record ;  it  is  incompatible  with 


JVLIVS  CJESAR. 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         443 

the  idea  that  he  was  a  wise  and  wonderful  superman  setting 
the  world  to  rights. 

Finally  (44  B.C.)  he  was  assassinated  by  a  group  of  his  own 
friends  and  supporters,  to  whom  these  divine  aspirations  had 
become  intolerable.  He  was  beset  in  the  Senate,  and  stabbed 
in  three  and  twenty  places,  dying  at  the  foot  of  the  statue  of 
his  fallen  rival  Pompey  the  Great.  The  scene  marks  the  com- 
plete demoralization  of  the  old  Roman  governing  body.  Brutus, 
the  ringleader  of  the  murderers,  would  have  addressed  the 
senators,  but,  confronted  by  this  crisis,  they  were  scuttling  gff 
in  every  direction.  For  the  best  part  of  a  day  Rome  did  not 
know  what  to  make  of  this  event;  the  murderers  marched 
about  with  their  bloody  weapons  through  an  undecided  city, 
with  no  one  gainsaying  them  and  only  a  few  joining  them; 
then  public  opinion  turned  against  them,  some  of  their  houses 
were  attacked,  and  they  had  to  hide  and  fly  for  their  lives. 

§6 

But  the  trend  of  things  was  overwhelmingly  towards  mon- 
archy. For  thirteen  years  more  the  struggle  of  personalities 
went  on.  One  single  man  is  to  be  noted  as  inspired  by  broad 
ideas  and  an  ambition  not  entirely  egoistic,  Cicero.  He  was  a 
man  of  modest  origin,  whose  eloquence  and  literary  power  had 
won  him  a  prominent  place  in  the  Senate.  He  was  a  little 
tainted  by  the  abusive  tradition  of  Demosthenes,  nevertheless 
he  stands  out,  a  noble  and  pathetically  ineffective  figure,  plead- 
ing with  the  now  utterly  degenerate,  base,  and  cowardly  Sen- 
ate for  the  high  ideals  of  the  Republic.  He  was  a  writer  of 
great  care  and  distinction,  and  the  orations  and  private  letters 
he  has  left  us  make  him  one  of  the  most  real  and  living  figures 
of  this  period  to  the  modern  reader.  He  was  proscribed  and 
killed  in  43  B.C.,  the  year  after  the  murder  of  Julius  Caesar, 
and  his  head  and  hands  were  nailed  up  in  the  Roman  forum. 
Octavian,  who  became  at  last  the  monarch  of  Rome,  seems  to 
have  made  an  effort  to  save  Cicero;  that  murder  was  certainly 
not  his  crime. 

Here  we  cannot  trace  out  the  tangle  of  alliances  and  be- 
trayals that  ended  in  the  ascendancy  of  this  Octavian,  the 
adopted  heir  of  Julius  Caesar.  The  fate  of  the  chief  figures 
is  interwoven  with  that  of  Cleopatra. 


444  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

After  the  death  of  Caesar,  she  set  herself  to  capture  the  emo- 
tions and  vanity  of  Antony,  a  much  younger  man  than  Caesar, 
vith  whom  she  was  probably  already  acquainted.  For  a  time 
Octavian  and  Antony  and  a  third  figure,  Lepidus,  divided  the 
Roman  world  just  as  Caesar  and  Pompey  had  divided  it  before 
their  final  conflict.  Octavian  took  the  hardier  west,  and  con- 
solidated his  power;  Antony  had  the  more  gorgeous  east — 
and  Cleopatra.  To  Lepidus  fell  that  picked  bone,  Carthaginian 
Africa.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  good  man  of  good  traditions, 
set  upon  the  restoration  of  Carthage  rather  than  upon  wealth 
or  personal  vanities.  The  mind  of  Antony  succumbed  to  those 
same  ancient  ideas  of  divine  kingship  that  had  already  proved 
too  much  for  the  mental  equilibrium  of  Julius  Caesar.  In  the 
company  of  Cleopatra  he  gave  himself  up  to  love,  amusements, 
and  a  dream  of  sensuous  glory,  until  Octavian  felt  that  the  time 
was  ripe  to  end  these  two  Egyptian  divinities. 

In  32  B.C.  Octavian  induced  the  Senate  to  depose  Antony 
from  the  command  of  the  east,  and  proceeded  to  attack  him.  A 
great  naval  battle  at  Actium  (31  B.C.)  was  decided  by  the  un- 
expected desertion  of  Cleopatra  with  sixty  ships  in  the  midst  of 
the  fight.  It  is  quite  impossible  for  us  to  decide  now  whether 
this  was  due  to  premeditated  treachery  or  to  the  sudden  whim 
of  a  charming  woman.  The  departure  of  these  ships  threw 
the  fleet  of  Antony  into  hopeless  confusion,  which  was  in- 
creased by  the  headlong  flight  of  this  model  lover  in  pursuit. 
He  went,  off  in  a  swift  galley  after  her  without  informing  his 
commanders.  He  left  his  followers  to  fight  and  die  as  they 
thought  fit,  and  for  a  time  they  were  incredulous  that  he  had 
gone.  The  subsequent  encounter  of  the  two  lovers  and  their 
reconciliation  is  a  matter  for  ironical  speculation  on  the  part 
of  Plutarch. 

Octavian's  net  closed  slowly  round  his  rival.  It  is  not  im- 
probable that  there  was  some  sort  of  understanding  between 
Octavian  and  Cleopatra,  as  perhaps  in  the  time  of  Julius  Caesar 
there  may  have  been  between  the  queen  and  Antony.  Antony 
gave  way  to  much  mournful  posturing,  varied  by  love  scenes, 
during  this  last  stage  of  his  little  drama.  For  a  time  he  posed 
as  an  imitator  of  the  cynic  Timon,  as  one  who  had  lost  all 
faith  in  mankind,  though  one  may  think  that  his  deserted 
sailors  at  Actium  had  better  reason  for  such  an  attitude.  Fi- 
nally he  found  himself  and  Cleopatra  besieged  by  Octavian  in 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         445 

Alexandria.  There  were  some  sallies  and  minor  successes,  and 
Antony  was  loud  with  challenges  to  Octavian  to  decide  the  mat- 
ter by  personal  combat.  Being  led  to  believe  that  Cleopatra 
had  committed  suicide,  this  star  of  romance  stabbed  himself, 
but  so  ineffectually  as  to  die  lingeringly,  and  he  was  carried 
off  to  expire  in  her  presence  (30  B.C.). 

Plutarch's  account  of  Antony,  which  was  derived  very 
largely  from  witnesses  who  had  seen  and  known  him,  describes 
him  as  of  heroic  mould.  He  is  compared  to  the  demigod  Her- 
cules, from  whom  indeed  he  claimed  descent,  and  also  to  the 
Indian  Bacchus.  There  is  a  disgusting  but  illuminating  de- 
scription of  a  scene  in  the  Senate  when  he  attempted  to  speak 
while  drunk,  and  was  overtaken  by  one  of  the  least  dignified 
concomitants  of  intoxication. 

For  a  little  while  Cleopatra  still  clung  to  life,  and  perhaps 
to  the  hope  that  she  might  reduce  Octavian  to  the  same  divine 
role  that  had  already  been  played  by  Julius  Caesar  and  Antony. 
She  had  an  interview  with  Octavian,  in  which  she  presented 
herself  as  beauty  in  distress  and  very  lightly  clad.  But  when 
it  became  manifest  that  Octavian  lacked  the  godlike  spark, 
and  that  his  care  for  her  comfort  and  welfare  was  dictated 
chiefly  by  his  desire  to  exhibit  her  in  a  triumphal  procession 
through  the  streets  of  Rome,  she  also  committed  suicide.  An 
asp  was  smuggled  to  her  past  the  Roman  sentries,  concealed  in 
a  basket  of  figs,  and  by  its  fangs  she  died. 

Octavian  seems  to  have  been  almost  entirely  free  from  the 
divine  aspirations  of  Julius  Caesar  and  Antony.  He  was  neither 
God  nor  romantic  hero;  he  was  a  man.  He  was  a  man  of  far 
greater  breadth  and  capacity  than  any  other  player  in  this  last 
act  of  the  Republican  drama  in  Rome.  All  things  considered, 
he  was  perhaps  the  best  thing  that  could  have  happened  to  Rome 
at  that  time.  He  "voluntarily  resigned  the  extraordinary  pow- 
ers which  he  had  held  since  43,  and,  to  quote  his  own  words, 
'handed  over  the  republic  to  the  control  of  the  senate  and  the 
people  of  Rome.'  The  old  constitutional  machinery  was  once 
more  set  in  motion;  the  senate,  assembly,  and  magistrates  re- 
sumed their  functions,  and  Octavian  himself  was  hailed  as  the 
'restorer  of  the  commonwealth  and  the  champion  of  freedom.7 
It  was  not  so  easy  to  determine  what  relation  he  himself,  the 
actual  master  of  the  Roman  world,  should  occupy  towards 
this  revived  republic.  His  abdication,  in  any  real  sense  of 


446  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  word,  would  have  simply  thrown  everything  back  into 
confusion.  The  interests  of  peace  and  order  required  that  he 
shohild  retain  at  least  the  substantial  part  of  his  authority ;  and 
this  object  was  in  fact  accomplished,  and  the  rule  of  the  em- 
perors founded  in  a  manner  which  has  no  parallel  in  history. 
Any  revival  of  the  kingly  title  was  out  of  the  question,  and 
Octavian  himself  expressly  refused  the  dictatorship.  Nor  was 
any  new  office  created  or  any  new  official  title  invented  for  his 
benefit.  But  by  senate  and  people  he  was  invested  according 
to  the  old  constitutional  forms  with  certain  powers,  as  many 
citizens  had  been  before  him,  and  so  took  his  place  by  the  side 
of  the  lawfully  appointed  magistrates  of  the  republic;  only, 
to  mark  his  pre-eminent  dignity,  as  the  first  of  them  all,  the 
senate  decreed  that  he  should  take  as  an  additional  cognomen 
that  of  'Augustus/  while  in  common  parlance  he  was  hence- 
forth styled  Princeps,  a  simple  title  of  courtesy,  familiar  to 
republican  usage  and  conveying  no  other  idea  than  that  of  a 
recognized  primacy  and  precedence  over  his  fellow-citizens. 
The  ideal  sketched  by  Cicero  in  his  De  Republica,  of  a  constitu- 
tional president  of  a  free  republic,  was  apparently  realized; 
but  it  was  only  in  appearance.  For  in  fact  the  special  preroga- 
tives conferred  upon  Octavian  gave  him  back  in  substance  the 
autocratic  authority  he  had  resigned,  and  as  between  the  re- 
stored republic  and  its  new  princeps  the  balance  of  power  was 
overwhelmingly  on  the  side  of  the  latter."  * 

§  7 

In  this  manner  it  was  that  Roman  republicanism  ended  in  a 
princeps  or  ruling  prince,  and  the  first  great  experiment  in  a 
self-governing  community  on  a  scale  larger  than  that  of  tribe 
or  city,  collapsed  and  failed. 

The  essence  of  its  failure  was  that  it  could  not  sustain  unity. 
In  its  early  stages  its  citizens,  both  patrician  and  plebeian,  had 
a  certain  tradition  of  justice  and  good  faith,  and  of  the  loyalty 
of  all  citizens  to  the  law,  and  of  the  goodness  of  the  law  for  all 
citizens ;  it  clung  to  this  idea  of  the  importance  of  the  law  and 
of  law-abidingness  nearly  into  the  first  century  B.C.  But  the 
unforeseen  invention  and  development  of  money,  the  tempta- 
tions and  disruptions  of  imperial  expansion,  the  entanglement  of 
1H.  S.  Jones  in  The  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  article  "Rome." 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         447 

electoral  methods,  weakened  and  swamped  this  tradition  by  pre- 
senting old  issues  in  new  disguises  under  which  the  judgment 
did  not  recognize  them,  and  by  enabling  men  to  be  loyal  to  the 
professions  of  citizenship  and  disloyal  to  its  spirit.  The  bond 
of  the  Roman  people  had  always  been  a  moral  rather  than  a 
religious  bond ;  their  religion  was  sacrificial  and  superstitious ; 
it  embodied  no  such  great  ideas  of  a  divine  leader  and  of  a 
sacred  mission  as  Judaism  was  developing.  As  the  idea  of 
citizenship  failed  and  faded  before  the  new  occasions,  there 
remained  no  inner,  that  is  to  say  no  real,  unity  in  the  system 
at  all.  Every  man  tended  more  and  more  to  do  what  was  right 
in  his  own  eyes. 

Under  such  conditions  there  was  no  choice  between  chaos  and 
a  return  to  monarchy,  to  the  acceptance  of  some  chosen  in- 
dividual as  the  one  unifying  will  in  the  state.  Of  course  in 
that  return  there  is  always  hidden  the  expectation  that  the 
monarch  will  become  as  it  were  magic,  will  cease  to  be  merely 
a  petty  human  being,  and  will  think  and  feel  as  something 
greater  and  more  noble,  as  indeed  a  state  personage;  and  of 
course  monarchy  invariably  fails  to  satisfy  that  expectation. 
We  shall  glance  at  the  extent  of  this  failure  in  the  brief  review 
we  shall  presently  make  of  the  emperors  of  Rome.  We  shall 
find  at  last  one  of  the  more  constructive  of  these  emperors, 
Constantine  the  Great,  conscious  of  his  own  inadequacy  as  a 
unifying  power,  turning  to  the  faith,  the  organization,  and 
teaching  network  of  one  of  the  new  religious  movements  in 
the  empire,  to  supply  just  that  permeating  and  correlating 
factor  in  men's  minds  that  was  so  manifestly  wanting. 

With  Caesar,  the  civilization  of  Europe  and  Western  Asia 
went  back  to  monarchy,  and,  through  monarchy,  assisted  pres- 
ently by  organized  Christianity,  it  sought  to  achieve  peace, 
righteousness,  happiness,  and  world  order  for  close  upon  eighteen 
centuries.  Then  almost  suddenly  it  began  reverting  to  repub- 
licanism, first  in  one  country  and  then  in  another,  and,  assisted 
by  the  new  powers  of  printing  and  the  press  and  of  organized 
general  education,  and  by  the  universalist  religious  ideas  in 
which  the  world  had  been  soaked  for  generations,  it  seems  now 
to  have  resumed  again  the  effort  to  create  a  republican  world- 
state  and  a  world-wide  scheme  of  economic  righteousness  which 
the  Romans  had  made  so  prematurely  and  in  which  they  had 
so  utterly  and  disastrously  failed. 


448 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


FROM  TIBERIUS  TO  THE  GOD  EMPEROR         449 

Certain  conditions,  we  are  now  beginning  to  perceive,  are 
absolutely  necessary  to  such  a  creation;  conditions  which  it  is 
inconceivable  that  any  pre-Christian  Koman  could  have  regarded 
as  possible.  We  may  still  think  the  attainment  of  these  condi- 
tions a  vastly  laborious  and  difficult  and  uncertain  undertaking, 
but  we  understand  that  the  attempt  must  be  made  because  no 
other  prospect  before  us  gives  even  a  promise  of  happiness  or 
self-respect  or  preservation  of  our  kind.  The  first  of  these  con- 
ditions is  that  there  should  be  a  common  political  idea  in  the 
minds  of  all  men,  an  idea  of  the  state  thought  of  as  the  personal 
possession  of  each  individual  and  as  the  backbone  fact  of  his 
scheme  of  duties.  In  the  early  days  of  Rome,  when  it  was  a 
little  visible  state,  twenty  miles  square,  such  notions  could  be 
and  were  developed  in  children  in  their  homes,  and  by  what 
they  saw  and  heard  of  the  political  lives  of  their  fathers ;  but  in 
a  larger  country  such  as  Rome  had  already  become  before  the 
war  with  Pyrrhus,  there  was  a  need  of  an  organized  teaching 
of  the  history,  of  the  main  laws,  and  of  the  general  intentions 
of  the  state  towards  everyone  if  this  moral  unity  was  to  be 
maintained.  But  the  need  was  never  realized,  and  no  attempt 
at  any  such  teaching  was  ever  made.  At  the  time  it  could 
not  have  been  made.  It  is  inconceivable  that  it  could  have 
been  made.  The  knowledge  was  not  there,  and  there  existed 
no  class  from  which  the  needed  teachers  could  be  drawn  and 
no  conception  of  an  organization  for  any  such  systematic  moral 
and  intellectual  training  as  the  teaching  organization  of  Chris- 
tianity, with  its  creeds  and  catechisms  and  sermons  and  con- 
firmations, presently  supplied. 

Moreover,  we  know  nowadays  that  even  a  universal  education 
of  this  sort  supplies  only  the  basis  for  a  healthy  republican 
stat-e.  JSText  to  education  there  must  come  abundant,  prompt, 
and  truthful  information  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  state,  and 
frank  and  free  discussion  of  the  issues  of  the  time.  Even  nowa- 
days these  functions  are  performed  only  very  imperfectly  and 
badly  by  the  press  we  have  and  by  our  publicists  and  politicians ; 
but  badly  though  it  is  done,  the  thing  is  done,  and  the  fact 
that  it  is  done  at  all  argues  that  it  may  ultimately  be  done  well. 
In  the  Roman  state  it  was  not  even  attempted.  The  Roman 
citizen  got  his  political  facts  from  rumour  and  the  occasional 
orator.  He  stood  wedged  in  the  forum,  imperfectly  hearing  a 


450  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

distant  speaker.  He  probably  misconceived  every  issue  upon 
which  he  voted. 

And  of  the  monstrous  ineffectiveness  of  the  Roman  voting 
system  we  have  already  written. 

Unable  to  surmount  or  remove  these  obstacles  to  a  sane  and 
effective  popular  government,  the  political  instincts  of  the  Ro- 
man mind  turned  towards  monarchy.  But  it  was  not  monarchy 
of  the  later  European  type,  not  hereditary  monarchy,  which 
was  now  installed  in  Rome.  The  princeps  was  really  like  an 
American  war-time  president,  but  he  was  elected  not  for  four 
years  but  for  life,  he  was  able  to  appoint  senators  instead  of 
being  restrained  by  an  elected  senate,  and  with  a  rabble  pop- 
ular meeting  in  the  place  of  the  house  of  representatives.  He 
was  also  pontifex  maximus,  chief  of  the  sacrificial  priests,  a 
function  unknown  at  Washington;  and  in  practice  it  became 
usual  for  him  to  designate  and  train  his  successor  and  to  select 
for  that  honour  a  son  or  an  adopted  son  or  a  near  relation  whom 
he  could  trust  The  power  of  the  princeps  was  in  itself  enor- 
mous to  entrust  to  the  hands  of  a  single  man  without  any  ade- 
quate checks,  but  it  was  further  enhanced  by  the  tradition  of 
monarch-worship  which  had  now  spread  out  from  Egypt  over 
the  entire  Hellenized  east,  and  which  was  coming  to  Rome  in 
the  head  of  every  Oriental  slave  and  immigrant.  By  natural 
and  imperceptible  degrees  the  idea  of  the  god-emperor  came 
to  dominate  the  whole  Romanized  world. 

Only  one  thing  presently  remained  to  remind  the  god-emperor 
that  he  was  mortal,  and  that  was  the  army.  The  god-emperor 
was  never  safe  upon  the  Olympus  of  the  Palatine  Hill  at  Rome. 
He  was  only  secure  while  he  was  the  beloved  captain  of  his 
legions.  And  as  a  consequence  only  the  hardworking  emperors 
who  kept  their  legions  active  and  in  close  touch  with  themselves 
had  long  reigns.  The  sword  overhung  the  emperor  and  spurred 
him  to  incessant  activity.  If  he  left  things  to  his  generals,  one 
of  those  generals  presently  replaced  him.  This  spur  was  per- 
haps the  redeeming  feature  of  the  Roman  Imperial  system.  In 
the  greater,  compacter,  and  securer  empire  of  China  there  was 
not  the  same  need  of  legions,  and  so  there  was  not  the  same 
swift  end  for  lazy  or  dissipated  or  juvenile  monarchs  that  over- 
took such  types  in  Rome. 


XXVIII 

THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  THE  SEA  AND  THE  GREAT 
PLAINS  OF  THE  OLD  WORLD 

§  1.  A  Short  Catalogue  of  Emperors.  §  2.  Roman  Civiliza- 
tion at  its  Zenith.  §  3.  Limitations  of  the  Roman  Mind. 
§  4.  The  Stir  of  the  Great  Plains.  §  5.  The  Western  (true 
Roman)  Empire  Crumples  Up.  §  6.  The  Eastern  (revived 
Hellenic)  Empire. 


WESTERN  writers  are  apt,  through  their  patriotic  pre- 
dispositions, to  overestimate  the  organization,  civiliz- 
ing work,  and  security  of  the  absolute  monarchy  that 
established  itself  in  Rome  after  the  accession  of  Augustus  Csesar. 
From  it  we  derive  the  political  traditions  of  Britain,  France, 
Spain,  Germany,  and  Italy,  and  these  countries  loom  big  in  the 
perspectives  of  European  writers.  By  the  scale  of  a  world  his- 
tory the  Roman  Empire  ceases  to  seem  so  overwhelmingly  im- 
portant. It  lasted  about  four  centuries  in  all  before  it  was  com- 
pletely shattered.  The  Byzantine  Empire  was  no  genuine  con- 
tinuation of  it  ;  it  was  a  resumption  of  the  Hellenic  Empire  of 
Alexander  ;  it  spoke  Greek  ;  its  monarch  had  a  Roman  title  no 
doubt,  but  so  for  that  matter  had  the  late  Tsar  of  Bulgaria. 
During  its  four  centuries  of  life  the  empire  of  Rome  had  phases 
of  division  and  complete  chaos  ;  its  prosperous  years,  if  they  are 
gathered  together  and  added  up,  do  not  amount  in  all  to  a 
couple  of  centuries.  Compared  with  the  quiet  steady  expan- 
sion, the  security,  and  the  civilizing  task  of  the  contemporary 
Chinese  Empire,  or  with  Egypt  between  4000  and  1000  B.C., 
or  with  Sumeria  before  the  Semitic  conquest,  this  amounts  to 
a  mere  incident  in  history.  The  Persian  Empire  of  Cyrus 
again,  which  reached  from  the  Hellespont  to  the  Indus,  had  as 
high  a  standard  of  civilization  ;  and  its  homelands  remained  un- 
conquered  and  fair]^  prosperous  for  over  two  hundred  years. 

451 


452  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Its  predecessor,  the  Median  Empire,  had  endured  for  half  a 
century.  After  a  brief  submergence  by  Alexander  the  Great, 
it  rose  again  as  the  Seleucid  Empire,  which  endured  for  some 
centuries.  The  Seleucid  dominion  shrank  at  last  to  the  west 
of  the  Euphrates,  and  became  a  part  of  the  Koman  Empire; 
but  Persia,  revived  by  the  Parthians  as  a  new  Persian  Empire, 
first  under  the  Arsacids  and  then  under  the  Sassanids,  outlived 
the  empire  of  Rome.  The  Sassanids  repeatedly  carried  war 
into  the  Byzantine  Empire,  and  held  the  line  of  the  Euphrates 
steadfastly.  In  616  A.D.  under  Chosroes  II,  they  were  holding 
Damascus,  Jerusalem,  and  Egypt,  and  threatening  the  Helles- 
pont. But  there  has  been  no  tradition  to  keep  alive  the  glories 
of  the  Sassanids.  The  reputation  of  Rome  has  flourished 
through  the  prosperity  of  her  heirs.  The  tradition  of  Rome 
is  greater  than  its  reality. 

History  distinguishes  two  chief  groups  of  Roman  emperors 
who  were  great  administrators.  The  first  of  these  groups 
began  with: — 

Augustus  Caesar  (27  B.C.  to  14  A.D.),  the  Octavian  of  the 
previous  section,  who  worked  hard  at  the  reorganization  of  the 
provincial  governments  and  at  financial  reform.  He  estab- 
lished a  certain  tradition  of  lawfulness  and  honesty  in  the 
bureaucracy,  and  he  restrained  the  more  monstrous  corruptions 
and  tyrannies  by  giving  the  provincial  citizen  the  right  to  ap- 
peal to  Caesar.  But  he  fixed  the  European  boundaries  of  the 
empire  along  the  Rhine  and  Danube,  so  leaving  Germany,  which 
is  the  necessary  backbone  of  a  safe  and  prosperous  Europe,  to 
barbarism ;  and  he  made  a  similar  limitation  in  the  east  at  the 
Euphrates,  leaving  Armenia  independent,  to  be  a  constant  bone 
of  contention  with  the  Arsacids  and  Sassanids.  It  is  doubtful 
whether  he  considered  that  he  was  fixing  the  final  boundaries 
of  the  empire  along  these  lines,  or  whether  he  thought  it  desir- 
able to  consolidate  for  some  years  before  any  further  attempts 
at  expansion. 

Tiberius'  (14  to  37  A.D.)  is  also  described  as  a  capable  ruler, 
but  he  became  intensely  unpopular  in  Rome,  and  it  would  seem 
that  he  was  addicted  to  gross  and  abominable  vices.  But  his 
indulgence  in  these  and  his  personal  tyrannies  and  cruelties  did 
not  interfere  with  the  general  prosperity  of  the  empire.  It  is 
difficult  to  judge  him ;  nearly  all  our  sources  of  information  are 
manifestly  hostile  to  him. 


THE  CJ3SARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       453 


454  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Caligula  (37  to  41  A.D.)  was  insane,  but  the  empire  carried 
on  during  four  years  of  eccentricity  at  its  head.  Finally  he 
was  murdered  in  his  palace  hy  his  servants,  and  there  seems  to 
have  been  an  attempt  to  restore  the  senatorial  government,  an 
attempt  which  was  promptly  suppressed  by  the  household 
legions. 

Claudius  (41  to  54  A.D.),  the  uncle  of  Caligula,  upon  whom 
the  choice  of  the  soldiers  fell,  was  personally  uncouth,  but  he 
seems  to  have  been  a  hardworking  and  fairly  capable  admin- 
istrator. He  advanced  the  westward  boundary  of  the  empire  by 
annexing  the  southern  half  of  Britain.  He  was  poisoned  by 
Agrippina,  the  mother  of  his  adopted  son,  Nero,  and  a  woman 
of  great  charm  and  force  of  character. 

Nero  (54  to  68  A.D.),  like  Tiberius,  is  credited  with  mon- 
strous vices  and  cruelties,  but  the  empire  had  acquired  sufficient 
momentum  to  carry  on  through  his  fourteen  years  of  power. 
He  certainly  murdered  his  devoted  but  troublesome  mother  and 
his  wife,  the  latter  as  a  mark  of  devotion  to  a  lady,  Poppsea, 
who  then  married  him;  but  the  domestic  infelicities  of  the 
Caesars  are  no  part  of  our  present  story.  The  reader  greedy 
for  criminal  particulars  must  go  to  the  classical  source,  Sue- 
tonius. These  various  Caesars  and  their  successors  and  their 
womenkind  were  probably  no  worse  essentially  than  most  weak 
and  passionate  human  beings,  but  they  had  no  real  religion, 
being  themselves  gods;  they  had  no  wide  knowledge  on  which 
to  build  high  ambitions,  their  women  were  fierce  and  often 
illiterate,  and  they  were  under  no  restraints  of  law  or  custom. 
They  were  surrounded  by  creatures  ready  to  stimulate  their 
slightest  wishes  and  to  translate  their  vaguest  impules  into 
action.  What  are  mere  passing  black  thoughts  and 
angry  impulses  with  most  of  us  became  therefore  deeds 
with  them.  Before  a  man  condemns  Nero  as  a  different 
species  of  being  from  himself,  he  should  examine  his  own  secret 
thoughts  very  carefully.  Nero  became  intensely  unpopular  in 
Rome,  and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  he  became  unpopular 
not  because  he  murdered  and  poisoned  his  intimate  relations, 
but  because  there  was  an  insurrection  in  Britain  under  a 
certain  Queen  Boadicea,  and  the  Roman  forces  suffered  a  great 
disaster  (61  A.D.),  and  because  there  was  a  destructive  earth- 
quake in  Southern  Italy.  The  Roman  population,  true  to  its 
Etruscan  streak,  never  religious  and  always  superstitious,  did 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       455 

not  mind  a  wicked  Caesar,  but  it  did  object  strongly  to  an 
unpropitious  one.  The  Spanish  legions  rose  in  insurrection 
under  an  elderly  general  of  seventy-three,  Galba,  whom  they 
acclaimed  emperor.  He  advanced  upon  Rome  carried  in 
a  litter.  Nero,  hopeless  of  support,  committed  suicide 
(68  A.D.). 

Galba,  however,  was  only  one  of  a  group  of  would-be  em- 
perors. The  generals  in  command  of  the  Rhine  legions,  the 
Palatine  troops,  and  the  eastern  armies,  each  attempted  to 
seize  power.  Rome  saw  four  emperors  in  a  year,  Galba,  Otho, 
Vitellus,  and  Vespasian;  the  fourth,  Vespasian  (69-79  A.D.), 
from  the  eastern  command,  had  the  firmest  grip,  and  held  and 
kept  the  prize.  But  with  Nero  the  line  of  Caesars  born  or 
adopted  ended.  Caesar  ceased  to  be  the  family  name  of  the 
Roman  emperors  and  became  a  title,  Divus  Caesar,  the  Caesar 
god.  The  monarchy  took  a  step  forward  towards  orientalism  by 
an  increased  insistence  upon  the  worship  of  the  ruler. 

Vespasian  (69  to  79  A.D.)  and  his  sons  Titus  (79  A.D.)  and 
Domitian  (81  A.D.)  constitute,  as  it  were,  a  second  dynasty, 
the  Flavian;  then  after  the  assassination  of  Domitian  came 
a  group  of  emperors  related  to  one  another  not  by  blood,  but 
by  adoption,  the  adoptive  emperors.  Nerva  (96  A.D.)  was  the 
first  of  this  line,  and  Trajan  (98  A.D.)  the  second.  They  were 
followed  by  the  indefatigable  Hadrian  (117  A.D.),  Antoninus 
Pius  (138  A.D.),  and  Marcus  Aurelius  (161  to  180  A.D.). 
Under  both  the  Flavians  and  the  Antonines  the  boun- 
daries of  the  empire  crept  forward  again.  North  Britain 
was  annexed  in  84  A.D.,  the  angle  of  the  Rhine  and 
Danube  was  filled  in,  and  what  is  now  Transylvania  was  made 
into  a  new  province,  Dacia.  Trajan  also  invaded  Parthia 
and  annexed  Armenia,  Assyria,  and  Mesopotamia.  Under  his 
rule  the  empire  reached  its  maximum  extent.  Hadrian,  his 
successor,  was  of  a  cautious  and  retractile  disposition.  He  aban- 
doned these  new  eastern  conquests  of  Trajan's,  and  he  also 
abandoned  North  Britain.  He  adopted  the  Chinese  idea  of 
the  limiting  wall  against  barbarism,  an  excellent  idea  so  long 
as  the  pressure  of  population  on  the  imperial  side  of  the  wall 
is  greater  than  the  pressure  from  without,  but  worthless  other- 
wise. He  built  Hadrian's  wall  across  Britain,  and  a  palisade 
between  the  Rhine  and  the  Danube.  The  full  tide  of  Roman 
expansion  was  past,  and  in  the  reign  of  his  successor  the  North 


456  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

European  frontier  was  already  actively  on  the  defensive  against 
the  aggression  of  Teutonic  and  Slavic  tribes. 

Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus  is  one  of  those  figures  in  history 
about  which  men  differ  widely  and  intensely.  To  some  critics 
he  seems  to  have  been  a  priggish  person;  he  dabbled  in  re- 
ligions, and  took  a  pleasure  in  conducting  priestly  ceremonies 
in  priestly  garments — a  disposition  offensive  to  common  men 
— and  they  resent  his  alleged  failure  to  restrain  the  wickedness 
of  his  wife  Faustina.  The  stories  of  his  domestic  infelicity, 
however,  rest  on  no  very  good  foundations,  though  certainly 
his  son  Commodus  was  a  startling  person  for  a  good  home  to 
produce.  On  the  other  hand,  he  was  unquestionably  a  devoted 
and  industrious  emperor,  holding  social  order  together  through 
a  series  of  disastrous  years  of  vile  weather,  great  floods,  failing 
harvests  and  famine,  barbaric  raids  and  revolts,  and  at  last  a 
terrible  universal  pestilence.  Says  F.  W.  Farrar,  quoted  in  the 
Encyclopedia  Britannica,  "He  regarded  himself  as  being,  in 
fact,  the  servant  of  all.  The  registry  of  the  citizens,  the  sup- 
pression of  litigation,  the  elevation  of  public  morals,  the  care 
of  minors,  the  retrenchment  of  public  expenses,  the  limitation 
of  gladiatorial  games  and  shows,  the  care  of  roads,  the  restora- 
tion of  senatorial  privileges,  the  appointment  of  none  but  worthy 
magistrates,  even  the  regulation  of  street  traffic,  these  and 
numberless  other  duties  so  completely  absorbed  his  attention 
that,  in  spite  of  indifferent  health,  they  often  kept  him  at 
severe  labour  from  early  morning  till  long  after  midnight.  His 
position,  indeed,  often  necessitated  his  presence  at  games  and 
shows;  but  on  these  occasions  he  occupied  himself  either  in 
reading,  or  being  read  to,  or  in  writing  notes.  He  was  one 
of  those  who  held  that  nothing  should  be  done  hastily,  and 
that,  few  crimes  were  worse  than  waste  of  time." 

But  it  is  not  by  these  industries  that  he  is  now  remembered. 
He  was  one  of  the  greatest  exponents  of  the  Stoical  philosophy, 
and  in  his  Meditations,  jotted  down  in  camp  and  court.,  he  has 
put  so  much  of  a  human  soul  on  record  as  to  raise  up  for 
himself  in  each  generation  a  fresh  series  of  friends  and  admirers. 

With  the  death  of  Marcus  Aurelius  this  phase  of  unity  and 
comparatively  good  government  came  to  an  end,  and  his  son 
Commodus  inaugurated  an  age  of  disorder.  Practically  the 
empire  had  been  at  peace  within  itself  for  two  hundred  years. 


THE  C^SARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       457 

Now  for  a  hundred  years  the  student  of  Roman  history  must 
master  the  various  criminology  of  a  number  of  inadequate  em- 
perors, while  the  frontier  crumbled  and  receded  under  bar- 
barian pressure.  One  or  two  names  only  seem  to  be  the  names 
of  able  men :  such  were  Septimius  Severus,  Aurelian,  and  Pro- 
bus.  Septimius  Severus  was  a  Carthaginian,  and  his  sister 
was  never  able  to  master  Latin.  She  conducted  her  Roman 
household  in  the  Punic  language,  which  must  have  made  Cato 
the  elder  turn  in  his  grave.  The  rest  of  the  emperors  of  this 
period  were  chiefly  adventurers  too  unimportant  to  the  general 
scheme  of  things  for  us  to  note.  At  times  there  were  separate 
emperors  ruling  in  different  parts  of  the  distracted  empire. 
From  our  present  point  of  view  the  Emperor  Decius,  who  was 
defeated  and  killed  during  a  great  raid  of  the  Goths  into 
Thrace  in  251  A.D.,  and  the  Emperor  Valerian,  who,  togethel 
with  the  great  city  of  Antioch,  was  captured  by  the  Sassanid 
Shah  of  Persia  in  260  A.D.,  are  worthy  of  notice  because  they 
mark  the  insecurity  of  the  whole  Roman  system,  and  the  char- 
acter of  the  outer  pressure  upon  it.  So,  too,  is  Claudius,  "the 
Conqueror  of  the  Goths,"  because  he  gained  a  great  victory 
over  these  people  at  Nish  in  Serbia  (270  A.D.),  and  because  he 
died,  like  Pericles,  of  the  plague. 

Through  all  these  centuries  intermittent  pestilences  were 
playing  a  part  in  weakening  races  and  altering  social  condi- 
tions, a  part  that  has  still  to  be  properly  worked  out  by  histo- 
rians. There  was,  for  instance,  a  great  plague  throughout  the 
empire  between  the  years  164  and  180  A.D.  in  the  reign  of  the 
Emperor  Marcus  Aurelius.  It  probably  did  much  to  disor- 
ganize social  life  and  prepare  the  way  for  the  troubles  that  fol- 
lowed the  accession  of  Commodus.  This  same  pestilence  dev- 
astated China,  as  we  shall  note  in  §  4  of  this  chapter.  Con- 
siderable fluctuations  of  climate  had  also  been  going  on  in  the 
first  and  second  centuries,  producing  stresses  and  shiftings  of 
population,  whose  force  historians  have  still  to  appraise.  But 
before  we  go  on  to  tell  of  the  irruptions  of  the  barbarians  and 
the  attempts  of  such  later  emperors  as  Diocletian  (284  A.D.) 
and  Constantine  the  Great  (312  A.D.)  to  hold  together  the  heav- 
ing and  splitting  vessel  of  the  state,  we  must  describe  something 
of  the  conditions  of  human  life  in  the  Roman  Empire  during 
its  two  centuries  of  prosperity. 


458  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

§  2 

The  impatient  reader  of  history  may  be  disposed  to  count 
the  two  centuries  of  order  between  27  B.C.  and  180  A.D.  as 
among  the  wasted  opportunities  of  mankind.  It  was  an  age 
of  spending  rather  than  of  creation,  an  age  of  architecture  and 
trade  in  which  the  rich  grew  richer  and  the  poor  poorer  and 
the  soul  and  spirit  of  man  decayed.  Looked  at  superficially, 
as  a  man  might  have  looked  at  it  from  an  aeroplane  a  couple 
of  thousand  feet  in  the  air,  there  was  a  considerable  flourish 
of  prosperity.  Everywhere,  from  York  to  Cyrene  and  from 
Lisbon  to  Antioch,  he  would  have  noted  large  and  well-built 
cities,  with  temples,  theatres,  amphitheatres,  markets,  and  the 
like ;  thousands  of  such  cities,  supplied  by  great  aqueducts  and 
served  by  splendid  high  roads,  whose  stately  remains  astonish 
us  to  this  day.  He  would  have  noted  an  abundant  cultivation, 
and  have  soared  too  high  to  discover  that  this  cultivation  was 
the  grudging  work  of  slaves.  Upon  the  Mediterranean  and  the 
Red  Sea  a  considerable  traffic  would  be  visible ;  and  the  sight  of 
two  ships  alongside  each  other  would  not  at  that  altitude  reveal 
the  fact  that  one  was  a  pirate  and  plundering  the  other. 

And  even  if  the  observer  came  down  to  a  closer  scrutiny, 
there  would  still  be  much  accumulated  improvement  to  note. 
There  had  been  a  softening  of  manners  and  a  general  refinement 
since  the  days  of  Julius  Caesar.  With  this  there  had  been  a 
real  increase  of  humane  feeling.  During  the  period  of  the 
Antonines,  laws  for  the  protection  of  slaves  from  extreme  cruelty 
came  into  existence,  and  it  was  no  longer  permissible  to  sell  them 
to  the  gladiatorial  schools.  Not  only  were  the  cities  outwardly 
more  splendidly  built,  but  within  the  homes  of  the  wealthy 
there  had  been  great  advances  in  the  art  of  decoration.  The 
gross  feasting,  animal  indulgence,  and  vulgar  display  of  the 
earlier  days  of  Roman  prosperity  were  now  tempered  by  a 
certain  refinement.  Dress  had  become  richer,  finer,  and  more 
beautiful.  There  was  a  great  trade  in  silk  with  remote  China, 
for  the  mulberry-tree  and  the  silkworm  had  not  yet  begun  to 
move  west.  By  the  time  silk  had  ended  its  long  and  varied 
journey  to  Rome  it  was  worth  its  weight  in  gold.  Yet  it  was 
used  abundantly,  and  there  was  a  steady  flow  of  the  precious 
metals  eastward  in  exchange.  There  had  been  very  considerable 
advances  in  gastronomy  and  the  arts  of  entertainment.  Petro- 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       459 

nius  describes  a  feast  given  by  a  wealthy  man  under  the  early 
Caesars,  a  remarkable  succession  of  courses,  some  delicious,  some 
amazing,  exceeding  anything  that  even  the  splendours  and 
imagination  of  modern  New  York  could  produce;  and  the 
festival  was  varied  by  music  and  by  displays  of  tight-rope 
dancing,  juggling,  Homeric  recitations,  and  the  like.  There 
was  a  considerable  amount  of  what  we  may  describe  as  "rich 
men's  culture"  throughout  the  empire.  Books  were  far  more 
plentiful  than  they  had  been  before  the  time  of  the  Caesars. 
Men  prided  themselves  upon  their  libraries,  even  when  the  cares 
and  responsibilities  of  property  made  them  too  busy  to  give 
their  literary  treasures  much  more  than  a  passing  examination. 
The  knowledge  of  Greek  spread  eastward  and  of  Latin  west- 
ward, and  if  the  prominent  men  of  this  or  that  British  or 
Gallic  city  lacked  any  profound  Greek  culture  themselves,  they 
could  always  turn  to  some  slave  or  other,  whose  learning  had 
been  guaranteed  of  the  highest  quality  by  the  slave-dealer,  to 
supply  the  deficiency. 

The  generation  of  Cato  had  despised  Greeks  and  the  Greek- 
language,  but  now  all  that  was  changed.  The  prestige  of  Greek 
learning  of  an  approved  and  settled  type  was  as  high  in  the 
Rome  of  Antoninus  Pius  as  it,  was  in  the  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge of  Victorian  England.  The  Greek  scholar  received  the 
same  mixture  of  unintelligent  deference  and  practical  contempt. 
There  was  a  very  considerable  amount  of  Greek  scholarship, 
and  of  written  criticism  and  commentary.  Indeed  there  was  so 
great  an  admiration  for  Greek  letters  as  almost  completely 
to  destroy  the  Greek  spirit;  and  the  recorded  observations  of 
Aristotle  were  valued  so  highly  as  to  preclude  any  attempt  to 
imitate  his  organization  of  further  inquiry.  It  is  noteworthy 
that  while  Aristotle  in  the  original  Greek  fell  like  seed  upon 
stony  soil  in  the  Roman  world,  he  was,  in  Syrian  and  Arabic 
translations,  immensely  stimulating  to  the  Arabic  civilization 
of  a  thousand  years  later.  N"or  were  the  aesthetic  claims  of 
Latin  neglected  in  this  heyday  of  Greek  erudition.  As  Greece 
had  her  epics  and  so  forth,  the  Romans  felt  that  they,  too,  must 
have  their  epics.  The  age  of  Augustus  was  an  age  of  imitative 
literature.  Virgil  in  the  ^Eneid  set  himself  modestly  but  reso- 
lutely, and  with  an  elegant  sort  of  successfulness,  to  parallel 
the  Odyssey  and  Iliad. 

All  this  wide-spread  culture  of  the  wealthy  householder  is  to 


460  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  credit  of  the  early  Eoman  Empire,  and  Gihbon  makes  the 
most  of  it  in  the  sunny  review  of  the  age  of  the  Antonines  with 
which  he  opens  his  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  His 
design  for  that  great  work  demanded  a  prelude  of  splendour  anA 
tranquillity.  But  he  was  far  too  shrewd  and  subtle  not  to 
qualify  his  apparent  approval  of  the  conditions  he  describes. 
"Under  the  Roman  Empire/7  he  writes,  "the  labour  of  an  in- 
dustrious and  ingenious  people  was  variously  but  incessantly 
employed  in  the  service  of  the  rich.  In  their  dress,  their  table, 
their  houses,  and  their  furniture,  the  favourites  of  fortune  united 
every  refinement  of  convenience,  of  elegance,  and  of  splendour, 
whatever  could  soothe  their  pride,  or  gratify  their  sensuality. 
Such  refinements,  under  the  odious  name  of  luxury,  have  been 
severely  arraigned  by  the  moralists  of  every  age ;  and  it  might 
perhaps  be  more  conducive  to  the  virtue,  as  well  as  happiness, 
of  mankind,  if  all  possessed  the  necessaries,  and  none  the  super- 
fluities of  life.  But  in  the  present  imperfect  condition  of 
society,  luxury,  though  it  may  proceed  from  vice  or  folly,  seems 
•to  be  the  only  means  that  can  correct  the  unequal  distribution 
of  property.  The  diligent  mechanic  and  the  skilful  artist, 
who  have  obtained  no  share  in  the  division  of  the  earth,  receive 
a  voluntary  tax  from  the  possessors  of  land;  and  the  latter  are 
prompted,  by  a  sense  of  interest,  to  improve  those  estates,  with 
whose  produce  they  may  purchase  additional  pleasure.  This 
operation,  the  particular  effects  of  which  are  felt  in  every  soci- 
ety, acted  with  much  more  diffuse  energy  in  the  Roman  world. 
The  provinces  would  soon  have  been  exhausted  of  their  wealth, 
if  the  manufactures  and  commerce  of  luxury  had  not  insen- 
sibly restored  to  the  industrious  subjects  the  sums  which  were 
exacted  from  them  by  the  arms  and  authority  of  Rome." 
And  so  on,  with  a  sting  of  satire  in  every  fold  of  the  florid 
description. 

If  we  look  a  little  more  widely  than  a  hovering  aeroplane  can 
do  at  the  movement  of  races  upon  the  earth,  or  a  little  more 
closely  than  an  inspection  of  streets,  amphitheatres,  and  ban- 
quets goes,  into  the  souls  and  thoughts  of  men,  we  shall  find 
that  this  impressive  display  of  material  prosperity  is  merely 
the  shining  garment  of  a  polity  blind  to  things  without  and 
things  within,  and  blind  to  the  future.  If,  for  instance,  we 
compare  the  two  centuries  of  Roman  ascendancy  and  opportu- 
nity, the  first  and  second  centuries  A.D.,  with  the  two  centuries 


THE  CJESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       461 

of  Greek  and  Hellenic  life  beginning  about  466  B.C.  with  the 
supremacy  of  Pericles  in  Athens,  we  are  amazed  by — we  can- 
not call  it  an  inferiority,  it  is  a  complete  absence  of  science.  The 
incuriousness  of  the  Roman  rich  and  the  Roman  rulers  was  more 
massive  and  monumental  even  than  their  architecture. 

In  one  field  of  knowledge  particularly  we  might  have  ex- 
pected the  Romans  to  have  been  alert  and  enterprising,  and 
that  was  geography.  Their  political  interests  demanded  a 
steadfast  inquiry  into  the  state  of  affairs  beyond  their  fron- 
tiers, and  yet  that  inquiry  was  never  made.  There  is  prac- 
tically no  literature  of  Roman  travel  beyond  the  imperial  limits, 
no  such  keen  and  curious  accounts  as  Herodotus  gives  of  the 
Scythians,  the  Africans,  and  the  like.  There  is  nothing  in 
Latin  to  compare  with  the  early  descriptions  of  India  and 
Siberia  that  are  to  be  found  in  Chinese.  The  Roman  legions 
went  at  one  time  into  Scotland,  yet  there  remains  no  really 
intelligent  account  of  Picts  or  Scots,  much  less  any  glance 
at  the  seas  beyond.  Such  explorations  as  those  of  Hanno  or 
Pharaoh  Necho  seem  to  have  been  altogether  beyond  the  scope 
of  the  Roman  imagination.  It  is  probable  that  after  the  de- 
struction of  Carthage  the  amount  of  shipping  that  went  out 
into  the  Atlantic  through  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  fell  to  incon- 
siderable proportions.  Still  more  impossible  in  this  world  of 
vulgar  wealth,  enslaved  intelligence,  and  bureaucratic  rule  was 
any  further  development  of  the  astronomy  and  physiography  of 
Alexandria.  The  Romans  do  not  seem  even  to  have  inquired 
what  manner  of  men  wove  the  silk  and  prepared  the  spices  or 
collected  the  amber  and  the  pearls  that  came  into  their  mar- 
kets. Yet  the  channels  of  inquiry  were  open  and  easy;  path- 
ways led  in  every  direction  to  the  most  convenient  "jumping-off 
places''  for  explorers  it  is  possible  to  imagine. 

"The  most  remote  countries  of  the  ancient  world  were  ran- 
sacked to  supply  the  pomp  and  delicacy  of  Rome.  The  forests 
of  Scythia  afforded  some  valuable  furs.  Amber  was  brought 
overland  from  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  to  the  Danube,  and  the 
barbarians  were  astonished  at  the  price  which  they  received  in 
exchange  for  so  useless  a  commodity.  There  was  a  considerable 
demand  for  Babylonian  carpets  and  other  manufactures  of  the 
East ;  but  the  most  important  branch  of  foreign  trade  was  car- 
ried on  with  Arabia  and  India.  Every  year,  about  the  time  of 
the  summer  solstice,  a  fleet  of  a  hundred  and  twenty  vessels 


462  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

sailed  from  Myos-hormos,  a  port  of  Egypt  on  the  Red  Sea.  By 
the  periodical  assistance  of  the  monsoons,  they  traversed  the 
ocean  in  about  forty  days.  The  coast  of  Malabar,  or  the  island 
of  Ceylon,  was  the  usual  term  of  their  navigation,  and  it  was 
in  those  markets  that  the  merchants  from  the  more  remote 
countries  of  Asia  expected  their  arrival.  The  return  of  the 
fleet  to  Egypt  was  fixed  to  the  months  of  December  or  January, 
and  as  soon  as  their  rich  cargo  had  been  transported,  on  the 
backs  of  camels,  from  the  Red  Sea  to  the  Nile,  and  had  de- 
scended that  river  as  far  as  Alexandria,  it  was  poured,  without 
delay,  into  the  capital  of  the  empire."  x 

Yet  Rome  was  content  to  feast,  exact,  grow  rich,  and  watch 
its  gladiatorial  shows  without  the  slightest  attempt  to  learn 
anything  of  India,  China,  Persia  or  Scythia,  Buddha  or  Zoro- 
aster, or  about  the  Huns,  the  Negroes,  the  people  of  Scandi- 
navia, or  the  secrets  of  the  western  sea. 

When  we  realize  the  uninspiring  quality  of  the  social  atmos^ 
phere  which  made  this  indifference  possible,  we  are  able  to 
account  for  the  failure  of  Rome  during  its  age  of  opportunity 
to  develop  any  physical  or  chemical  science,  and  as  a  conse- 
quence to  gain  any  increased  control  over  matter.  Most  of  the 
physicians  in  Rome  were  Greeks  and  many  of  them  slaves — for 
the  Roman  wealthy  did  not  even  understand  that  a  bought  mind 
is  a  spoilt  mind.  Yet  this  was  not  due  to  any  want  of  natural 
genius  among  the  Roman  people;  it  was  due  entirely  to  their 
social  and  economic  conditions.  From  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
present  day  Italy  has  produced  a  great  number  of  brilliant 
scientific  men.  And  one  of  the  most  shrewd  and  inspired  of 
scientific  writers  was  an  Italian,  Lucretius,  who  lived  between 
the  time  of  Marius  and  Julius  Caesar  (about  100  B.C.  to  about 
55  B.C.).  This  amazing  man  was  of  the  quality  of  Leonardo  da 
Vinci  (also  an  Italian)  or  Newton.  He  wrote  a  long  Latin  poem 
about  the  processes  of  Nature,  De  Rerum  Naturia,  in  which  he 
guessed  with  astonishing  insight  about  the  constitution  of  mat- 
ter and  about  the  early  history  of  mankind.  Osborn  in  his  Old 
Stone  Age  quotes  with  admiration  long  passages  from  Lucretius 
about  primitive  man,  so  good  and  true  are  they  to-day.  But  this 
was  an  individual  display,  a  seed  that  bore  no  fruit.  Roman 
science  was  still-born  into  a  suffocating  atmosphere  of  vile 
wealth  and  military  oppression.  The  true  figure  to  represent 

'Gibbon. 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       463 

the  classical  Roman  attitude  to  science  is  not  Lucretius,  but 
that  Roman  soldier  who  hacked  Archimedes  to  death  at  the 
storming  of  Syracuse. 

And  if  physical  and  biological  science  wilted  and  died  on 
the  stony  soil  of  Roman  prosperity,  political  and  social  science 
never  had  a  chance  to  germinate.  Political  discussion  would 
have  been  treason  to  the  emperor,  social  or  economic  inquiry 
would  have  threatened  the  rich.  So  Rome,  until  disaster  fell 
upon  her,  never  examined  into  her  own  social  health,  never 
questioned  the  ultimate  value  of  her  hard  officialism.  Conse- 
quently, there  was  no  one  who  realized  the  gravity  of  her  failure 
to  develop  any  intellectual  imagination  to  hold  her  empire 
together,  any  general  education  in  common  ideas  that  would 
make  men  fight  and  work  for  the  empire  as  men  will  fight  and 
work  for  a  dear  possession.  But  the  rulers  of  the  Roman 
Empire  did  not  want  their  citizens  to  fight  for  anything  in.  any 
spirit  at  all.  The  rich  had  eaten  the  heart  out  of  their  general 
population,  and  they  were  content  with  the  meal  they  had 
made.  The  legions  were  filled  with  Germans,  Britons,  JsTumid- 
ians,  and  the  like;  and  until  the  very  end  the  wealthy  Romans 
thought  they  could  go  on  buying  barbarians  to  defend  them 
against  the  enemy  without  and  the  rebel  poor  within.  How 
little  was  done  in  education  by  the  Romans  is  shown  by  an 
account  of  what  was  done.  Says  Mr.  H.  Stuart  Jones,  "Julius 
Caesar  bestowed  Roman  citizenship  on  'teachers  of  the  liberal 
arts';  Vespasian  endowed  professorships  of  Greek  and  Latin 
oratory  at  Rome;  and  later  emperors,  especially  Antoninus 
Pius,  extended  the  same  benefits  to  the  provinces.  Local  enter- 
prise and  munificence  were  also  devoted  to  the  cause  of  educa- 
tion; we  learn  from  the  correspondence  of  the  younger  Pliny 
that  public  schools  were  founded  in  the  towns  of  Northern  Italy. 
But  though  there  was  a  wide  diffusion  of  knowledge  under  the 
empire,  there  was  no  true  intellectual  progress.  Augustus,  it  is 
true,  gathered  about  him  the  most  brilliant  writers  of  his 
time,  and  the  debut  of  the  new  monarchy  coincided  with  the 
Golden  Age  of  Roman  literature ;  but  this  was  of  brief  duration, 
and  the  beginnings  of  the  Christian  era  saw  the  triumph  of 
classicism  and  the  first  steps  in  the  decline  which  awaits  all 
literary  movements  which  look  to  the  past  rather  than  the 
future." 

There  is  a  diagnosis  of  the  intellectual  decadence  of  the  age 


464  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

in  a  treatise  upon  the  sublime  by  a  Greek  writer  who  wrote 
somewhen  in  the  second,  third,  or  fourth  century  A.D.,  and 
who  may  possibly  have  been  Longinus  Philologus,  which  states 
very  distinctly  one  manifest  factor  in  the  mental  sickness  of  the 
Roman  world.  He  is  cited  by  Gibbon :  "The  sublime  Longinus, 
who,  in  somewhat  a  later  period  and  in  the  court  of  a  Syrian 
queen,  Zenobia,  preserved  the  spirit  of  ancient  Athens,  ob- 
serves and  laments  the  degeneracy  of  his  contemporaries,  which 
debased  their  sentiments,  enervated  their  courage,  and  depressed 
their  talents.  'In  the  same  manner,'  says  he,  'as  some  children 
always  remain  pigmies,  whose  infant  limbs  have  been  too  closely 
confined,  thus  our  tender  minds,  fettered  by  the  prejudices  and 
habits  of  a  just  servitude,  are  unable  to  expand  themselves  or 
to  attain  that  well-proportioned  greatness  which  we  admire  in 
the  ancients,  who,  living  under  a  popular  government,  wrote 
with?  all  the  same  freedom  as  they  acted.7  ? 

But  this  critic  grasped  only  one  aspect  of  the  restraints 
upon  mental  activity.  The  leading-strings  that  kept  the  Roman 
mind  in  a  permanent  state  of  infantilism  constituted  a  double 
servitude ;  they  were  economic  as  well  as  political.  The  account 
Gibbon  gives  of  the  life  and  activities  of  a  certain  Herodes 
Atticus,  who  lived  in  the  time  of  Hadrian,  shows  just  how 
little  was  the  share  of  the  ordinary  citizen  in  the  outward  mag- 
nificence of  the  time.  This  Atticus  had  an  immense  fortune, 
and  he  amused  himself  by  huge  architectural  benefactions  to 
various  cities.  Athens  was  given  a  racecourse,  and  a  theatre  of 
cedar,  curiously  carved,  was  set  up  there  to  the  memory  of  his 
wife ;  a  theatre  was  built  at  Corinth,  a  racecourse  was  given  to 
Delphi,  baths  to  Thermopylae,  an  aqueduct  to  Canusium,  and  so 
on  and  so  on.  One  is  struck  by  the  spectacle  of  a  world  of 
slaves  and  common  people  who  were  not  consulted  and  over 
whose  heads,  without  any  participation  on  their  part,  this  rich 
man  indulged  in  his  displays  of  "taste."  Numerous  inscrip- 
tions in  Greece  and  Asia  still  preserve  the  name  of  Herodes 
Atticus,  "patron  and  benefactor/7  who  ranged  about  the  empire 
as  though  it  was  his  private  garden,  commemorating  himself 
by  these  embellishments.  He  did  not  confine  himself  to  splendid 
buildings.  He  was  also  a  philosopher,  though  none  of  his  wis- 
dom has  survived.  He  had  a  large  villa  near  Athens,  and  there 
philosophers  were  welcome  guests  so  long  as  they  convinced  their 
patron  of  the  soundness  of  their  pretensions,  received  his  ciis- 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       465 

courses  with  respect,  and  did  not  offend  him  by  insolent 
controversy. 

The  world,  it  is  evident,  was  not  progressing  during  these  two 
centuries  of  Roman  prosperity.  But  was  it  happy  in  its  stagna- 
tion? There  are  signs  of  a  very  unmistakable  sort  that  -the 
great  mass  of  human  beings  in  the  empire,  a  mass  numbering 
something  between  a  hundred  and  a  hundred  and  fifty  millions, 
was  not  happy,  was  probably  very  acutely  miserable,  beneath 
its  outward  magnificence.  True  there  were  no  great  wars  and 
conquests  within  the  empire,  little  of  famine  or  fire  or  sword 
to  afflict  mankind ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  there  was  a  terrible 
restraint  by  government,  and  still  more  by  the  property  of 
the  rich,  upon  the  free  activities  of  nearly  everyone.  Life  for 
the  great  majority  who  were  neither  rich  nor  official,  nor  the 
womankind  and  the  parasites  of  the  rich  and  official,  must  have 
been  laborious,  tedious,  and  lacking  in  interest  and  freedom 
to  a  degree  that  a  modern  mind  can  scarcely  imagine. 

Three  things  in  particular  may  be  cited  to  sustain  the  opinion 
that  this  period  was  a  period  of  widespread  unhappiness.  The 
first  of  these  is  the  extraordinary  apathy  of  the  population  to 
political  events.  They  saw  one  upstart  pretender  to  empire 
succeed  another  with  complete  indifference.  Such  things  did 
not  seem  to  matter  to  them ;  hope  had  gone.  When  presently 
the  barbarians  poured  into  the  empire,  there  was  nothing  but  the 
legions  to  face  them.  There  was  no  popular  uprising  against 
them  at  all.  Everywhere  the  barbarians  must  have  been  out- 
numbered if  only  the  people  had  resisted.  But  the  people  did 
not  resist.  It  is  manifest  that  to  the  bulk  of  its  inhabitants  the 
Roman  Empire  did  not  seem  to  be  a  thing  worth  fighting  for. 
To  the  slaves  and  common  people  the  barbarian  probably  seemed 
to  promise  more  freedom  and  less  indignity  than  the  pompous 
rule  of  the  imperial  official  and  grinding  employment  by  the 
rich.  The  looting  and  burning  of  palaces  and  an  occasional 
massacre  did  not  shock  the  folk  of  the  Roman  underworld  as  it 
shocked  the  wealthy  and  cultured  people  to  whom  we  owe  such 
accounts  as  we  have  of  the  breaking  down  of  the  imperial  sys- 
tem. Great  numbers  of  slaves  and  common  people  probably 
joined  the  barbarians,  who  knew  little  of  racial  or  patriotic 
prejudices,  and  were  openhanded  to  any  promising  recruit.  No 
doubt  in  many  cases  the  population  found  that  the  barbarian 
was  a  worse  infliction  even  than  the  tax-gatherer  and  the  slave- 


406  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

driver.  But  that  discovery  came  too  late  for  resistance  or  the 
restoration  of  the  old  order. 

And  as  a  second  symptom  that  points  to  the  same  conclusion 
that  life  was  hardly  worth  living  for  the  poor  and  the  slaves  and 
the  majority  of  people  during  the  age  of  the  Antonines,  we 
must  reckon  the  steady  depopulation  of  the  empire.  People 
refused  to  have  children.  They  did  so,  we  suggest,  because 
their  homes  were  not  safe  from  oppression,  "because  in  the  case 
of  slaves  there  was  no  security  that  the  husband  and  wife  would 
not  be  separated,  because  there  was  no  pride  nor  reasonable 
hope  in  children  any  more.  In  modern  states  the  great  breed- 
ing-ground has  always  been  the  agricultural  countryside  where 
there  is  a  more  or  less  secure  peasantry ;  but  under  the  Koman 
Empire  the  peasant  and  the  small  cultivator  was  either  a  wor- 
ried debtor,  or  he  was  held  in  a  network  of  restraints  that  made 
him  a  spiritless  serf,  or  he  had  been  ousted  altogether  by  the 
gang  production  of  slaves. 

A  third  indication  that  this  outwardly  flourishing  period  was 
one  of  deep  unhappiness  and  mental  distress  for  vast  multitudes, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  spread  of  new  religious  movements  through- 
out the  population.  We  have  seen  how  in  the  case  of  the  little 
country  of  Judea  a  whole  nation  may  be  infected  by  the  persua- 
sion that  life  is  unsatisfactory  and  wrong,  and  that  something 
is  needed  to  set  it  right.  The  mind  of  the  Jews,  as  we  know, 
had  crystallized  about  the  idea  of  the  Promise  of  the  One  True 
God  and  the  coming  of  a  Saviour  or  Messiah.  Rather  different 
ideas  from  these  were  spreading  through  the  Roman  Empire. 
They  were  but  varying  answers  to  one  universal  question: 
"What  must  we  do  for  salvation?"  A  frequent  and  natural 
consequence  of  disgust  with  life  as  it  is,  is  to  throw  the  imagina- 
tion forward  to  an  after-life,  which  is  to  redeem  all  the  miseries 
and  injustices  of  this  one.  The  belief  in  such  compensation  is 
a  great  opiate  for  present  miseries.  Egyptian  religion  had  long 
been  saturated  with  anticipations  of  immortality,  and  we  have 
seen  how  central  was  that  idea  to  the  cult  of  Serapis  and  Isis 
at  Alexandria.  The  ancient  mysteries  of  Demeter  and  Orpheus, 
the  mysteries  of  the  Mediterranean  race,  revived  and  made  a 
sort  of  iJieocrasia  with  these  new  cults. 

A  second  great  religious  movement  was  Mithraism,  a  de- 
velopment of  Zoroastrianism,  a  religion  of  very  ancient  Aryan 
origin,  traceable  back  to  the  Indo-Iranian  people  before  they 


THE  C^SARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       467 

split  into  Persians  and  Hindus.  We  cannot  here  examine  its 
mysteries  in  any  detail.1  Mithras  was  a  god  of  light,  a  Sun 
of  Righteousness,  and  in  the  shrines  of  the  cult  he  was  always 
represented  as  slaying  a  sacred  bull  whose  blood  was  the  seed  of 
life.  Suffice  it  that,  complicated  with  many  added  ingredients, 
this  worship  of  Mithras  came  into  the  Roman  Empire  about 
the  time  of  Pompey  the  Great,  and  began  to  spread  very  widely 
under  the  Caesars  and  Antonines.  Like  the  Isis  religion,  it 
promised  immortality.  Its  followers  were  mainly  slaves,  sol- 
diers, and  distressed  people.  In  its  methods  of  worship,  in  the 
burning  of  candles  before  the  altar  and  so  forth,  it  had  a  certain 
superficial  resemblance  to  the  later  developments  of  the  ritual 
of  the  third  great  religious  movement  in  the  Roman  world, 
Christianity. 

Christianity  also  was  a  doctrine  of  immortality  and  salvation, 
and  it,  too,  spread  at  first  chiefly  among  the  lowly  and  unhappy. 
Christianity  has  been  denounced  by  modern  writers  as  a  "slave 
religion."  It  was.  It  took  the  slaves  and  the  downtrodden,  and 
it  gave  them  hope  and  restored  their  self-respect,  so  that  they 
stood  up  for  righteousness  like  men  and  faced  persecution  and 
torment.  But  of  the  origins  and  quality  of  Christianity  we  will 
tell  more  fully  in  a  later  chapter. 

§  3 

We  have  already  shown  reason  for  our  statement  that  the 
Roman  imperial  system  was  a  very  unsound  political  growth 
indeed.  It  is  absurd  to  write  of  its  statecraft ;  it  had  none.  At 
its  best  it  had  a  bureaucratic  administration  which  kept  the 
peace  of  the  world  for  a  time  and  failed  altogether  to  secure  it. 

Let  us  note  here  the  main  factors  in  its  failure. 

The  clue  to  all  its  failure  lies  in  the  absence  of  any  free 
mental  activity  and  any  organization  for  the  increase,  develop- 
ment, and  application  of  knowledge.  It  respected  wealth  and 
it  despised  science.  It  gave  government  to  the  rich,  and  im- 
agined that  wise  men  could  be  bought  and  bargained  for  in  the 
slave  markets  when  they  were  needed.  It  was,  therefore,  a 
colossally  ignorant  and  unimaginative  empire.  It  foresaw 
nothing. 

It  had  no  strategic  foresight,  because  it  was  blankly  ignorant 
1  See  Legge,  Forerunners  and  Rivals  of  Christianity. 


468  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  geography  and  ethnology.  It  knew  nothing  of  the  conditions 
of  Russia,  Central  Asia,  and  the  East.  It  was  content  to  keep 
the  Khine  and  Danube  as  its  boundaries,  and  to  make  no  effort 
to  Romanize  Germany.  But  we  need  only  look  at  the  map  of 
Europe  and  Asia  showing  the  Roman  Empire  to  see  that  a  will- 
ing and  incorporated  Germany  was  absolutely  essential  to  the 
life  and  security  of  Western  Europe.  Excluded,  Germany  be- 
came a  wedge  that  needed  only  the  impact  of  the  Hunnish  ham- 
mer to  split  up  the  whole  system. 

Moreover,  this  neglect  to  push  the  boundaries  northward  to 
the  Baltic  left  that  sea  and  the  North  Sea  as  a  region  of  ex- 
periment and  training  and  instruction  in  seamanship  for  the 
Northmen  of  Scandinavia,  Denmark,  and  the  Frisian  coast. 
But  Rome  went  on  its  way  quite  stupidly,  oblivious  to  the  growth 
of  a  newer  and  more  powerful  piracy  in  the  north. 

The  same  unimaginative  quality  made  the  Romans  leave  the 
seaways  of  the  Mediterranean-  undeveloped.  When  presently 
the  barbarians  pressed  down  to  the  warm  water,  we  read  of  no 
swift  transport  of  armies  from  Spain  or  Africa  or  Asia  to  the 
rescue  of  Italy  and  the  Adriatic  coasts.  Instead,  we  see  the 
Vandals  becoming  masters  of  the  western  Mediterranean  with- 
out so  much  as  a  naval  battle. 

The  Romans  had  been  held  at  the  Euphrates  by  an  array  of 
mounted  archers.  It  was  clear  that  as  the  legion  was  organized 
it  was  useless  in  wide  open  country,  and  it  should  have  been 
equally  clear  that  sooner  or  later  the  mounted  nomads  of  east 
Germany,  south  Russia  or  Parthia  were  bound  to  try  conclu- 
sions with  the  empire.  But  the  Romans,  two  hundred  years 
after  Caesar's  time,  were  still  marching  about,  the  same  drilled 
and  clanking  cohorts  they  had  always  been,  easily  ridden  round 
and  shot  to  pieces.  The  empire  had  learnt  nothing  even  from 
Carrhse. 

The  incapacity  of  the  Roman  imperialism  for  novelty  in 
methods  of  transport  again  is  amazing.  It  was  patent  that  their 
power  and  unity  depended  upon  the  swift  movement  of  troops 
and  supplies  from  one  part  of  the  empire  to  another.  The  re- 
public made  magnificent  roads;  the  empire  never  improved 
upon  them.  Four  hundred  years  before  the  Antonines,  Hero 
of  Alexandria  had  made  the  first  steam-engine.  Beautiful 
records  of  such  beginnings  of  science  were  among  the  neglected 
treasures  of  the  rich  men's  libraries  throughout  the  imperial 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       469 

domains.  They  were  seed  lying  on  stony  ground.  The  armies 
and  couriers  of  Marcus  Aurelius  drudged  along  the  roads  ex- 
actly as  the  armies  of  Scipio  Africanus  had  done  three  centuries 
before  them. 

The  Roman  writers  were  always  lamenting  the  effeminacy 
of  the  age.  It  was  their  favourite  cant.  They  recognized  that 
the  free  men  of  the  forest  and  steppes  and  desert  were  harder 
and  more  desperate  fighters  than  their  citizens,  but  the  natural 
corollary  of  developing  the  industrial  power  of  their  accumula- 
tions of  population  to  make  a  countervailing  equipment  never 
entered  their  heads.  Instead  they  took  the  barbarians  into 
their  legions,  taught  them  the  arts  of  war,  marched  them  about 
the  empire,  and  returned  them,  with  their  lesson  well  learnt, 
to  their  own  people. 

In  view  of  these  obvious  negligences,  it  is  no  wonder  that 
the  Romans  disregarded  that  more  subtle  thing,  the  soul  of  the 
empire,  altogether,  and  made  no  effort  to  teach  or  train  or  win 
its  common  people  into  any  conscious  participation  with  its 
life.  Such  teaching  or  training  would  indeed  have  run  counter 
to  all  the  ideas  of  the  rich  men  and  the  imperial  officials.  They 
had  made  a  tool  of  religion;  science,  literature,  and  education 
they  had  entrusted  to  the  care  of  slaves,  who  were  bred  and 
trained  and  sold  like  dogs  or  horses;  ignorant,  pompous,  and 
base,  the  Roman  adventurers  of  finance  and  property  who  cre- 
ated the  empire,  lorded  it  with  a  sense  of  the  utmost  security 
while  their  destruction  gathered  without  the  empire  and  within. 

By  the  second  and  third  centuries  A.D.  the  overtaxed  and 
overstrained  imperial  machine  was  already  staggering  towards 
its  downfall. 

§4 

And  now  it  is  necessary,  if  we  are  to  understand  clearly  the 
true  situation  of  the  Roman  Empire,  to  turn  our  eyes  to  the 
world  beyond  its  northern  and  eastern  borders,  the  world  of 
the  plains,  that  stretches,  with  scarcely  a  break,  from  Holland 
across  Germany  and  Russia  to  the  mountains  of  Central  Asia 
and  Mongolia,  and  to  give  a  little  attention  to  the  parallel  em- 
pire in  China  that  was  now  consolidating  and  developing  a 
far  tougher  and  more  enduring  moral  and  intellectual  unity 
than  the  Romans  ever  achieved. 


470  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

"It  is  the  practice,"  says  Mr.  E.  H.  Parker,  "even  amongst 
our  most  highly  educated  men  in  Europe,  to  deliver  sonorous 
sentences  about  being  'masters  of  the  world/  'bringing  all  na- 
tions of  the  earth  under  her  sway/  and  so  on,  when  in  reality 
only  some  corner  of  the  Mediterranean  is  involved,  or  some 
ephemeral  sally  into  Persia  and  Gaul.  Cyrus  and  Alexander, 
Darius  and  Xerxes,  Caesar  and  Pompey,  all  made  very  interest- 
ing excursions,  but  they  were  certainly  not  on  a  larger  scale 
or  charged  with  greater  human  interest  than  the  campaigns 
which  were  going  on  at  the  other  end  of  Asia.  Western  civiliza- 
tion possessed  much  in  art  and  science  for  which  China  never 
cared,  but,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Chinese  developed  a  historical 
and  critical  literature,  a  courtesy  of  demeanour,  a  luxury  of 
clothing,  and  an  administrative  system  of  which  Europe  might 
have  been  proud.  In  one  word,  the  history  of  the  Ear  East  is 
quite  as  interesting  as  that  of  the  Far  West.  It  only  requires 
to  be  able  to  read  it.  When  we  brush  away  contemptuously 
from  our  notice  the  tremendous  events  which  took  place  on  the 
plains  of  Tartary,  we  must  not  blame  the  Chinese  too  much  for 
declining  to  interest  themselves  in  the  doings  of  what  to  them 
appear  insignificant  states  dotted  round  the  Mediterranean  and 
Caspian,  which,  at  this  time,  was  practically  all  the  world  of 
which  we  knew  in  Europe."  * 

We  have  already  mentioned  (in  Chap.  XIV  and  elsewhere) 
the  name  of  Shi  Hwang-ti,  who  consolidated  an  empire  much 
smaller,  indeed,  than  the  present  limits  of  China,  but  still 
very  great  and  populous,  spreading  from  the  valleys  of  the 
Hwang-ho  and  the  Yang-tse.  He  became  king  of  Ch'in  in  246 
B.C.  and  emperor  in  220  B.C.,  and  he  reigned  until  210  B.C., 
and  during  this  third  of  a  century  he  effected  much  the  same 
work  of  consolidation  that  Augustus  CaBsar  carried  out  in  Rome 
two  centuries  later.  At  his  death  there  was  dynastic  trouble 
for  four  years,  and  then  (206  B.C.)  a  fresh  dynasty,  the  Han, 
established  itself  and  ruled  for  two  hundred  and  twenty-nine 
years.  The  opening  quarter  century  of  the  Christian  era  was 
troubled  by  a  usurper;  then  what  is  called  the  Later  Han 
Dynasty  recovered  power  and  ruled  for  another  century  and  a 
half  until  China,  in  the  time  of  the  Antonines,  was  so  dev- 
astated by  an  eleven-year  pestilence  as  to  fall  into  disorder. 
This  same  pestilence,  we  may  note,  also  helped  to  produce  a 
JE.  H.  Parker,  A  Thousand  Yews  of  the  Tartars. 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS      471 


472  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

century  of  confusion  in  the  Western  world  (see  §  1).  But 
altogether  until  this  happened,  for  more  than  four  hundred 
years  Central  China  was  generally. at  peace,  and  on  the  whole 
well  governed,  a  cycle  of  strength  and  prosperity  unparalleled 
by  anything  in  the  experience  of  the  Western  world. 

Only  the  first  of  the  Han  monarchs  continued  the  policy  of 
Shi  Hwang-ti  against  the  literati.  His  successor  restored  the 
classics,  for  the  old  separatist  tradition  was  broken,  and  in  the 
uniformity  of  learning  throughout  the  empire  lay,  he  saw,  the 
cement  of  Chinese  unity.  While  the  Roman  world  was  still 
blind  to  the  need  of  any  universal  mental  organization,  the  Han 
emperors  were  setting  up  a  uniform  system  of  education  and 
of  literary  degrees  throughout  China  that  has  maintained  the 
intellectual  solidarity  of  that  great  and  always  expanding  coun- 
try into  modern  times.  The  bureaucrats  of  Rome  were  of  the 
most  miscellaneous  origins  and  traditions;  the  bureaucrats  of 
China  were,  and  are  still,  made  in  the  same  mould,  all  mem- 
bers of  one  tradition.  Since  the  Han  days  China  has  experi- 
enced great  vicissitudes  of  political  fortune,  but  they  have  never 
changed  her  fundamental  character;  she  has  been  divided,  but 
she  has  always  recovered  her  unity;  she  has  been  conquered, 
and  she  has  always  absorbed  and  assimilated  her  conquerors. 

But  from  our  present  point  of  view,  the  most  important  conse- 
quences of  this  consolidation  of  China  under  Shi  Hwang-ti  and 
the  Hans  was  in  its  reaction  upon  the  unsettled  tribes  of  the 
northern  and  western  border  of  China.  Throughout  the  disor- 
dered centuries  before  the  time  of  Shi  Hwang-ti,  the  Hiung- 
nu  or  Huns  had  occupied  Mongolia  and  large  portions  of  North- 
ern China,  and  had  raided  freely  into  China  and  interfered 
freely  in  Chinese  politics.  The  new  power  and  organization  of 
the  Chinese  civilization  began  to  change  this  state  of  affairs 
for  good  and  all. 

We  have  already,  in  our  first  account  of  Chinese  beginnings, 
noted  the  existence  of  these  Huns.  It  is  necessary  now  to  ex- 
plain briefly  who  and  what  they  were.  Even  in  using  this  word 
Hun  as  a  general  equivalent  for  the  Hiung-nu,  we  step  on  to 
controversial  ground.  In  our  accounts  of  the  development  of 
the  Western  world  we  have  had  occasion  to  name  the  Scythians, 
and  to  explain  the  difficulty  of  distinguishing  clearly  between 
Cimmerians,  Sarmatians,  Medes,  Persians,  Parthians,  Goths, 
and  other  more  or  less  nomadic,  more  or  less  Aryan  peoples 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       473 

who  drifted  to  and  fro  in  a  great  arc  between  the  Danube  and 
Central  Asia.  While  sections  of  the  Aryans  were  moving  south 
and  acquiring  and  developing  civilization,  these  other  Aryan 
peoples  were  developing  mobility  and  nomadism ;  they  were 
learning  the  life  of  the  tent,  the  wagon,  and  the  herd.  They 
were  learning  also  to  use  milk  as  a  food  basis,  and  were  prob- 
ably becoming  less  agricultural,  less  disposed  to  take  even 
snatch  crops,  than  they  had  been.  Their  development  was 
being  aided  by  a  slow  change  in  climate  that  was  replacing  the 
swamps  and  forests  and  parklands  of  South  Russia  and  Central 
Asia  by  steppes,  by  wide  grazing  lands  that  is,  which 
favoured  a  healthy,  unsettled  life,  and  necessitated  an  an- 
nual movement  between  summer  and  winter  pasture.  These 
peoples  had  only  the  lowest  political  forms;  they  split  up, 
they  mingled  together;  the  various  races  had  identical  social 
habits ;  and  so  it  is  that  the  difficulty,  the  impossibility  of  sharp 
distinctions  between  them  arises.  Now  the  case  of  the  Mon- 
golian races  to  the  north  and  north-west  of  the  Chinese  civiliza- 
tion is  very  parallel.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  Hiung- 
nu,  the  Huns,  and  the  later  people  called  the  Mongols,  were 
all  very  much  the  same  people,  and  that  the  Turks  and  Tartars 
presently  branched  off  from  this  same  drifting  Mongolian  popu- 
lation. Kalmucks  and  Buriats  are  later  developments  of  the 
same  strain.  Here  we  shall  favour  the  use  of  the  word  "Hun" 
as  a  sort  of  general  term  for  these  tribes,  just  as  we  have  been 
free  and  wide  in  our  use  of  "Scythian"  in  the  West. 

The  consolidation  of  China  was  a  very  serious  matter  for 
these  Hunnish  peoples.  Hitherto  their  overflow  of  population 
had  gone  adventuring  southward  into  the  disorders  of  divided 
China  as  water  goes  into  a  sponge.  Now  they  found  a  wall 
built  against  them,  a  firm  government,  and  disciplined  armies 
cutting  them  off  from  the  grass  plains.  And  though  the  wall 
held  them  back,  it  did  not  hold  back  the  Chinese.  They  were 
increasing  and  multiplying  through  these  centuries  of  peace, 
and  as  they  increased  and  multiplied,  they  spread  steadily  with 
house  and  plough  wherever  the  soil  permitted.  They  spread 
westward  into  Tibet  and  northward  and  north-westwardly,  per- 
haps to  the  edge  of  the  Gobi  desert.  They  spread  into  the  homes 
and  pasturing  and  hunting-grounds  of  the  Hunnish  nomads, 
exactly  as  the  white  people  of  the  United  States  spread  west- 
ward into  the  hunting-grounds  of  the  Red  Indians.  And  in 


474  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

spite  of  raid  and  massacre,  they  were  just  as  invincible  because 
they  had  the  pressure  of  numbers  and  a  strong  avenging  gov- 
ernment behind  them.  Even  without  the  latter  support  the 
cultivating  civilization  of  China  has  enormous  powers  of 
permeation  and  extension.  It  has  spread  slowly  and  continu- 
ously for  three  thousand  years.  It  is  spreading  in  Manchuria 
and  Siberia  to-day.  It  roots  deeply  where  it  spreads. 

Partly  the  Huns  were  civilized  and  assimilated  by  the  Chi- 
nese. The  more  northerly  Huns  were  checked  and  their  super- 
abundant energies  were  turned  westward.  The  southern  Huns 
were  merged  into  the  imperial  population. 

If  the  reader  will  examine  the  map  of  Central  Asia,  he  will 
see  that  very  great  mountain  barriers  separate  the  Southern, 
Western,  and  Eastern  peoples  of  Asia.  (But  he  should  be 
wary  of  forming  his  ideas  from  a  map  upon  Mercator's  projec- 
tion, which  enormously  exaggerates  the  areas  and  distances  of 
Northern  Asia  and  Siberia.)  He  will  find  that  from  the  cen- 
tral mountain  masses  three  great  mountain  systems  radiate  east- 
ward ;  the  Himalayas  going  south-eastward,  south  of  Tibet,  the 
Kuen  Lun  eastward,  north  of  Tibet,  and  the  Thien  Shan  north- 
eastward to  join  the  Altai  mountains.  Further  to  the  north  is 
the  great  plain,  still  steadily  thawing  and  drying.  Between 
the  Thien  Shan  and  the  Kuen  Lun  is  an  area,  the  Tarim  Basin 
(=  roughly  Eastern  Turkestan),  of  rivers  that  never  reach 
the  sea,  but  end  in  swamps  and  intermittent  lakes.  This  basin 
was  much  more  fertile  in  the  past  than  it  is  now.  The  moun- 
tain barrier  to  the  west  of  this  Tarim  Basin  is  high,  but  not 
forbidding;  there  are  many  practicable  routes  downward  into 
Western  Turkestan,  and  it  is  possible  to  travel  either  along  the 
northern  foothills  of  the  Kuen  Lun  or  by  the  Tarim  valley 
westward  from  China  to  Kashgar  (where  the  roads  converge), 
and  so  over  the  mountains  to  Kokand,  Samarkand,  and  Bok- 
hara. Here  then  is  the  natural  meeting-place  in  history  of 
Aryan  and  Mongolian.  Here  or  round  by  the  sea. 

We  have  already  noted  how  Alexander  the  Great  came  to 
one  side  of  the  barrier  in  329  B.C.  High  among  the  mountains 
of  Turkestan  a  lake  preserves  his  name.  Indeed,  so  living  is 
the  tradition  of  his  great  raid,  that  almost  any  stone  ruin  in 
Central  Asia  is  still  ascribed  to  "Iskander."  After  this  brief 
glimpse,  the  light  of  history  upon  this  region  fades  again,  and 
when  it  becomes  bright  once  more  it  is  on  the  eastern  and  not 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS 

upon  the  western  side.  Far  away  to  the  east  Shi  Hwang-ti  had 
routed  the  Huns  and  walled  them  out  of  China  proper.  A  por- 
tion of  these  people  remained  in  the  north  of  China,  a  remnant 
which  was  destined  to  amalgamate  with  Chinese  life  under  the 
Hans,  but  a  considerable  section  had  turned  westward  and 
(second  and  first  centuries  B.C.)  driven  before  them  a  kindred 
people  called  the  Yueh-Chi,  driving  them  from  the  eastern  to 
the  western  extremity  of  the  Kuen  Lun,  and  at  last  right  over 
the  barrier  into  the  once  Aryan  region  of  Western  Turkestan.1 
These  Yueh-Chi  conquered  the  slightly  Hellenized  kingdom  of 
Bactria,  and  mixed  with  Aryan  people  there.  Later  on  these 
Yueh-Chi  became,  or  were  merged  with  Aryan  elements  into,  a 
people  called  the  Indo-Scythians,  who  went  on  down  the  Khyber 
Pass  and  conquered  northern  portions  of  India  as  far  as  Benares 
(100-150  A.D.),  wiping  out  the  last  vestiges  of  Hellenic  rule 
in  India.  This  big  splash  over  of  the  Mongolian  races  west- 
ward was  probably  not  the  first  of  such  splashes,  but  it  is  the 
first  recorded  splash.  In  the  rear  of  the  Yueh-Chi  were  the 
Huns,  and  in  the  rear  of  the  Huns  and  turning  them  now  north- 
ward was  the  vigorous  Han  Dynasty  of  China.  In  the  reign 
of  the  greatest  of  the  Han  monarchs,  Wu-Ti  (140-86  B.C.),  the 
Huns  had  been  driven  northward  out  of  the  whole  of  Eastern 
Turkestan  or  subjugated,  the  Tarim  Basin  swarmed  with  Chi- 
nese settlers,  and  caravans  were  going  over  westward  with 
silk  and  lacquer  and  jade  to  trade  for  the  gold  and  silver  of 
Armenia  and  Rome. 

The  splash  over  of  the  Yueh-Chi  is  recorded,  but  it  is  fairly 
evident  that  much  westward  movement  of  sections  of  the  Hun- 
nish  peoples  is  not  recorded.  From  200  B.C.  to  200  A.D.  the 
Cninese  Empire  maintained  a  hard,  resolute,  advancing  front 
towards  nomadism,  and  the  surplus  of  the  nomads  drifted 
steadily  west.  There  was  no  such  settling  down  behind  a  final 
frontier  on  the  part  of  the  Chinese  as  we  see  in  the  case  of  the 
Romans  at  the  Rhine  and  Danube.  The  drift  of  the  nomads 
before  this  Chinese  thrust,  century  by  century,  turned  south- 
ward at  first  towards  Bactria.  The  Parthians  of  the  first  cen- 
tury B.C.  probably  mingled  Scythian  and  MongoliaH  elements. 
The  "singing  arrows"  that  destroyed  the  army  of  Crassus  came, 

'Even  in  Eastern  Turkestan  there  are  still  strong  evidences  of  Nordic 
blood  in  the  physiognomy  of  the  people.  EIJa  and  Percy  Sykes,  Through 
Deserts  and  Oases  of  Central  Asia. 


476  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

it  would  seem,  originally  from  the  Altai  and  the  Thien  Shan. 
After  the  first  century  B.C.  the  line  of  greater  attraction  and 
least  resistance  lay  for  a  time  towards  the  north  of  the  Caspian. 
In  a  century  or  so  all  the  country  known  as  Western  Turkestan 
was  "Mongolized,"  and  so  it  remains  to  this  day.  A  second 
great  thrust  by  China  began  about  75  A.D.,  and  accelerated  the 
westward  drift  of  the  nomads.  In  102,  Pan  Chau,  a  Chinese 
general,  was  sending  explorers  from  his  advanced  camp  upon 
the  Caspian  (or,  as  some  authorities  say,  the  Persian  Gulf) 
to  learn  particulars  of  the  Roman  power.  But  their  reports 
decided  him  not  to  proceed. 

By  the  first  century  A.D.  nomadic  Mongolian  peoples  were 
in  evidence  upon  the  eastern  boundaries  of  Europe,  already 
greatly  mixed  with  Nordic  nomads  and  with  uprooted  Nordic 
elements  from  the  Caspian-Pamir  region.  There  were  Hunnish 
peoples  established  between  the  Caspian  Sea  and  the  Urals. 
West  of  them  were  the  Alans,  probably  also  a  Mongolian  peo- 
ple with  Nordic  elements;  they  had  fought  against  Pompey 
the  Great  when  he  was  in  Armenia  in  65  B.C.  These  were  as 
yet  the  furthest  westward  peoples  of  the  new  Mongolian  ad- 
vance, and  they  made  no  further  westward  push  until  the  fourth 
century  A.D.  To  the  north-west  the  Finns,  a  Mongolian  people, 
had  long  been  established  as  far  west  as  the  Baltic. 

West  of  the  Huns,  beyond  the  Don,  there  were  purely  Nordic 
tribes,  the  Goths.  These  Goths  had  spread  south-eastward 
from  their  region  of  origin  in  Scandinavia.  They  were  a  Teu- 
tonic people,  and  we  have  already  marked  them  crossing  the 
Baltic  in  the  map  we  have  given  of  the  earlier  distribution  of 
the  Aryan-speaking  people.  These  Goths  continued  to  move 
south-eastward  across  Russia,  using  the  rivers  and  never  for- 
getting their  Baltic  watercraft.  No  doubt  they  assimilated 
much  Scythian  population  as  they  spread  down  to  the  Black 
Sea.  In  the  first  century  A.D.  they  were  in  two  main  divisions, 
the  Ostrogoths,  the  east  Goths,  who  were  between  the  Don  and 
the  Dnieper,  and  the  Visigoths,  or  west  Goths,  west  of  the 
Dnieper.  During  the  first  century  there  was  quiescence  over 
the  great  plains,  but  population  was  accumulating  and  the  tribes 
were  fermenting.  The  second  and  third  centuries  seem  to  have 
been  a  phase  of  comparatively  moist  seasons  and  abundant 
grass.  Presently  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  the  weather 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS      477 


478  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

grew  drier  and  the  grass  became  scanty  and  the  nomads  stirred 
afresh. 

But  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  the  opening  century  of 
the  Christian  era,  the  Chinese  Empire  was  strong  enough  to 
expel  and  push  off  from  itself  the  surplus  of  this  Mongolian 
nomadism  to  the  north  of  it  which  presently  conquered  North 
India  and  gathered  force  and  mingled  with  Aryan  nomadism, 
and  fell  at  last  like  an  avalanche  upon  the  weak-backed  Roman 
Empire. 

Before  we  go  on  to  tell  of  the  blows  that  now  began  to  fall 
upon  the  Roman  Empire  and  of  the  efforts  of  one  or  two  great 
men  to  arrest  the  collapse,  we  may  say  a  few  words  about  the 
habits  and  quality  of  these  westward-drifting  barbaric  Mon- 
golian peoples  who  were  now  spreading  from  the  limits  of 
China  towards  the  Black  and  Baltic  Seas.  It  is  still  the  Euro- 
pean custom  to  follow  the  lead  of  the  Roman  writers  and  write 
of  these  Huns  and  their  associates  as  of  something  incredibly 
destructive  and  cruel.  But  such  accounts  as  we  have  from  the 
Romans  were  written  in  periods  of  panic,  and  the  Roman  could 
lie  about  his  enemies  with  a  freedom  and  vigour  that  must 
arouse  the  envy  even  of  the  modern  propagandist.  He  could 
talk  of  "Punic  faith"  as  a  byword  for  perfidy  while  committing 
the  most  abominable  treacheries  against  Carthage,  and  his  rail- 
ing accusations  of  systematic  cruelty  against  this  people  or 
that  were  usually  the  prelude  and  excuse  for  some  frightful 
massacre  or  enslavement  or  robbery  on  his  own  part.  He  had 
quite  a  modern  passion  for  self-justification.  We  must  remem- 
ber that  these  accounts  of  the  savagery  and  frightfulness  of 
the  Huns  came  from  a  people  whose  chief  amusement  was 
gladiatorial  shows,  and  whose  chief  method  of  dealing  with  in- 
surrection and  sedition  was  nailing  the  offender  to  a  cross  to 
die.  From  first  to  last  the  Roman  Empire  must  have  killed 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  men  in  that  way.  A  large  portion 
of  the  population  of  this  empire  that  could  complain  of  the 
barbarism  of  its  assailants  consisted  of  slaves  subject  prac- 
tically to  almost  any  lust  or  caprice  at  the  hands  of  their  owners. 
It  is  well  to  bear  these  facts  in  mind  before  we  mourn  the 
swamping  of  the  Roman  Empire  by  the  barbarians  as  though 
it  was  an  extinction  of  all  that  is  fine  in  life  by  all  that  is  black 
and  ugly. 

The  facts  seem  to  be  that  the  Hunnish  peoples  were  the  east- 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       479 

ern  equivalent  of  the  primitive  Aryans,  and  that,  in  spite  of 
their  profound  racial  and  linguistic  differences,  they  mixed 
with  the  nomadic  and  semi-nomadic  residuum  of  the  Aryan- 
speaking  races  north  of  the  Danube  and  Persia  very  easily  and 
successfully.  Instead  of  killing,  they  enlisted  and  intermarried 
with  the  peoples  they  invaded.  They  had  that  necessary  gift 
for  all  peoples  destined  to  political  predominance,  tolerant 
assimilation.  They  carne  rather  later  in  time,  and  their 
nomadic  life  was  more  highly  developed  than  that  of  the  primi- 
tive Aryans.  The  primitive  Aryans  were  a  forest  and  ox-wagon 
people  who  took  to  the  horse  later.  The  Hunnish  peoples  had 
grown  up  with  the  horse.  Somewhen  about  1200  or  1000 
years  B.C.  they  began  to  ride  the  horse.  The  bit,  the  saddle, 
the  stirrup,  these  are  not  primitive  things,  but  they  are  neces- 
sary if  man  and  horse  are  to  keep  going  for  long  stretches.  It 
is  well  to  bear  in  mind  how  modern  a  thing  is  riding.  Alto- 
gether man  has  not  been  in  the  saddle  for  much  more  than  three 
thousand  years.1  We  have  already  noted  the  gradual  appear- 
ance of  the  war-chariot,  the  mounted  man,  and  finally  of  dis- 
ciplined cavalry  in  this  history.  It  was  from  the  Mongolian 
regions  of  Asia  that  these  things  came.  To  this  day  men  in 
Central  Asia  go  rather  in  the  saddle  than  on  their  proper  feet. 
Says  Ratzel,2  "Strong,  long-necked  horses  are  found  in  enor- 
mous numbers  on  the  steppes.  For  Mongols  and  Turcomans 
riding  is  not  a  luxury;  even  the  Mongol  shepherds  tend  their 
flocks  on  horseback.  Children  are  taught  to  ride  in  early  youth ; 
and  the  boy  of  three  years  old  often  takes  his  first  riding-lesson 
on  a  safe  child's  saddle  and  makes  quick  progress." 

It  is  impossible  to  suppose  that  the  Huns  and  the  Alans  could 
have  differed  very  widely  in  character  from  the  present  nomads 
of  the  steppe  regions,  and  nearly  all  observers  are  agreed  in 
describing  these  latter  as  open  and  pleasant  people.  They 
are  thoroughly  honest  and  free-spirited.  "The  character  of 
the  herdsmen  of  Central  Asia,"  says  Eatzel,3  "when  unadul- 
terated, is  ponderous  eloquence,  frankness,  rough  good-nature, 
pride,  but  also  indolence,  irritability,  and  a  tendency  to  vin- 
dictiveness.  Their  faces  show  a  considerable  share  of  frankness 

'See  Roger  Pocock,  Horses,  a  very  interesting  and  picturesque  little 
book. 

3  The  History  of  Mankind,  book  v.,  C. 
*Ibid. 


480  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

combined  with  amusing  naivete.  .  .  .  Their  courage  is  rather 
a  sudden  blaze  of  pugnacity  than  cold  boldness.  Religious 
fanaticism  they  have  none.  Hospitality  is  universal."  This  is 
not  an  entirely  disagreeable  picture.  Their  personal  bearing, 
he  says  further,  is  quieter  and  more  dignified  than  that  of  the 
townsmen  of  Turkestan  and  Persia.  Add  to  this  that  the 
nomadic  life  prevents  any  great  class  inequalities  or  any  ex- 
tensive development  of  slavery. 

Of  course  these  peoples  out  of  Asia  were  totally  illiterate  and 
artistically  undeveloped.  But  we  must  not  suppose,  on  that 
account,  that  they  were  primitive  barbarians,  and  that  their 
state  of  life  was  at  the  level  from  which  the  agricultural  civili- 
zation had  long  ago  arisen.  It  was  not.  They,  too,  had  de- 
veloped, but  they  had  developed  along  a  different  line,  a  line 
with  less  intellectual  complication,  more  personal  dignity  per- 
haps, and  certainly  with  a  more  intimate  contact  with  wind 
and  sky. 

§  5 

The  first  serious  irruptions  of  the  German  tribes  into  the 
Roman  Empire  began  in  the  third  century  with  the  decay  of 
the  central  power.  We  will  not  entangle  the  reader  here  with 
the  vexed  and  intricate  question  of  the  names,  identity,  and 
inter-relationships  of  the  various  Germanic  tribes.  Historians 
find  great  difficulties  in  keeping  them  distinct,  and  these 
difficulties  are  enhanced  by  the  fact  that  they  them- 
selves took  little  care  to  keep  themselves  distinct.  We  find  in 
236  A.D.  a  people  called  the  Franks  breaking  bounds  upon  the 
Lower  Rhine,  and  another,  the  Alamanni,  pouring  into  Alsace. 
A  much  more  serious  push  southward  was  that  of  the  Goths. 
We  have  already  noted  the  presence  of  these  people  in  South 
Russia,  and  their  division  by  the  Dnieper  into  Western  and 
Eastern  Goths.  They  had  become  a  maritime  people  again 
upon  the  Black  Sea — probably  their  traditional  migration  from 
Sweden  was  along  the  waterways,  for  it  is  still  possible  to  row 
a  boat,  with  only  a  few  quite  practicable  portages,  from  the 
Baltic  right  across  Russia  to  either  the  Black  or  Caspian  Sea 
— and  they  had  wrested  the  command  of  the  eastern  seas  from 
the  control  of  Rome.  They  were  presently  raiding  the  shores 
of  Greece.  They  also  crossed  the  Danube  in  a  great  land  raid 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS      481 

in  247,  and  defeated  and  killed  the  Emperor  Decius  in  what  is 
now  Serbia.  The  province  of  Dacia  vanished  from  Roman 
history.  In  270  they  were  defeated  at  Nish  in  Serbia  by 
Claudius,  and  in  276  they  were  raiding  Pontus.  It  is  char- 
acteristic of  the  invertebrate  nature  of  the  empire  that  the 
legions  of  Gaul  found  that  the  most  effective  method  of  deal- 
ing with  the  Franks  and  the  Alamanni  at  this  time  was  by 
setting  up  a  separate  emperor  in  Gaul  and  doing  the  job  by 
themselves. 

Then  for  a  while  the  barbarians  were  held,  and  the  Emperor 
Probus  in  276  forced  the  Franks  and  the  Alamanni  back  over 
the  Rhine.  But  it  is  significant  of  the  general  atmosphere 
of  insecurrfy  created  by  these  raids  that  Aurelian  (270-275) 
fortified  Rome,  which  had  been  an  open  and  secure  city  for  all 
the  earlier  years  of  the  empire. 

In  321  A.D.  the  Goths  were  again  over  the  Danube,  plunder- 
ing what  is  now  Serbia  and  Bulgaria.  They  were  driven  back 
by  Constantine  the  Great,  of  whom  we  shall  have  more  to  tell 
in  the  next  chapter.  About  the  end  of  his  reign  (337  A.D.) 
the  Vandals,  a  people  closely  kindred  to  the  Goths,  being  pressed 
by  them,  obtained  permission  to  cross  the  Danube  into  Pan- 
nonia,  which  is  now  that  part  of  Hungary  west  of  the  river. 

But  by  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  the  Hunnish  people 
to  the  east  were  becoming  aggressive  again.  They  had  long 
subjugated  the  Alani,  and  now  they  made  the  Ostrogoths,  the 
east  Goths,  tributary.  The  Visigoths  (or  west  Goths)  followed 
the  example  of  the  Vandals,  and  made  arrangements  to  cross 
the  Danube  into  Roman  territory.  There  was  some  dispute 
upon  the  terms  of  this  settlement,  and  the  Visigoths,  growing 
fierce,  assumed  the  offensive,  and  at  Adrianople  defeated  the 
Emperor  Valens,  who  was  killed  in  this  battle.  They  were 
then  allowed  to  settle  in  what  fs  now  Bulgaria,  and  their  army 
became  nominally  a  Roman  army,  though  they  retained  their 
own  chiefs,  the  foremost  of  whom  was  Alaric.  It  exhibits 
the  complete  "barbarization"  of  the  Roman  empire  that  had 
already  occurred,  that  the  chief  opponent  of  Alaric  the  Goth, 
Stilicho,  was  a  Pannonian  Vandal.  The  legions  in  Gaul  were 
under  the  command  of  a  Frank,  and  the  Emperor  Theodosius  I 
(emp.  379-395)  was  a  Spaniard  chiefly  supported  by  Gothic 
auxiliaries. 

The  empire  was  now  splitting  finally  into  an  eastern  (Greek- 


482  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

speaking)  and  a  western  (Latin-speaking)  half.  Theodosius 
the  Great  was  succeeded  by  his  sons  Arcadius  at  Constanti- 
nople and  Honorius  at  Kavenna.  Alaric  made  a  puppet  of  the 
eastern  monarch  and  Stilicho  of  the  western.  Huns  now  first 
appear  within  the  empire  as  auxiliary  troops  enlisted  under 
Stilicho.  In  this  struggle  of  East  and  West,  the  frontier — if 
we  can  still  speak  of  a  frontier  between  the  unauthorized  bar- 
barian without  and  the  barbarian  in  employment  within — gave 
way.  Fresh  Vandals,  more  Goths,  Alans,  Suevi,  marched  freely 
westward,  living  upon  the  country.  Amidst  this  confusion 
occurred  a  crowning  event.  Alaric  the  Goth  marched  down 
Italy,  and  after  a  short  siege  captured  Rome  (410). 

By  425  or  so,  the  Vandals  (whom  originally  we  noted  in 
East  Germany)  and  a  portion  of  the  Alani  (whom  we  first 
mentioned  in  South-east  Russia)  had  traversed  Gaul  and  the 
Pyrenees,  and  had  amalgamated  and  settled  in  the  south  of 
Spain.  There  were  Huns  in  possession  of  Pannonia  and  Goths 
in  Dalmatia.  Into  Bohemia  and  Moravia  came  and  settled  a 
Slavic  people,  the  Czechs  (451).  In  Portugal  and  north  of 
the  Vandals  in  Spain  were  Visigoths  and  Suevi.  Gaul  was 
divided  among  Visigoths,  Franks,  and  Burgundians.  Britain 
was  being  invaded  by  Low  German  tribes,  the  Jutes,  Angles 
and  Saxons,  before  whom  the  Keltic  British  of  the  south-west 
were  flying  across  the  sea  to  what  is  now  Brittany  in  France. 
The  usual  date  given  for  this  invasion  is  449,  but  it  was  prob- 
ably earlier.1  And  as  the  result  of  intrigues  between  two  im- 
perial politicians,  the  Vandals  of  the  south  of  Spain,  under 
their  king  Genseric,  embarked  en  masse  for  North  Africa  (429), 
became  masters  of  Carthage  (439),  secured  the  mastery  of  the 
sea,  raided,  captured,  and  pillaged  Rome  (455),  crossed  into 
Sicily,  and  set  up  a  kingdom  in  West  Sicily,  which  endured 
there  for  a  hundred  years  (up  to  534).  At  the  time  of  its 
greatest  extent  (477)  this  Vandal  kingdom  included  also 
Corsica,  Sardinia,  and  the  Balearic  Isles,  as  well  as  much  of 
North  Africa. 

About  this  Vandal  kingdom  facts  and  figures  are  given  that 
show  very  clearly  the  true  nature  of  these  barbarian  irruptions. 
They  were  not  really  the  conquest  and  replacement  of  one  peo- 
ple or  race  by  another;  what  happened  was  something  very 
different  it  was  a  social  revolution  started  and  masked  by  a 

>E.  B. 


THE  CJESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       48* 


484  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

superficial  foreign  conquest.  The  whole  Vandal  nation,  men, 
women,  and  children,  that  came  from  Spain  to  Africa,  for 
example,  did  not  number  more  than  eighty  thousand  souls. 
We  know  this  because  we  have  particulars  of  the  transport 
problem.  In  their  struggle  for  North  Africa,  Dr.  Schurtz  tells 
us,1  "there  is  no  trace  of  any  serious  resistance  offered  by  the 
inhabitants;  Boniface  (the  Roman  governor  of  North  Africa) 
had  defended  Hippo  with  Gothic  mercenaries,  while  the  native 
population  lent  no  appreciable  assistance,  and  the  nomad  tribes 
of  the  country  either  adopted  a  dubious  attitude  or  availed  them- 
selves of  the  difficulties  of  the  Roman  governor  to  make  attacks 
and  engage  in  predatory  expeditions.  This  demoralization  re- 
sulted from  social  conditions,  which  had  perhaps  developed  more 
unfavourably  in  Africa  than  in  other  parts  of  the  Roman  Em- 
pire. The  free  peasants  had  long  ago  become  the  serfs  of  the 
great  landed  proprietors,  and  were  little  superior  in  position  to 
the  masses  of  slaves  who  were  everywhere  to  be  found.  And 
the  great  landowners  had  become  in  their  turn  easy  victims 
of  the  policy  of  extortion  followed  by  unscrupulous  governors 
to  an  increasingly  unprecedented  extent  in  proportion  as  the 
dignity  of  the  imperial  power  sank  lower.  No  man  who  had 
anything  to  lose  would  now  take  a  place  in  the  senate  of  the 
large  towns,  which  had  once  been  the  goal  of  the  ambitious, 
for  the  senators  were  required  to  make  up  all  deficiencies  in  the 
revenue,  and  such  deficiencies  were  now  frequent  and  consider- 
able. ...  Bloody  insurrections  repeatedly  broke  out,  always 
traceable  ultimately  to  the  pressure  of  taxation.  .  .  ." 

Manifestly  the  Vandals  came  in  as  a  positive  relief  to  such 
a  system.  They  exterminated  the  great  landowners,  wiped  out 
all  debts  to  Roman  money-lenders,  and  abolished  the  last  ves- 
tiges of  military  service.  The  cultivators  found  themselves 
better  off;  the  minor  officials  kept  their  places;  it  was  not  so 
much  a  conquest  as  a  liberation  from  an  intolerable  deadlock. 

It  was  while  the  Vandals  were  still  in  Africa  that  a  great 
leader,  Attila,  arose  among  the  Huns.  The  seat  of  his  govern- 
ment was  in  the  plains  east  of  the  Danube.  For  a  time  he 
swayed  a  considerable  empire  of  Hunnish  and  Germanic  tribes, 
and  his  rule  stretched  from  the  Rhine  into  Central  Asia.  He 
negotiated  on  equal  terms  with  the  Chinese  emperor.  He 
bullied  Ravenna  and  Constantinople  for  ten  years.  Honoria. 

•In  Helmolt'8  History  of  the  World. 


THE  CLESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       485 

the  grand-daughter  of  Theodosius  II,  Emperor  of  the  Eastern 
empire,  one  of  those  passionate  young  ladies  who  cause  so  much 
trouble  in  the  world,  having  been  put  under  restraint  because 
of  a  love  affair  with  a  court  chamberlain,  sent  her  ring  to 
Attila  and  called  upon  him  to  be  her  husband  and  deliverer. 
He  was  also  urged  to  attack  the  Eastern  empire  by  Genseric 
the  Vandal,  who  was  faced  by  an  alliance  of  the  Western  and 
Eastern  emperors.  He  raided  southward  to  the  very  walls  of 
Constantinople,  completely  destroying,  says  Gibbon,  seventy 
cities  in  his  progress,  and  forcing  upon  the  emperor  an  onerous 
peace,  which  apparently  did  not  involve  the  liberation  of 
Honoria  to  her  hero. 

At  this  distance  of  time  we  are  unable  to  guess  at  the  motives 
for  this  omission.  Attila  continued  to  speak  of  her  as  his 
affianced  bride,  and  to  use  the  relationship  as  a  pretext  for 
aggressions.  In  the  subsequent  negotiations  a  certain  Priscus 
accompanied  an  embassy  to  the  camp  of  the  Hunnish  monarch, 
and  the  fragments  that  still  survive  of  the  narrative  he  wrote 
give  us  a  glimpse  of  the  camp  and  way  of  living  of  the  great 
conqueror. 

The  embassy  was  itself  a  curiously  constituted  body.  Its 
head  was  Maximin,  an  honest  diplomatist  who  went  in  good 
faith.  Quite  unknown  to  him  and,  at  the  time,  to  Priscus, 
Vigilius,  the  interpreter  of  the  expedition,  had  also  a  secret 
mission  from  the  court  of  Theodosius  which  was  to  secure  by 
bribery  the  assassination  of  Attila.  The  little  expedition  went 
by  way  of  Nish ;  it  crossed  the  Danube  in  canoes,  dug  out  of  a 
single  tree,  and  it  was  fed  by  contributions  from  the  villages 
on  the  route.  Differences  in  dietary  soon  attracted  the  atten- 
tion of  the  envoys.  Priscus  mentions  mead  in  the  place  of  wine, 
millet  for  corn,  and  a  drink  either  distilled  1  or  brewed  from 
barley.  The  journey  through  Hungary  will  remind  the  reader 
in  many  of  its  incidents  of  the  journeys  of  travellers  in  Central 
Africa  during  the  Victorian  period.  The  travellers  were 
politely  offered  temporary  wives. 

Attila7  s  capital  was  rather  a  vast  camp  and  village  than  a 
town.  There  was  only  one  building  of  stone,  a  bath  constructed 
on  the  Roman  model.  The  mass  of  the  people  were  in  huts  and 
tents;  Attila  and  his  leading  men  lived  in  timber  palaces  in 
great  stockaded  enclosures  with  their  numerous  wives  and  min- 

1  Gibbon. 


486  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

isters  about  them.  There  was  a  vast  display  of  loot,  but  Attila 
himself  affected  a  nomadic  simplicity ;  he  was  served  in  wooden 
cups  and  platters,  and  never  touched  bread.  He  worked  hard, 
kept  open  court  before  the  gate  of  his  palace,  and  was  commonly 
in  the  saddle.  The  primitive  custom  of  both  Aryans  and  Mon- 
gols of  holding  great  feasts  in  hall  still  held  good,  and  there 
was  much  hard  drinking.  Priscus  describes  how  bards  chanted 
before  Attila.  They  "recited  the  verses  which  they  had  com- 
posed, to  celebrate  his  valour  and  his  victories.  A  profound 
silence  prevailed  in  the  hall,  and  the  attention  of  the  guests 
was  captivated  by  the  vocal  harmony,  which  revived  and  per- 
petuated the  memory  of  their  own  exploits;  a  martial  ardour 
flashed  from  the  eyes  of  the  warriors,  who  were  impatient  for 
battle;  and  the  tears  of  the  old  men  expressed  their  generous 
despair,  that  they  could  no  longer  partake  the  danger  and  glory 
of  the  field.  This  entertainment,  which  might  be  considered 
as  a  school  of  military  virtue,  was  succeeded  by  a  farce  that 
debased  the  dignity  of  human  nature.  A  Moorish  and  Scythian 
buffoon  successively  excited  the  mirth  of  the  rude  spectators  by 
their  deformed  figures,  ridiculous  dress,  antic  gestures,  absurd 
speeches,  and  the  strange,  unintelligible  confusion  of  the  Latin, 
the  Gothic,  and  the  Hunnish  languages,  and  the  hall  resounded 
with  loud  and  licentious  peals  of  laughter.  In  the  midst  of 
this  intemperate  riot,  Attila  alone,  without  change  of  counte- 
nance, maintained  his  steadfast  and  inflexible  gravity."  1 

Although  Attila  was  aware,  through  the  confession  of  the 
proposed  assassin,  of  the  secret  work  of  Vigilius,  he  allowed 
this  embassy  to  return  in  safety,  with  presents  of  numerous 
horses  and  the  like,  to  Constantinople.  Then  he  despatched  an 
ambassador  to  Theodosius  II  to  give  that  monarch,  as  people 
say,  a  piece  of  his  mind.  "Theodosius,"  said  the  envoy,  "is 
the  son  of  an  illustrious  and  respectable  parent;  Attila,  like- 
wise, is  descended  from  a  noble  race;  and  he  has  supported,  by 
his  actions  the  dignity  which  he  inherited  from  his  father 
Munzuk.  But  Theodosius  has  forfeited  his  parental  honours, 
and,  by  consenting  to  pay  tribute,  has  degraded  himself  to  the 
condition  of  a  slave.  It  is  therefore  just  that  he  should  rever- 
ence the  man  whom  fortune  and  merit  have  placed  above  him ; 
instead  of  attempting,  like  a  wicked  slave,  clandestinely  to 
conspire  against  his  master." 

1  Gibbons. 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS      487 

This  straightforward  bullying  was  met  by  abject  submission. 
The  emperor  sued  for  pardon,  and  paid  a  great  ransom. 

In  451  Attila  declared  war  on  the  western  empire.  He 
invaded  Gaul.  So  far  as  the  imperial  forces  were  concerned, 
he  had  things  all  his  own  way,  and  he  sacked  most  of  the  towns 
of  France  as  far  south  as  Orleans.  Then  the  Franks  and 
Visigoths  and  the  imperial  forces  united  against  him,  and  a 
great  and  obstinate  battle  at  Troyes  (451),  in  which  over 
150,000  men  were  killed  on  both  sides,  ended  in  his  repulse 
and  saved  Europe  from  a  Mongolian  overlord.  This  disaster 
by  no  means  exhausted  Attila's  resources.  He  turned  his  at- 
tention southward,  and  overran  North  Italy.  He  burnt  Aquileia 
and  Padua,  and  looted  Milan,  but  he  made  peace  at  the  entreaty 
of  Pope  Leo  I.  He  died  in  453.  .  .  . 

Hereafter  the  Huns,  so  far  as  that  name  goes  in  Europe,  the 
Huns  of  Attila,  disappeared  out  of  history.  They  dissolve  into 
the  surrounding  populations.  They  were  probably  already  much 
mixed,  and  rather  Aryan  than  Mongolian.  They  did  not  be- 
come, as  one  might  suppose,  the  inhabitants  of  Hungary,  though 
they  have  probably  left  many  descendants  there.  About  a  hun- 
dred years  after  came  another  Hunnish  or  mixed  people,  the 
Avars,  out  of  the  east  into  Hungary,  but  these  were  driven  out 
eastward  again  by  Charlemagne  in  791-5.  The  Magyars,  the 
modern  Hungarians,  came  westward  later.  They  were  a 
Turko-Finnish  people.  The  Magyar  is  a  language  belonging  to 
the  Finno-Ugrian  division  of  the  Ural-Altaic  tongues.  The 
Magyars  were  on  the  Volga  about  550.  They  settled  in  Hun- 
gary about  900.  .  .  .  But  we  are  getting  too  far  on  in  our 
story,  and  we  must  return  to  Rome. 

In  493  Theodoric,  a  Goth,  became  King  of  Rome,  but  already 
for  seventeen  years  there  had  been  no  Roman  emperor.  So 
it  was  in  utter  social  decay  and  collapse  that  the  great  slave- 
holding  "world-ascendancy"  of  the  God-Csesars  and  the  rich 
men  of  Rome  came  to  an  end. 

§n 
6 

But  though  throughout  the  whole  of  Western  Europe  and 
North  Africa  the  Roman  imperial  system  had  collapsed,  though 
credit  had  vanished,  luxury  production  had  ceased  and  money 
was  hidden,  though  creditors  were  going  unpaid  and  slaves 


488 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


masterless,  the  tradition  of  the  Caesars  was  still  being  carried 
on  in  Constantinople.  We  have  already  had  occasion  to  men- 
tion as  two  outstanding  figures  among  the  late  Casars,  Diocle- 
tian (284)  and  Constantine  the  Great  (312),  and  it  was  to 
the  latter  of  t'hese  that  the  world  owes  the  setting  up  of  a  fresh 
imperial  centre  at  Constantinople.  Very  early  during  the  im- 
perial period  the  unsuitahility  of  the  position  of  Rome  as  a 
world  capital,  due  to  the  Roman  failure  to  use  the  sea,  was  felt. 


HOMA1M  EMPIRE  ei 


uAten-TlxeocUnac  wa«l£Lna 


vruvLlir  .snlyiccb  *tb  "tiuz 
Etnpcror  at  Coastaniinople 


The  destruction  of  Carthage  and  Corinth  had  killed  the  ship- 
ping of  the  main  Mediterranean  sea-routes.  For  a  people  who 
did  not  use  the  sea  properly,  having  the  administrative  centre 
at  Rome  meant  that  every  legion,  every  draft  of  officials,  every 
order,  had  to  travel  northward  for  half  the  length  of_  Italy 
before  it  could  turn  east  or  west.  Consequently  nearly  all  the 
more  capable  emperors  set  up  their  headquarters  at  some  sub- 
ordinate centre  in  a  more  convenient  position.  Sirmium  (on 
the  River  Save),  Milan,  Lyons,  and  Nicomedia  (in  Bithynia) 
were  among  such  supplementary  capitals.  For  a  time  under 
Diocletian,  Durazzo  was  the  imperial  capital.  Ravenna,  near 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS      480 

the  head  of  the  Adriatic,  was  the  capital  of  the  last  Koman 
emperors  in  the  time  of  Alaric  and  Stilicho. 

It  was  Constantiiie  the  Great  who  determined  upon  the 
permanent  transfer  of  the  centre  of  imperial  power  to  the 
Bosphorus.  We  have  already  noted  the  existence  of  the  city 
of  Byzantium,  which  Constantine  chose  to  develop  into  his  new 
capital.  It  played  a  part  in  the  story  of  the  intricate  Itistiseus 
(Chap,  xxi,  §  4)  ;  it  repulsed  Philip  of  Macedon  (Chap,  xxiii, 
§  3).  If  the  reader  will  examine  its  position,  he  will  see  that 
in  the  hands  of  a  line  of  capable  emperors,  and  as  the  centre 
of  a  people  with  some  solidarity  and  spirit  and  seacraft  (neither 
of  which  things  were  vouchsafed  to  it),  it  was  extraordinarily 
well  placed.  Its  galleys  could  have  penetrated  up  the  rivers 
to  the  heart  of  Russia  and  outflanked  every  barbarian  advance. 
It  commanded  practicable  trade  routes  to  the  east,  and  it  was 
within  a  reasonable  striking  distance  of  Mesopotamia,  Egypt, 
Greece,  and  all  the  more  prosperous  and  civilized  regions  of 
the  world  at  that  period.  And  even  under  the  rule  of  a  series 
of  inept  monarchs  and  under  demoralized  social  conditions,  the 
remains  of  the  Roman  Empire  centring  at  Constantinople  held 
out  for  nearly  a  thousand  years. 

It  was  the  manifest  intention  of  Constantine  the  Great  that 
Constantinople  should  be  the  centre  of  an  undivided  empire. 
But  having  regard  to  the  methods  of  travel  and  transport  avail- 
able at  the  time,  the  geographical  conditions  of  Europe  and 
Western  Asia  do  not  point  to  any  one  necessary  centre  of  govern- 
ment. If  Rome  faced  westward  instead  of  eastward,  and  so 
failed  to  reach  out  beyond  the  Euphrates,  Constantinople  on 
the  other  hand  was  hopelessly  remote  from  Gaul.  The  enfeebled 
Mediterranean  civilization,  after  a  certain  struggle  for  Italy, 
did  in  fact  let  go  of  the  west  altogether  and  concentrated  upon 
what  were  practically  the  central  vestiges,  the  stump,  of  the 
empire  of  Alexander.  The  Greek  language  resumed  its  sway, 
which  had  never  been  very  seriously  undermined  by  the  official 
use  of  Latin.  This  "Eastern"  or  Byzantine  empire  is  generally 
spoken  of  as  if  it  were  a  continuation  of  the  Roman  tradition. 
It  is  really  far  more  like  a  resumption  of  Alexander's. 

The  Latin  language  had  not  the  intellectual  vigour  behind  it 
it  had  not  the  literature  and  the  science,  to  make  it  a  neces- 
sity to  intelligent  men  and  so  to  maintain  an  ascendancy  over 
the  Greek.  For  no  language,  whatever  officialdom  may  do, 


490 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  CAESARS  BETWEEN  SEA  AND  PLAINS       491 

can  impose  itself  in  competition  with  another  that  can  offer 
the  advantages  of  a  great  literature  or  encyclopaedic  informa- 
tion. Aggressive  languages  must  bring  gifts,  and  the  gifts  of 
Greek  were  incomparably  greater  than  the  gifts  of  Latin.  The 
Eastern  empire  was  from  the  beginnings  of  its  separation  Greek- 
speaking,  and  a  continuation,  though  a  degenerate  continua- 
tion, of  the  Hellenic  tradition.  Its  intellectual  centre  was  no 
longer  in  Greece,  but  Alexandria.  Its  mentality  was  no  longer 
the  mentality  of  free-minded  plain-speaking  citizens,  of  the 
Stagirite  Aristotle  and  the  Greek  Plato ;  its  mentality  was  the 
mentality  of  the  pedants  and  of  men  politically  impotent;  its 
philosophy  was  a  pompous  evasion  of  real  things,  and  its  scien- 
tific impulse  was  dead.  Nevertheless,  it  was  Hellenic  and  not 
Latin.  The  Roman  had  come,  and  he  had  gone  again.  Indeed 
he  had  gone  very  extensively  from  the  west  also.  By  the  sixth 
century  A.D.  the  populations  of  Europe  and  North  Africa  had 
been  stirred  up  like  sediment.  When  presently  in  the  seventh 
and  eighth  centuries  the  sediment  begins  to  settle  down  again 
and  populations  begin  to  take  on  a  definite  localized  character, 
the  Roman  is  only  to  be  found  by  name  in  the  region  about 
Rome.  Over  large  parts  of  his  Western  empire  we  find  changed 
and  changing  modifications  of  his  Latin  speech ;  in  Gaul,  where 
the  Frank  is  learning  a  Gallic  form  of  Latin  and  evolving 
French  in  the  process;  in  Italy,  where,  under  the  influence  of 
Teutonic  invaders,  the  Lombards  and  Goths,  Latin  is  being 
modified  into  various  Italian  dialects;  in  Spain  and  Portugal, 
where  it  is  becoming  Spanish  and  Portuguese.  The  funda- 
mental Latinity  of  the  languages  in  these  regions  serves  to  re- 
mind us  of  the  numerical  unimportance  of  the  various  Frankish, 
Vandal,  Avar,  Gothic,  and  the  like  German-speaking  invaders, 
and  serves  to  justify  our  statement  that  what  happened  to  the 
Western  empire  was  not  so  much  conquest  and  the  replacement 
of  one  population  by  another  as  a  political  and  social  revolu- 
tion. The  district  of  Yalais  in  South  Switzerland  also  retained 
a  fundamentally  Latin  speech  and  so  did  the  Canton  Grisons; 
and,  what  is  more  curious  and  interesting,  is  that  in  Dacia  and 
Mossia  Inferior,  large  parts  of  which  to  the  north  of  the  Danube 
became  the  modern  Roumania  (=  Romania),  although  these 
regions  were  added  late  to  the  empire  and  lost  soon,  the  Latin 
speech  also  remained. 

In  Britain  Latin  was  practically  wiped  out  by  the  conquering 


492  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Anglo-Saxons,  from  among  whose  various  dialects  the  root  stock 
of  English  presently  grew. 

But  while  the  smashing  of  the  Roman  social  and  political 
structure  was  thus  complete,  while  in  the  east  it  was  thrown 
off  by  the  older  and  stronger  Hellenic  tradition,  and  while 
in  the  west  it  was  broken  up  into  fragments  that  began  to  take 
on  a  new  and  separate  life  of  their  own,  there  was  one  thing 
that  did  not  perish,  but  grew,  and  that  was  the  tradition  of 
the  world  empire  of  Rome  and  of  the  supremacy  of  the  Caesars. 
When  the  reality  was  destroyed,  the  legend  had  freedom  to 
expand.  Removed  from  the  possibility  of  verification,  the  idea 
of  a  serene  and  splendid  Roman  world-supremacy  grew  up  in 
the  imagination  of  mankind,  and  still  holds  it  to  this  day. 

Ever  since  the  time  of  Alexander,  human  thought  has  been 
haunted  by  the  possible  political  unity  of  the  race.  All  the 
sturdy  chiefs  and  leaders  and  kings  of  the  barbarians,  who 
raided  through  the  prostrate  but  vast  disorder  of  the  decayed 
empire,  were  capable  of  conceiving  of  some  mighty  king  of 
kings  greater  than  themselves  and  giving  a  real  law  for  all 
men,  and  they  were  ready  to  believe  that  elsewhere  in  space 
and  time,  and  capable  of  returning  presently  to  resume  his 
supremacy,  Caesar  had  been  such  a  king  of  kings.  Far  above 
their  own  titles,  therefore,  they  esteemed  and  envied  the  title 
of  Caesar.  The  international  history  of  Europe  from  this  time 
henceforth  is  largely  the  story  of  kings  and  adventurers  setting 
up  to  be  Caesar  and  Imperator  (Emperor).  We  shall  tell  of 
some  of  them  in  their  places.  So  universal  did  this  "Cse&aring" 
become,  that  the  Great  War  of  1914-18  mowed  down  no  fewer 
than  four  Caesars,  the  German  Kaiser  (=  Caesar),  the  Austrian 
Kaiser,  the  Tsar  (—  Caesar)  of  Russia,  and  that  fantastic  figure, 
the  Tsar  of  Bulgaria.  The  French  "Imperator"  (Napoleon 
III)  had  already' fallen  in  1871.  There  is  now  (1920)  no  one 
left  in  the  world  to  carry  on  the  Imperial  title  or  the  tradition 
of  Divus  Caesar  except  the  Turkish  Sultan  and  the  British  mon- 
arch. The  former  commemorates  his  lordship  over  Constanti- 
nople as  Kaisar-i-Roum ;  the  latter  is  called  the  Caesar  of  India 
(a  country  no  real  Caesar  ever  looked  upon),  Kaisar-i-Hind. 


XXIX 

THE  BEGINNINGS,  THE  EISE,  AND  THE  DIVISIONS 
OF  CHKISTIANITY 

§  1.  Judea  at  the  Christian  Era.  §  2.  The  Teachings  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth.  §  3.  The  New  Universal  Religions.  §  4. 
The  Crucifixion  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  §  5.  Doctrines 
Added  to  the  Teachings  of  Jesus.  §  6.  The  Struggles  and 
Persecutions  of  Christianity.  §  7.  Constantine  the  Great. 
§  8.  The  Establishment  of  Official  Christianity.  §  9.  The 
Map  of  Europe,  A.  D.  500.  §  10.  The  Salvation  of  Learn- 
ing ~by  Christianity. 


BEFORE  we  can  understand  the  qualities  of  Christianity, 
which  must  now  play  a  large  part  in  our  history,  and 
which  opened  men's  eyes  to  fresh  aspects  of  the  possi- 
bility of  a  unified  world,  we  must  go  back  some  centuries  and 
tell  of  the  condition  of  affairs  in  Palestine  and  Syria,  in  which 
countries  Christianity  arose.  We  have  already  told  the  main 
facts  about  the  origin  of  the  Jewish  nation  and  tradition,  about 
the  Diaspora,  about  the  fundamentally  scattered  nature  of 
Jewry  even  from  the  beginning,  and  the  gradual  development  of 
the  idea  of  one  just  God  ruling  the  earth  and  bound  by  a  special 
promise  to  preserve  and  bring  to  honour  the  Jewish  people.  The 
Jewish  idea  was  and  is  a  curious  combination  of  theological 
breadth  and  an  intense  racial  patriotism.  The  Jews  looked 
for  a  special  saviour,  a  Messiah,  who  was  to  redeem  mankind 
by  the  agreeable  process  of  restoring  the  fabulous  glories  of 
David  and  Solomon,  and  bringing  the  whole  world  at  last  under 
the  benevolent  but  firm  Jewish  heel.  As  the  political  power 
of  the  Semitic  peoples  declined,  as  Carthage  followed  Tyre 
into  the  darkness  and  Spain  became  a  Roman  province,  this 
dream  grew  and  spread.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the 
scattered  Phoenicians  in  Spain  and  Africa  and  throughout  the 

493 


494  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Mediterranean,  speaking  as  they  did  a  language  closely  akin 
to  Hebrew  and  being  deprived  of  their  authentic  political  rights, 
became  proselytes  to  Judaism.  For  phases  of  vigorous  prosely- 
tism  alternated  with  phases  of  exclusive  jealousy  in  Jewish 
history.  On  one  occasion  the  Idumeans,  being  conquered,  were 
all  forcibly  made  Jews.1  There  were  Arab  tribes  who  were 
Jews  in  the  time  of  Muhammad,  and  a  Turkish  people  who 
were  mainly  Jews  in  South  Russia  in  the  ninth  century.  Juda- 
ism is  indeed  the  reconstructed  political  ideal  of  many  shattered 
people* — mainly  Semitic.  It  is  to  the  Phoenician  contingent 
and  to  Aramean  accessions  in  Babylon  that  the  financial  and 
commercial  tradition  of  the  Jews  is  to  be  ascribed.  But  as  a 
result  of  these  coalescences  and  assimilations,  almost  every- 
where in  the  towns  throughout  the  Roman  Empire,  and  far 
beyond  it  in  the  east,  Jewish  communities  traded  and  flourished, 
and  were  kept  in  touch  through  the  Bible,  and  through  a  re- 
ligious and  educational  organization.  The  main  part  of  Jewry 
never  was  in  Judea  and  had  never  come  out  of  Judea. 

Manifestly  this  intercommunicating  series  of  Judaized  com- 
munities had  very  great  financial  and  political  facilities.  They 
could  assemble  resources,  they  could  stir  up,  they  could  allay. 
They  were  neither  so  abundant  nor  so  civilized  as  the  still  more 
widely  diffused  Greeks,  but  they  had  a  tradition  of  greater 
solidarity.  Greek  was  hostile  to  Greek;  Jew  stood  by  Jew. 
Wherever  a  Jew  went,  he  found  men  of  like  mind  and  like 
tradition  with  himself.  He  could  get  shelter,  food,  loans,  and 
legal  help.  And  by  reason  of  this  solidarity  rulers  had  every- 
where to  take  account  of  this  people  as  a  help,  as  a  source  of 
loans,  or  as  a  source  of  trouble.  So  it  is  that  the  Jews  have 
persisted  as  a  people  while  Hellenism  has  become  a  universal 
light  for  mankind. 

We  cannot  tell  here  in  any  detail  the  history  of  that  smaller 
part  of  Jewry  that  lived  in  Judea.  These  Jews  had  returned 
to  their  old  position  of  danger ;  again  they  were  seeking  peace 
in,  so  to  speak,  the  middle  of  a  highway.  In  the  old  time  they 
had  been  between  Syria  and  Assyria  to  the  north  and  Egypt  to 
the  south;  now  they  had  the  Seleucids  to  the  north  and  the 
Ptolemys  to  the  south,  and  when  the  Seleucids  went,  then  down 
came  the  Roman  power  upon  them.  The  independence  of 
Judea  was  always  a  qualified  and  precarious  thing.  The  reader 

1  Josephus. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


495 


must  go  to  the  Antiquities  and  the  Wars  of  the  Jews  of  Flavius 
Josephus,  a  copious,  tedious,  and  maddeningly  patriotic  writer, 
to  learn  of  the  succession  of  their  rulers,  of  their  high-priest 
monarchs,  and  of 
the  Maccabaans,  the 
Herods  and  the  like. 
These  rulers  were 
for  the  most  part  of 
the  ordinary  eastern 
*  7  P  e>  cunning, 
treacherous,  and 
blood-stained.  Thrice 
Jerusalem  was  taken 
and  twice  the  temple 
was  destroyed.  It 
was  the  support  of 
the  far  more  power- 
ful Diaspora  that 
prevented  the  little 
country  from  being 
wiped  out  alto- 
gether, until  70  A.D., 
when  ITitus,  the 
adopted  son  and  suc- 
cessor of  the  Em- 
p  e  r  o  r  Vespasian, 
after  a  siege  that 
ranks  in  bitterness 
and  horror  with  that 
of  Tyre  and  Car- 
thage, took  Jerusa- 
lem and  destroyed 
city  and  temple  alto- 
gether. He  did  this 
in  an  attempt  to  destroy  Jewry,  but  indeed  he  made  Jewry 
stronger  by  destroying  its  one  sensitive  and  vulnerable  point. 
Throughout  a  history  of  five  centuries  of  war  and  civil  com- 
motion between  the  return  from  captivity  and  the  destruction 
of  Jerusalem,  certain  constant  features  of  the  Jew  persisted. 
He  remained  obstinately  monotheistic;  he  would  have  none 
other  gods  but  the  one  true  God.  In  Rome,  as  in  Jerusalem, 


GALILSS  axvi  sarroundina  provinces: 


496  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

he  stood  out  manfully  against  the  worship  of  any  god-Caesar. 
And  to  the  best  of  his  ability  he  held  to  his  covenants  with  his 
God.  No  graven  images  could  enter  Jerusalem;  even  the 
Roman  standards  with  -their  eagles  had  to  stay  outside. 

Two  divergent  lines  of  thought  are  traceable  in  Jewish  affairs 
during  these  five  hundred  years.  On  the  right,  so  to  speak,  are 
the  high  and  narrow  Jews,  the  Pharisees,  very  orthodox,  very 
punctilious  upon  even  the  minutest  details  of  the  law,  intensely 
patriotic  and  exclusive.  Jerusalem  on  one  occasion  fell  to  the 
Seleucid  monarch  Antiochus  IV  because  the  Jews  would  not 
defend  it  on  the  Sabbath  day,  when  it  is  forbidden  to  work; 
and  it  was  because  the  Jews  made  no  effort  to  destroy  his  siege 
train  on  the  Sabbath  that  Pompey  the  Great  was  able  to  take 
Jerusalem.  But  against  these  narrow  Jews  were  pitted  the 
broad  Jews,  the  Jews  of  the  left,  who  were  Hellenizers,  among 
whom  are  to  be  ranked  the  Sadducees,  who  did  not  believe  in 
immortality.  These  latter  Jews,  the  broad  Jews,  were  all 
more  or  less  disposed  to  mingle  with  and  assimilate  themselves 
to  the  Greeks  and  Hellenized  peoples  about  them.  They  were 
ready  to  accept  proselytes,  and  so  to  share  God  and  his  promise 
with  all  mankind.  But  what  they  gained  in  generosity  they 
lost  in  rectitude.  They  were  the  worldlings  of  Judea.  We 
have  already  noted  how  the  Hellenized  Jews  of  Egypt  lost  their 
Hebrew,  and  had  to  have  their  Bible  translated  into  Greek. 

In  the  reign  of  Tiberius  Csesar  a  great  teacher  arose  out  of 
Judea  who  was  to  liberate  the  intense  realization  of  the  right- 
eousness and  unchallengeable  oneness  of  God,  and  of  man's 
moral  obligation  to  God,  which  was  the  strength  of  orthodox 
Judaism,  from  that  greedy  and  exclusive  narrowness  with  which 
it  was  so  extraordinarily  intermingled  in  the  Jewish  mind.  This 
was  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  seed  rather  than  the  founder  of 
Christianity. 


§  2 

The  audience  to  which  this  book  will  first  be  presented  will 
be  largely  an  audience  of  Christians,  with  perhaps  a  sprinkling 
of  Jewish  readers,  and  the  former  at  least  will  regard  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  as  being  much  more  than  a  human  teacher,  and  his 
appearance  in  the  world  not  as  a  natural  event  in  history,  but 
as  something  of  a  supernatural  sort  interrupting  and  changing 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  497 

that  steady  development  of  life  towards  a  common  consciousness 
and  a  common  will,  which  we  have  hitherto  been  tracing  in  this 
book.  But  these  persuasions,  dominant  as  they  are  in  Europe 
and  America,  are  nevertheless  not  the  persuasions  of  all  men 
or  of  the  great  majority  of  mankind,  and  we  are  writing  this 
outline  of  the  story  of  life  with  as  complete  an  avoidance  of 
controversial  matter  as  may  be.  We  are  trying  to  write  as  if 
this  book  was  to  be  read  as  much  by  Hindus  or  Moslems  or 
Buddhists  as  by  Americans  and  Western  Europeans.  We  shall 
therefore  hold  closely  to  the  apparent  facts,  and  avoid,  without 
any  disputation  or  denial,  the  theological  interpretations  that 
have  been  imposed  upon  them.  We  shall  tell  what  men  have 
believed  about  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  but  him  we  shall  treat  as 
being  what  he  appeared  to  be,  a  man,  just  as  a  painter  must 
needs  paint  him  as  a  man.  The  documents  that  testify  to  his 
acts  and  teachings  we  shall  treat  as  ordinary  human  documents. 
If  the  light  of  divinity  shine  through  our  recital,  we  will  neither 
help  nor  hinder  it.  This  is  what  we  have  already  done  in  the 
case  of  Buddha,  and  what  we  shall  do  later  with  Muhammad. 
About  Jesus  we  have  to  write  not  theology  but  history,  and 
our  concern  is  not  with  the  spiritual  and  theological  significance 
of  his  life,  but  with  its  effects  upon  the  political  and  every-day 
life  of  men. 

Almost  our  only  sources  of  information  about  the  personality 
of  Jesus  are  derived  from  the  four  gospels,  all  of  which  were 
certainly  in  existence  a  few  decades  after  his  death,  and  from 
allusions  to  his  life  in  the  letters  (epistles)  of  the  early  Chris- 
tian propagandists.  The  first  three  gospels,  the  gospels  of 
Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke,  many  suppose  to  be  derived  from 
some  earlier  documents ;  the  gospel  of  St.  John  has  more  idiosyn- 
crasy and  is  coloured  by  theology  of  a  strongly  Hellenic  type. 
Critics  are  disposed  to  regard  the  gospel  of  St.  Mark  as  being 
the  most  trustworthy  account  of  the  personality  and  .actual 
words  of  Jesus.  But  all  four  agree  in  giving  us  a  picture 
of  a  very  definite  personality;  they  carry  the  same  conviction 
of  reality  that  the  early  accounts  of  Buddha  do.  In  spite  of 
miraculous  and  incredible  additions,  one  is  obliged  to  say,  "Here 
was  a  man.  This  part  of  the  tale  could  not  have  been  invented." 
•  But  just  as  the  personality  of  Gautama  Buddha  has  been 
distorted  and  obscured  by  the  stiff  squatting  figure,  the  gilded 
idol  of  later  Buddhism,  so  one  feels  that  the  lean  and  strenuous 


498  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

personality  of  Jesus  is  much  wronged  by  the  unreality  and  con- 
ventionality that  a  mistaken  reverence  has  imposed  upon  his 
figure  in  modern  Christian  art.  Jesus  was  a  penniless  teacher, 
who  wandered  about  the  dusty  sun-bit  country  of  Judea,  living 
upon  casual  gifts  of  food;  yet  he  is  always  represented  clean, 
combed,  and  sleek,  in  spotless  raiment,  erect,  and  with  some- 
thing motionless  about  him  as  though  he  was  gliding  through 
the  air.  This  alone  has  made  him  unreal  and  incredible  to 
many  people  who  cannot  distinguish  the  core  of  the  story  from 
the  ornamental  and  unwise  additions  of  the  unintelligently 
devout. 

And  it  may  be  that  the  early  parts  of  the  gospels  are  accre- 
tions of  the  same  nature.  The  miraculous  circumstances  of 
the  birth  of  Jesus,  the  great  star  that  brought  wise  men  from 
the  east  to  worship  at  his  manger  cradle,  the  massacre  of  the 
male  infant  children  in  the  region  of  Bethlehem  by  Herod 
as  a  consequence  of  these  portents,  and  the  flight  into  Egypt, 
are  all  supposed  to  be  such  accretionary  matter  by  many  authori- 
ties. At  the  best  they  are  events  unnecessary  to  the  teaching, 
and  they  rob  it  of  much  of  the  strength  and  power  it  possesses 
when  we  strip  it  of  such  accompaniment.  So,  too,  do  the  dis- 
crepant genealogies  given  by  Matthew  and  Luke,  in  which  there 
is  an  endeavour  to  trace  the  direct  descent  of  Joseph,  his  father, 
from  King  David,  as  though  it  was  any  honour  to  Jesus  or  to 
anyone  to  have  such  a  man  as  an  ancestor.  The  insertion  of 
these  genealogies  is  the  more  peculiar  and  unreasonable,  be- 
cause, according  to  the  legend,  Jesus  was  not  the  son  of  Joseph 
at  all,  but  miraculously  conceived. 

We  are  left,  if  we  do  strip  this  record  of  these  difficult  acces- 
sories, with  the  figure  of  a  being,  very  human,  very  earnest  and 
passionate,  capable  of  swift  anger,  and  teaching  a  new  and 
simple  and  profound  doctrine — namely,  the  universal  loving 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  coming  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 
He  was  clearly  a  person — to  use  a  common  phrase — of  intense 
personal  magnetism.  He  attracted  followers  and  filled  them 
with  love  and  courage.  Weak  and  ailing  people  were  heartened 
and  healed  by  his  presence.  Yet  he  was  probably  of  a  delicate 
physique,  because  of  the  swiftness  with  which  he  died  under 
the  pains  of  crucifixion.  There  is  a  tradition  that  he  fainted 
when,  according  to  the  custom,  he  was  made  to  bear  his  cross 
to  the  place  of  execution.  When  he  first  appeared  as  a  teacher 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  499 

he  was  a  man  of  about  thirty.  He  went  about  the  country  for 
three  years  spreading  his  doctrine,  and  then  he  came  to  Jerusa- 
lem and  was  accused  of  trying  to  set  up  a  strange  kingdom  in 
Judea;  he  was  tried  upon  this  charge,  and  crucified  together 
with  two  thieves.  Long  before  these  two  were  dead,  his  suffer- 
ings were  over. 

Now  it  is  a  matter  of  fact  that  in  the  gospels  all  that  body 
of  theological  assertion  which  constitutes  Christianity  finds  lit- 
tle support.  There  is,  as  the  reader  may  see  for  himself,  no 
clear  and  emphatic  assertion  in  these  books  of  the  doctrines 
which  Christian  teachers  of  all  denominations  find  generally 
necessary  to  salvation.  Except  for  one  or  two  passages  in  St. 
John's  Gospel  it  is  difficult  to  get  any  words  actually  ascribed 
to  Jesus  in  which  he  claimed  to  be  the  Jewish  Messiah 
(rendered  in  Greek  by  "the  Christ")  and  still  more  difficult 
is  it  to  find  any  claim  to  be  a  part  of  the  godhead,  or  any  pas- 
sage in  which  he  explained  the  doctrine  of  the  Atonement  or 
urged  any  sacrifices  or  sacraments  (that  is  to  say,  priestly 
offices)  upon  his  followers.  We  shall  see  presently  how  later 
on  all  Christendom  was  torn  by  disputes  about  the  Trinity. 
There  is  no  evidence  that  the  apostles  of  Jesus  ever  heard  of 
the  Trinity — at  any  rate  from  him.  The  observance  of  the 
Jewish  Sabbath,  again,  transferred  to  the  Mithraic  Sun-day  >  is 
an  important  feature  of  many  Christian  cults;  but  Jesus  de- 
liberately broke  the  Sabbath,  and  said  that  it  was  made  for  man 
and  not  man  for  the  Sabbath.  Nor  did  he  say  a  word  about 
the  worship  of  his  mother  Mary,  in  the  guise*of  Isis,  the  Queen 
of  Heaven.  All  that  is  most  characteristically  Christian  in 
worship  and  usage,  he  ignored.  Sceptical  writers  have  had  the 
temerity  to  deny  that  Jesus  can  be  called  a  Christian  at  all. 
For  light  upon  these  extraordinary  gaps  in  his  teaching,  each 
reader  must  go  to  his  own  religious  guides.  Here  we  are  bound 
to  mention  these  gaps  on  account  of  the  difficulties  and  con- 
troversies that  arose  out  of  them,  and  we  are  equally  bound  not 
to  enlarge  upon  them. 

As  remarkable  is  the  enormous  prominence  given  by  Jesus 
to  the  teaching  of  what  he  called  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  and 
its  comparative  insignificance  in  the  procedure  and  teaching  of 
most  of  the  Christian  churches. 

This  doctrine  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  which  was  the  main 
teaching  of  Jesus,  and  which  plays  so  small  a  part  in  the  Chris- 


500  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tian  creeds,  is  certainly  one  of  the  most  revolutionary  doctrines 
that  ever  stirred  and  changed  human  thought.  It  is  small  won- 
der if  the  world  of  that  time  failed  to  grasp  its  full  significance, 
and  recoiled  in  dismay  from  even  a  half  apprehension  of  its 
tremendous  challenges  to  the  established  habits  and  institutions 
of  mankind.  It  is  small  winder  if  the  hesitating  convert  and 
disciple  presently  went  back  to  the  old  familiar  ideas  of  temple 
and  altar,  of  fierce  deity  and  propitiatory  observance,  of  conse- 
crated priest  and  magic  blessing,  and — these  things  being  at- 
tended to — reverted  then  to  the  dear  old  habitual  life  of  hates 
and  profits  and  competition  and  pride.  For  the  doctrine  of 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  as  Jesus  seems  to  have  preached  it, 
was  no  less  than  a  bold  and  uncompromising  demand  for  a 
complete  change  and  cleansing  of  the  life  of  our  struggling  race, 
an  utter  cleansing,  without  and  within.  To  the  gospels  the 
reader  must  go  for  all  that  is  preserved  of  this  tremendous 
teaching ;  here  we  are  only  concerned  with  the  jar  of  its  impact 
upon  established  ideas. 

The  Jews  were  persuaded  that  God,  the  one  God  of  the  whole 
world,  was  a  righteous  god,  but  they  also  thought  of  him  as  a 
trading  god  who  had  made  a  bargain  with  their  Father  Abra- 
ham about  them,  a  very  good  bargain  indeed  for  them,  to  bring 
them  at  last  to  predominance  in  the  earth.  With  dismay  and 
anger  they  heard  Jesus  sweeping  away  their  dear  securities. 
God,  he  taught,  was  no  bargainer;  there  were  no  chosen  people 
and  no  favourites  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  God  was  the 
loving  father  of  all  life,  as  incapable  of  showing  favour  as  the 
universal  sun.  And  all  men  were  brothers — sinners  alike  and 
beloved  sons  alike — of  this  divine  father.  In  the  parable  of 
the  Good  Samaritan  Jesus  cast  scorn  upon  that  natural  tendency 
we  all  obey,  to  glorify  our  own  people  and  to  minimize  the 
righteousness  of  other  creeds  and  other  races.  In  the  parable 
of  the  labourers  he  thrust  aside  the  obstinate  claim  of  the 
Jews  to  have  a  sort  of  first  mortgage  upon  God.  All  whom 
God  takes  into  the  kingdom,  he  taught,  God  serves  alike ;  there 
is  no  distinction  in  his  treatment,  because  there  is  no  measure  to 
his  bounty.  From  all,  moreover,  as  the  parable  of  the  buried 
talent  witnesses,  and  as  the  incident  of  the  widow's  mite  en- 
forces, he  demands  the  utmost.  There  are  no  privileges,  no 
rebates,  and  no  excuses  in  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

But  it  was  not  only  the  intense  tribal  patriotism  of  the  Jews 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  501 

that  Jesus  outraged.  They  were  a  people  of  intense  family 
loyalty,  and  he  would  have  swept  away  all  the  narrow  and  re- 
strictive family  affections  in  the  great  flood  of  the  love  of  God. 
The  whole  Kingdom  of  Heaven  was  to  be  the  family  of  his 
followers.  We  are  told  that,  "While  he  yet  talked  to  the  peo- 
ple, behold,  his  mother  and  his  brethren  stood  without,  desiring 
to  speak  with  him.  Then  one  said  unto  him,  Behold,  thy  mother 
and  thy  brethren  stand  without,  desiring  to  speak  with  thee. 
But  he  answered  and  said  unto  him  that  told  him,  Who  is  my 
mother  ?  and  who  are  my  brethren  ?  And  he  stretched  forth  his 
hand  towards  his  disciples,  and  said,  Behold  my  mother  and 
my  brethren !  For  whosoever  shall  do  the  will  of  my  Father 
which  is  in  heaven,  the  same  is  my  brother,  and  sister,  and 
mother.'7 1 

And  not  only  did  Jesus  strike  at  patriotism  and  the  bonds 
of  family  loyalty  in  the  name  of  God's  universal  fatherhood 
and  the  brotherhood  of  all  mankind,  but  it  is  clear  that  his 
teaching  condemned  all  the  gradations  of  the  economic  system, 
all  private  wealth,  and  personal  advantages.  All  men  belonged 
to  the  kingdom ;  all  their  possessions  belonged  to  the  kingdom ; 
the  righteous  life  for  all  men,  .he  only  righteous  life,  was  the 
service  of  God's  will  with  all  that  we  had,  with  all  that  we  were. 
Again  and  again  he  denounced  private  riches  and  the  reserva- 
tion of  any  private  life. 

"And  when  he  was  gone  forth  into  the  way,  there  came 
one  running,  and  kneeled  to  him,  and  asked  him,  Good  Master, 
what  shall  I  do  that  I  may  inherit  eternal  life?  And  Jesus 
said  unto  him,  Why  callest  thou  me  good  ?  there  is  none  good 
but  one,  that  is,  God.  Thou  knowest  the  commandments,  Do 
not  commit  adultery,  Do  not  kill,  Do  not  steal,  Do  not  bear 
false  witness,  Defraud  not,  Honour  thy  father  and  mother. 
And  he  answered  and  said  unto  him,  Master,  all  these  things 
have  I  observed  from  my  youth.  Then  Jesus  beholding  him 
loved  him,  and  said  unto  him,  One  thing  thou  lackest:  go  thy 
way,  sell  whatsoever  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the  poor,  and  thou 
shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven :  and  come,  take  up  the  cross,  and 
follow  me.  And  he  was  sad  at  that  saying,  and  went  away 
grieved :  for  he  had  great  possessions. 

"And  Jesus  looked  round  about,  and  saith  unto  his  disciples, 
How  hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the  kingdom 

'Matt.  xii.   46-50. 


502  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  God!  And  the  disciples  were  astonished  at  his  words. 
But  Jesus  answered  again,  and  saith  unto  them,  Children,  how 
hard  is  it  for  them  that  trust  in  riches  to  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  God !  It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the  eye  of  a 
needle,  than  for  a  rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God."  1 

Moreover,  in  his  tremendous  prophecy  of  this  kingdom  which 
was  to  make  all  men  one  together  in  God,  Jesus  had  small 
patience  for  the  bargaining  righteousness  of  formal  religion. 
Another  large  part  of  his  recorded  utterances  is  aimed  against 
the  meticulous  observance  of  the  rules  of  the  pious  career. 
"Then  came  together  unto  him  the  Pharisees,  and  certain  of 
the  scribes,  which  came  from  Jerusalem.  And  when  they  saw 
some  of  his  disciples  eat  bread  with  defiled,  that  is  to  say,  with 
unwashen,  hands,  they  found  fault.  For  the  Pharisees,  and 
all  the  Jews,  except  they  wash  their  hands  oft,  eat  not,  holding 
the  tradition  of  the  elders.  And  when  they  come  from  the 
market,  except  they  wash,  they  eat  not.  And  many  other  things 
there  be,  which  they  have  received  to  hold,  as  the  washing  of 
cups,  and  pots,  brazen  vessels,  and  of  tables.  Then  the  Phari- 
sees and  scribes  asked  him,  Why  walk  not  thy  disciples  accord- 
ing to  the  tradition  of  the  elders,  but  eat  bread  with  unwashen 
hands  ?  He  answered  and  said  unto  them,  Well  hath  Isaiah 
prophesied  of  you  hypocrites,  as  it  is  written, 

"This  people  honoureth  me  with  their  lips, 

"But  their  heart  is  far  from  me. 

"Howbeit  in  vain  do  they  worship  me, 

"Teaching  for  doctrines  the  commandments  of  men. 

"For  laying  aside  the  commandment  of  God,  ye  hold  the 
tradition  of  men,  as  the  washing  of  pots  and  cups:  and  many 
other  such  things  ye  do.  And  he  said  unto  them,  Full  well 
ye  reject  the  commandment  of  God,  that  ye  may  keep  your  own 
tradition."  2 

So,  too,  we  may  note  a  score  of  places  in  which  he  flouted 
that  darling  virtue  of  the  formalist,  the  observance  of  the 
Sabbath. 

It  was  not  merely  a  moral  and  a  social  revolution  that  Jesus 
proclaimed;  it  is  clear  from  a  score  of  indications  that  his 
teaching  had  a  political  bent  of  the  plainest  sort.  It  is  true 
that  he  said  his  kingdom  was  not  of  this  world,  that  it  was  in 
the  hearts  of  men  and  not  upon  a  throne ;  but  it  is  equally  clear 
1Mark.  x.  17-25.  8Mark.  vii.  1-9. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  503 

that  wherever  and  in  what  measure  his  kingdom  was  set  up 
in  the  hearts  of  men,  the  outer  world  would  he  in  that  measure 
revolutionized  and  made  new. 

Whatever  else  the  deafness  and  blindness  of  his  hearers  may 
have  missed  in  his  utterances,  it  is  plain  that  they  did  not 
miss  his  resolve  to  revolutionize  the  world.  Some  of  the  ques- 
tions that  were  brought  to  Jesus  and  the  answers  he  gave  enable 
us  to  guess  at  the  drift  of  much  of  his  unrecorded  teaching. 
The  directness  of  his  political  attack  is  manifest  by  such  an 
incident  as  that  of  the  coin — 

"And  they  send  unto  him  certain  of  the  Pharisees  and  of  the 
Herodians,  to  catch  him  in  his  words.  And  when  they  were 
come,  they  say  unto  him,  Master,  we  know  that  thou  art  true, 
and  carest  for  no  man:  for  thou  regardest  not  the  person  of 
men,  but  teachest  the  way  of  God  in  truth :  Is  it  lawful  to  give 
tribute  to  Caesar,  or  not  ?  Shall  we  give,  or  shall  we  not  give  ? 
But  he,  knowing  their  hypocrisy,  said  unto  them,  Why  tempt  ye 
me?  bring  me  a  penny,  that  I  may  see  it.  And  they  brought 
it.  And  he  saith  unto  them,  Whose  is  this  image  and  super- 
scription? And  they  said  unto  him,  Caesar's.  And  Jesus  an- 
swering said  unto  them,  Eender  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Caesar's,  and  to  God  the  things  that  are  God's"  * — which  in 
view  of  all  else  that  he  had  taught,  left  very  little  of  a  man 
or  his  possessions  for  Caesar. 

The  whole  tenor  of  the  opposition  to  him  and  the  circum- 
stances of  his  trial  and  execution  show  clearly  that  to  his  con- 
temporaries he  seemed  to  propose  plainly  and  did  propose 
plainly  to  change  and  fuse  and  enlarge  all  human  life.  But 
even  his  disciples  did  not  grasp  the  profound  and  comprehensive 
significance  of  that  proposal.  They  were  ridden  by  the  old 
Jewish  dream  of  a  king,  a  Messiah  to  overthrow  the  Hellenized 
Herods  and  the  Roman  overlord,  and  restore  the  fabled  glories 
of  David.  They  disregarded  the  substance  of  his  teaching, 
plain  and  direct  though  it  was;  evidently  they  thought  it  was 
merely  his  mysterious  and  singular  way  of  setting  about  the 
adventure  that  would  at  last  put  him  on  the  throne  of  Jerusa- 
lem. They  thought  he  was  just  another  king  among  the  endless 
succession  of  kings,  but  of  a  quasi-magic  kind,  and  making 
quasi-magic  profession  of  an  impossible  virtue. 

"And  James  and  John,  the  sons  of  Zebedee,  come  unto  him, 
'Mark.  xii.  13-17. 


504  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

saying  Master,  we  would  that  thou  shouldest  do  for  us  whatso- 
ever we  shall  desire.  And  he  said  unto  them,  What  would 
ye  that  I  should  do  for  you  ?  They  said  unto  him,  Grant  unto 
us  that  we  may  sit,  one  on  thy  right  hand,  and  the  other  on 
thy  left  hand,  in  thy  glory.  But  Jesus  said  unto  them,  Ye  know 
not  what  ye  ask :  can  ye  drink  of  the  cup  that  I  drink  of  ?  and 
be  baptized  with  the  baptism  that  I  am  baptized  with?  And 
they  said  unto  him,  We  can.  And  Jesus  said  unto  them,  Ye 
shall  indeed  drink  of  the  cup  that  I  drink  of;  and  with  the 
baptism  that  I  am  baptized  withal  shall  ye  be  baptized :  but  to 
sit  on  my  right  hand  and  on  my  left  hand  is  not  mine  to  give; 
but  it  shall  be  given  to  them  for  whom  it,  is  prepared.  And 
when  the  ten  heard  it,  they  began  to  be  much  displeased  with 
James  and  John.  But  Jesus  called  them  to  him,  and  saith 
unto  them,  Ye  know  that  they  which  are  accounted  to  rule  over 
the  Gentiles  exercise  lordship  over  them;  and  their  great  ones 
exercise  authority  upon  them.  But  so  shall  it  not  be  among 
you:  but  whosoever  will  be  great  among  you,  shall  be  your 
minister:  and  whosoever  of  you  will  be  the  chief est,  shall  be 
servant  of  all.  For  even  the  Son  of  Man  came  not  to  be  minis- 
tered unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  his  life  a  ransom  for 
many."  l 

This  was  cold  comfort  for  those  who  looked  for  a  due  reward 
for  their  services  and  hardships  in  his  train.  They  could  not 
believe  this  hard  doctrine  of  a  kingdom  of  service  which  was 
its  own  exceeding  great  reward.  Even  after  his  death  upon 
the  cross,  they  could  still,  after  their  first  dismay,  revert  to 
the  belief  that  he  was  nevertheless  in  the  vein  of  the  ancient 
world  of  pomps  and  privileges,  that  presently  by  some  amazing 
miracle  he  would  become  undead  again  and  return,  and  set 
up  his  throne  with  much  splendour  and  graciousness  in  Jerusa- 
lem. They  thought  his  life  was  a  stratagem  and  his  death  a 
trick. 

He  was  too  great  for  his  disciples.  And  in  view  of  what  he 
plainly  said,  is  it  any  wonder  that  all  who  were  rich  and  pros- 
perous felt  a  horror  of  strange  things,  a  swimming  of  their  world 
at  his  teaching?  Perhaps  the  priests  and  the  rulers  and  the 
rich  men  understood  him  better  than  his  followers.  He  was 
dragging  out  all  the  little  private  reservations  they  had  made 
from  social  service  into  the  light  of  a  universal  religious  life. 

»Mark  x.  35-45, 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  505 

He  was  like  some  terrible  moral  huntsman  digging  mankind 
out  of  the  snug  burrows  in  which  they  had  lived  hitherto.  In 
the  white  blaze  of  this  kingdom  of  his  there  was  to  be  no  prop- 
erty, no  privilege,  no  pride  and  precedence;  no  motive  indeed 
and  no  reward  but  love.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  men  were  dazzled 
and  blinded  and  cried  out  against  him  ?  Even  his  disciples 
cried  out  when  he  would  not  spare  them  the  light.  Is  it  any 
wonder  that  the  priests  realized  that  between  this  man  and 
themselves  there  was  no  choice  but  that  he  or  priestcraft  should 
perish  ?  Is  it  any  wonder  that  the  Roman  soldiers,  confronted 
and  amazed  by  something  soaring  over  their  comprehension  and 
threatening  all  their  disciplines,  should  take  refuge  in  wild 
laughter,  and  crown  him  with  thorns  and  robe  him  in  purple 
and  make  a  mock  Caesar  of  him  ?  For  to  take  him  seriously  was 
to  enter  upon  a  strange  and  alarming  life,  to  abandon  habits, 
to  control  instincts  and  impulses,  to  essay  an  incredible 
happiness.  ...  • 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  to  this  day  this  Galilean  is  too  much 
for  our  small  hearts? 

§Q 
3 

Yet  be  it  noted  that  while  there  was  much  in  the  real  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  that  a  rich  man  or  a  priest  or  a  trader  or  an 
imperial  official  or  any  ordinary  respectable  citizen  could  not 
accept  without  the  most  revolutionary  changes  in  his  way  of 
living,  yet  there  was  nothing  that  a  follower  of  the  actual  teach- 
ing of  Gautama  Sakya  might  not  receive  very  readily,  nothing 
to  prevent  a  primitive  Buddhist  from  being  also  a  Nazarene, 
and  nothing  to  prevent  a  personal  disciple  of  Jesus  from  ac- 
cepting all  the  recorded  teachings  of  Buddha. 

Again  consider  the  tone  of  this  extract  from  the  writings  of 
a  Chinaman,  Mo  Ti,  who  lived  somewhen  in  the  fourth  century 
B.C.,  when  the  doctrines  of  Confucius  and  Lao  Tse  prevailed 
in  China,  before  the  advent  of  Buddhism  to  that  country,  and 
note  how  "Nazarene"  it  is. 

"The  mutual  attacks  of  state  on  state;  the  mutual  usurpa- 
tions of  family  on  family;  the  mutual  robberies  of  man  on 
man ;  the  want  of  kindness  on  the  part  of  the  sovereign  and  of 
loyalty  on  the  part  of  the  minister ;  the  want  of  tenderness  and 
filial  duty  between  father  and  son — these,  and  such  as  these,  are 


506  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  things  injurious  to  the  empire.  All  this  has  arisen  from 
want  of  mutual  love.  If  but  that  one  virtue  could  be  made 
universal,  the  princes  loving  one  another  would  have  no  bat- 
tle-fields ;  the  chiefs  of  families  would  attempt  no  usurpations ; 
men  would  commit  no  robberies;  rulers  and  ministers  would 
be  gracious  and  loyal ;  fathers  and  sons  would  be  kind  and  filial ; 
brothers  would  be  harmonious  and  easily  reconciled.  Men  in 
general  loving  one  another,  the  strong  would  not  make  prey 
of  the  weak;  the  many  would  not  plunder  the  few,  the  rich 
would  not  insult  the  poor,  the  noble  would  not  be  insolent  to 
the  mean;  and  the  deceitful  would  not  impose  upon  the 
simple."  * 

This  is  extraordinarily  like  the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
cast  into  political  terms.  The  thoughts  of  Mo  Ti  came  close 
to  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

This  essential  identity  is  the  most  important  historical  aspect 
of  these  great  world  religions.  They  were  in  their  beginnings 
quite  unlike  the  priest,  altar,  and  temple  cults,  those  cults  for 
the  worship  of  definite  finite  gods  that  played  so  great  and  so 
essential  a  part  in  the  earlier  stages  of  man's  development  be- 
tween 15,000  B.C.  and  600  B.C.  These  new  world  religions, 
from  600  B.C.  onward,  were  essentially  religions  of  the  heart 
and  of  the  universal  sky.  They  swept  away  all  those  various 
and  limited  gods  that  had  served  the  turn  of  human  needs  since 
the  first  communities  were  welded  together  by  fear  and  hope. 
And  presently  when  we  come  to  Islam  we  shall  find  that  for  a 
third  time  the  same  fundamental  new  doctrine  of  the  need  of  a 
universal  devotion  of  all  men  to  one  Will  reappears.  Warned 
by  the  experiences  of  Christianity,  Muhammad  was  very 
emphatic  in  insisting  that  he  himself  was  merely  a  man  and  so 
saved  his  teaching  from  much  corruption  and  misrepresenta- 
tion. 

We  speak  of  these  great  religions  of  mankind  which  arose  be- 
tween the  Persian  conquest  of  Babylon  and  the  break-up  of 
the  Roman  empire  as  rivals;  but  it  is  their  defects,  their  ac- 
cumulations and  excrescences,  their  differences  of  language  and 
phrase,  that  cause  the  rivalry;  and  it  is  not  to  one  overcoming 
the  other  or  to  any  new  variant  replacing  them  that  we  must 
look,  but  to  the  white  truth  in  each  being  burnt  free  from  its 
dross,  and  becoming  manifestly  the  same  truth — namely,  that 

JHirth,  The  Ancient   History  of  China,  Chap.   viii. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  507 

the  hearts  of  men,  and  therewith  all  the  lives  and  institutions 
of  men,  must  be  subdued  to  one  common  Will,  ruling  them  all.1 
And  though  much  has  been  written  foolishly  about  the  an- 
tagonism of  science  and  religion,  there  is  indeed  no  such 
antagonism.  What  all  these  world  religions  declare  by  inspira- 
tion and  insight,  history  as  it  grows  clearer  and  science  as  its 
range  extends  display,  as  a  reasonable  and  demonstrable  fact, 
that  men  form  one  universal  brotherhood,  that  they  spring  from 
one  common  origin,  that  their  individual  lives,  their  nations 
and  races,  interbreed  and  blend  and  go  on  to  merge  again  at 
last  in  one  common  human  destiny  upon  this  little  planet  amidst 
the  stars.  And  the  psychologist  can  now  stand  beside  the 
preacher  and  assure  us  that  there  is  no  reasoned  peace  of  heart, 
no  balance  and  no  safety  in  the  soul,  until  a  man  in  losing  his 
life  has  found  it,  and  has  schooled  and  disciplined  his  interests 
and  will  beyond  greeds,  rivalries,  fears,  instincts,  and  narrow 
affections.  The  history  of  our  race  and  personal  religious  ex- 
perience run  so  closely  parallel  as  to  seem  to  a  modern  observer 
almost  the  same  thing ;  both  tell  of  a  being  at  first  scattered  and 
blind  and  utterly  confused,  feeling  its  way  slowly  to  the  serenity 
and  salvation  of  an  ordered  and  coherent  purpose.  That,  in  the 
simplest,  is  the  outline  of  history ;  whether  one  have  a  religious 
purpose  or  disavow  a  religious  purpose  altogether,  the  lines  of 
the  outline  remain  the  same. 

§4 

In  the  year  30  A.D.,  while  Tiberius,  the  second  emperor,  was 
Emperor  of  Rome  and  Pontius  Pilate  was  procurator  of  Judea, 
a  little  while  before  the  Feast  of  the  Passover,  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth came  into  Jerusalem.  Probably  he  came  then  for  the  first 
time.  Hitherto  he  had  been  preaching  chiefly  in  Galilee,  and 
for  the  most  part  round  and  about  the  town  of  Capernaum.  In 
Capernaum  he  had  preached  in  the  synagogue. 

His  entry  into  Jerusalem  was  a  pacific  triumph.  He  had 
gathered  a  great  following  in  Galilee — he  had  sometimes  to 
preach  from  a  boat  upon  the  Lake  of  Galilee,  because  of  the 
pressure  of  the  crowd  upon  the  shore — and  his  fame  had  spread 

1  "Stt.  Paul  understood  what  most  Christians  never  realize,  namely,  that 
the  Gospel  of  Christ  is  not  a  religion,  but  religion  itself  in  its  most 
universal  and  deepest  significance." — Dean  Inge  in  Outspoken  Essays*. 


508  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

before  him  to  the  capital.  Great  crowds  came  out  to  greet  him. 
It  is  clear  they  did  not  understand  the  drift  of  his  teaching,  and 
that  they  shared  the  general  persuasion  that  by  some  magic  of 
righteousness  he  was  going  to  overthrow  the  established  order. 
He  rode  into  the  city  upon  the  foal  of  an  ass  that  had  been  bor- 
rowed by  his  disciples.  The  crowd  accompanied  him  with  cries 
of  triumph  and  shouts  of  "Hosanna,"  a  word  of  rejoicing. 

He  went  to  the  temple.  Its  outer  courts  were  cumbered  with 
the  tables  of  money-changers  and  with  the  stalls  of  those  who 
sold  doves  to  be  liberated  by  pious  visitors  to  the  temple.  These 
traders  upon  religion  he  and  his  followers  cast  out,  overturning 
the  tables.  It  was  almost  his  only  act  of  positive  rule. 

Then  for  a  week  he  taught  in  Jerusalem,  surrounded  by  a 
crowd  of  followers  who  made  his  arrest  by  the  authorities  diffi- 
cult. Then  officialdom  gathered  itself  together  against  this 
astonishing  intruder.  One  of  his  disciples,  Judas,  dismayed  and 
disappointed  at  the  apparent  ineffectiveness  of  this  capture  of 
Jerusalem,  went  to  the  Jewish  priests  to  give  them  his  advice 
and  help  in  the  arrest  of  Jesus.  For  this  service  he  was  re- 
warded with  thirty  pieces  of  silver.  The  high  priest  and  the 
Jews  generally  had  many  reasons  for  dismay  at  this  gentle  in- 
surrection that  was  filling  the  streets  with  excited  crowds;  for 
example,  the  Romans  might  misunderstand  it  or  use  it  as  an 
occasion  to  do  some  mischief  to  the  whole  Jewish  people.  Ac- 
cordingly the  high  priest  Caiaphas,  in  his  anxiety  to  show  his 
loyalty  to  the  Roman  overlord,  was  the  leader  in  the  pro- 
ceedings against  this  unarmed  Messiah,  and  the  priests  and 
the  orthodox  mob  of  Jerusalem  the  chief  accusers  of  Jesus. 

How  he  was  arrested  in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane,  how  he 
was  tried  and  sentenced  by  Pontius  Pilate,  the  Roman  procura- 
tor, how  he  was  scourged  and  mocked  by  the  Roman  soldiers 
and  crucified  upon  the  hill  called  Golgotha,  is  told  with  unsur- 
passable simplicity  and  dignity  in  the  gospels. 

The  revolution  collapsed  utterly.  The  disciples  of  Jesus  with 
one  accord  deserted  him,  and  Peter,  being  taxed  as  one  of  them, 
said,  "I  know  not  the  man."  This  was  not  the  end  they  had 
anticipated  in  their  great  coming  to  Jerusalem.  His  last  hours 
of  aching  pain  and  thirst  upon  the  cross  were  watched  only  by 
a  few  women  and  near  friends.  Towards  the  end  of  the  long 
day  of  suffering  this  abandoned  leader  roused  himself  to  one 
supreme  effort,  cried  out  with  a  loud  voice,  "My  God !  my 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  509 

God!  why  has  thou  forsaken  me  ?"  and,  leaving  these  words 
to  echo  down  the  ages,  a  perpetual  riddle  to  the  faithful, 
died. 

It  was  inevitable  that  simple  believers  should  have  tried  to 
enhance  the  stark  terrors  of  this  tragedy  by  foolish  stories  of 
physical  disturbances  similar  to  those  which  had  been  invented 
to  emphasize  the  conversion  of  Gautama.  We  are  told  that  a 
great  darkness  fell  upon  the  earth,  and  that  the  veil  of  the  temple 
was  rent  in  twain ;  but  if  indeed  these  things  occurred,  they 
produced  not  the  slightest  effect  upon  the  minds  of  people  in 
Jerusalem  at  that  time.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  nowadays  that 
the  order  of  nature  indulged  in  any  such  meaningless  comments. 
Far  more  tremendous  is  it  to  suppose  a  world  apparently  in- 
different to  those  three  crosses  in  the  red  evening  twilight,  and 
to  the  little  group  of  perplexed  and  desolated  watchers.  The 
darkness  closed  upon  the  hill ;  the  distant  city  set  about  its  prep- 
arations for  the  Passover;  scarcely  anyone  but  that  knot  of 
mourners  on  the  way  to  their  homes  troubled  whether  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  was  still  dying  or  already  dead.  ... 

The  souls  of  the  disciples  were  plunged  for  a  time  into  utter 
darkness.  Then  presently  came  a  whisper  among  them  and 
stories,  rather  discrepant  stories,  that  the  body  of  Jesus  was 
not  in  the  tomb  in  which  it  had  been  •  placed,  and  that  first  one 
and  then  another  had  seen  him  alive.  Soon  they  were  consoling 
themselves  with  the  conviction  that  he  had  risen  from  the  dead, 
that  he  had  shown  himself  to  many,  and  had  ascended  visibly 
into  heaven.  Witnesses  were  found  to  declare  that  they  had 
'positively  seen  him  go  up,  visibly  in  his  body.  He  had  gone 
through  the  blue — to  God,  Soon  they  had  convinced  themselves 
that  he  would  presently  come  again,  in  power  and  glory,  to 
judge  all  mankind.  In  a  little  while,  they  said,  he  would  come 
back  to  them;  and  in  these  bright  revivals  of  their  old-time 
dream  of  an  assertive  and  temporal  splendour  theiy  forgot  the 
greater  measure,  the  giant  measure,  he  had  given  them  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God. 

-•  •  §      5 

The  story  of  the  early  beginnings  of  Christianity  is  the  story 
of  the  struggle  between  the  real  teachings  and  spirit  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  and  the  limitations,  amplifications,  and  misunder* 


510  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

standings  of  the  very  inferior  men  who  had  loved  and  followed 
him  from  Galilee,  and  who  were  now  the  bearers  and  custodians 
of  his  message  to  mankind.  The  gospels  and  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  present  a  patched  and  uneven  record,  but  there  can  be 
little  question  that  on  the  whole  it  is  a  quite  honest  record  of 
those  early  days. 

The  early  Nazarenes,  as  the  followers  of  Jesus  were  called, 
present  from  the  first  a  spectacle  of  a  great  confusion  between 
these  two  strands,  his  teaching  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  glosses 
and  interpretations  of  the  disciples  on  the  other.  They  con- 
tinued for  a  time  his  disciplines  of  the  complete  subjugation  of 
self;  they  had  their  goods  in  common,  they  had  no  bond  but 
love.  Nevertheless,  they  built  their  faith  upon  the  stories  that 
were  told  of  his  resurrection  and  magical  ascension,  and  the 
promised  return.  Few  of  them  understood  that  the  renunciation 
of  self  is  its  own  reward,  that  it  is  itself  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven;  they  regarded  it  as  a  sacrifice  that  entitled  them  to 
the  compensation  of  power  and  dominion  when  presently  the 
second  coming  occurred.  They  had  now  all  identified  Jesus 
with  the  promised  Christ,  the  Messiah  so  long  expected  by  the 
Jewish  people.  They  found  out  prophecies  of  the  crucifixion 
in  the  prophets — the  Gospel  of  Matthew  is  particularly  insistent 
upon  these  prophecies.  Revived  by  these  hopes,  enforced  by  the 
sweet  and  pure  lives  of  many  of  the  believers,  the  Nazarene  doc- 
trine began  to  spread  very  rapidly  in  Judea  and  Syria. 

And  presently  there  arose  a  second  great  teacher,  whom  many 
modern  authorities  regard  as  the  real  founder  of  Christianity, 
Saul  of  Tarsus,  or  Paul.  Saul  apparently  was  his  Jewish  and 
Paul  his  Roman  name;  he  was  a  Roman  citizen,  and  a  man 
of  much  wider  education  and  a  much  narrower  intellectuality 
than  Jesus  seems  to  have  been.  By  birth  he  was  probably  a 
Jew,  though  some  Jewish  writers  deny  this;  he  had  certainly 
studied  under  Jewish  teachers.  But  he  was  well  versed  in  the 
Hellenic  theologies  of  Alexandria,  and  his  language  was  Greek. 
Some  classical  scholars  profess  to  find  his  Greek  unsatisfactory ; 
he  did  not  use  the  Greek  of  Athens,  but  the  Greek  of  Alexandria ; 
but  he  used  it  with  power  and  freedom.1  He  was  a  religious 
theorist  and  teacher  long  before  he  heard  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 

1  Paul's  Greek  is  very  good.  He  is  affected  by  the  philosophical  jargon 
of  the  Hellenistic  schools  and  by  that  of  Stoicism.  But  his  mastery  of 
sublime  language  is  amazing. — G.  M, 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  511 

and  he  appears  in  the  New  Testament  narrative  at  first  as  the 
bitter  critic  and  antagonist  of  the  Nazarenes. 

The  present  writer  has  been  unable  to  find  any  discussion  of 
the  religious  ideas  of  Paul  before  he  became  a  follower  of  Jesus. 
They  must  have  been  a  basis,  if  only  a  basis  of  departure,  for 
his  new  views,  and  their  phraseology  certainly  supplied  the 
colour  of  his  new  doctrines.  We  are  almost  equally  in  the 
dark  as  to  the  teachings  of  Gamaliel,  who  is  named  as  the 
Jewish  teacher  at  whose  feet  he  sat.  Nor  do  we  know  what 
Gentile  teachings  had  reached  him.  It  is  highly  probable  that 
he  had  been  influenced  by  Mithraism.  He  uses  phrases  curi- 
ously like  Mithraistic  phrases.  What  will  be  clear  to  anyone 
who  reads  his  various  Epistles,  side  by  side  with  the  Gospels, 
is  that  his  mind  was  saturated  by  an  idea  which  does  not  appear 
at  all  prominently  in  the  reported  sayings  and  teachings  of 
Jesus,  the  idea  of  a  sacrificial  person,  who  is  offered  up  to  God 
as  an  atonement  for  sin.  What  Jesus  preached  was  a  new  birth 
of  the  human  soul;  what  Paul  preached  was  the  ancient  re- 
ligion of  priest  and  altar  and  propitiatory  bloodshed.  Jesus 
was  to  him  the  Easter  lamb,  that  traditional  human  victim 
without  spot  or  blemish  who  haunts  all  the  religions  of  the  dark 
white  peoples.  Paul  came  to  the  Nazarenes  with  overwhelming 
force  because  he  came  to  them  with  this  completely  satisfactory' 
explanation  of  the  disaster  of  the  crucifixion.  It  was  a  brilliant 
elucidation  of  what  had  been  utterly  perplexing. 

Paul  had  never  seen  Jesus.  His  knowledge  of  Jesus  and  his 
teaching  must  have  been  derived  from  the  hearsay  of  the  original 
disciples.  It  is  clear  that  he  apprehended  much  of  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  and  his  doctrine  of  a  new  birth,  but  he  built  this  into  a 
theological  system,  a  very  subtle  and  ingenious  system,  whose 
appeal  to  this  day  is  chiefly  intellectual.  And  it  is  clear  that 
the  faith  of  the  Nazarenes,  which  he  found  as  a  doctrine  of 
motive  and  a  way  of  living,  he  made  into  a  doctrine  of  belief. 
He  found  the  Nazarenes  with  a  spirit  and  hope,  and  he  left 
them  Christians  with  the  beginning  of  a  creed. 

But  we  must  refer  the  reader  to  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and 
the  Pauline  Epistles  for  an  account  of  Paul's  mission  and  teach- 
ing. He  was  a  man  of  enormous  energy,  and  he  taught  at  Jeru- 
salem, Antioch,  Athens,  Corinth,  Ephesus,  and  Rome. 

Possibly  he  went  into  Spain.  The  manner  of  his  death  is 
not  certainly  known,  but  it  is  said  that  he  was  killed  in  Home 


512  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

during  the  reign  of  Nero.  A  great  fire  had  burnt  a  large  part 
of  Rome,  and  the  new  sect  was  accused  of  causing  this.  The 
rapid  spread  of  Christian  teaching  certainly  owes  more  to  Paul 
than  to  any  other  single  man.  Within  two  decades  of  the  cruci- 
fixion this  new  religion  was  already  attracting  the  attention  of 
the  Roman  rulers  in  several  provinces.  If  it  had  acquired  a 
theology  in  the  hands  of  St.  Paul,  it  still  retained  much  of 
the  revolutionary  and  elementary  quality  of  the  teachings  of 
Jesus.  It  had  become  somewhat  more  tolerant  of  private  prop- 
erty; it  would  accept  wealthy  adherents  without  insisting  upon 
the  communization  of  their  riches,  and  St.  Paul  has  condoned 
the  institution  of  slavery  ("Slaves,  be  obedient  to  your  mas- 
ters"), but  it  still  set  its  face  like  flint  against  certain  funda- 
mental institutions  of  the  Roman  world.  It  would  not  tolerate 
the  godhead  of  Caesar;  not  even  by  a  mute  gesture  at  the  altar 
would  the  Christians  consent  to  worship  the  Emperor,  though 
their  lives  were  at  stake  in  the  matter.  It  denounced  the  gladia- 
torial shows.  Unarmed,  but  possessing  enormous  powers  of 
passive  resistance,  Christianity  thus  appeared  at  the  outset 
plainly  as  rebellion,  striking  at  the  political  if  not  at 
the  economic  essentials  of  the  imperial  system.  The  first 
evidences  of  Christianity  in  non-Christian  literature  we  find 
when  perplexed  Roman  officials  began  to  write  to  one  another 
and  exchange  views  upon  the  strange  problem  presented  by  this 
infectious  rebellion  of  otherwise  harmless  people. 

Much  of  the  history  of  the  Christians  in  the  first  two  cen- 
turies of  the  Christian  era  is  very  obscure.  They  spread  far  and 
wide  throughout  the  world,  but  we  know  very  little  of  their  ideas 
or  their  ceremonies  and  methods  during  that  time.  As  yet  they 
had  no  settled  creeds,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  there 
were  wide  local  variations  in  their  beliefs  and  disciplines  during 
this  formless  period.  But  whatever  their  local  differences, 
everywhere  they  seem  to  have  carried  much  of  the  spirit  of 
Jesus';  and  though  everywhere  they  aroused  bitter  enmity  and 
active  counter-propaganda,  the  very  charges  made  against  them 
witness  to  the  general  goodness  of  their  lives. 

During  this  indefinite  time  a  considerable  amount  of  a  sort 
of  theocrasia  seems  to  have  gone  on  between  the  Christian  cult 
and  the  almost  equally  popular  and  widely  diffused  Mithraic 
cult,  and  the  cult  of  Serapis-Isis-Horus.  From  the  former  it 
would  seem  the  Christians  adopted  Sun-day  as  their  chief  day 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  513 

of  worship  instead  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath,  the  abundant  use  of 
candles  in  religious  ceremonies,  the  legend  of  the  adoration 
by  the  shepherds,  and  probably  also  those  ideas  and  phrases,  so 
distinctive  of  certain  sects  to  this  day,  about  being  "washed  in 
the  blood"  of  Christ,  and  of  Christ  being  a  blood  sacrifice.  For 
we  have  to  remember  that  a  death  by  crucifixion  is  hardly  a  more 
bloody  death  than  hanging;  to  speak  of  Jesus  shedding  his 
blood  for  mankind  is  really  a  most  inaccurate  expression.  Even 
when  we  remember  that  he  was  scourged,  that  he  wore  a  crown 
of  thorns,  and  that  his  side  was  pierced  by  a  spear,  we  are  still 
far  from  a  "fountain  filled  with  blood."  But  Mithraism  cen- 
tred upon  some  now  forgotten  mysteries  about  Mithras  sacri- 
ficing a  sacred  and  benevolent  bull ;  all  the  Mithraic  shrines 
seem  to  have  contained  a  figure  of  Mithras  killing  this  bull, 
which  bleeds  copiously  from  a  wound  in  its  side,  and  from  this 
blood  a  new  life  sprang.  The  Mithraist  votary  actually  bathed 
in  the  blood  of  the  sacrificial  bull,  and  was  "born  again" 
thereby.  At  his  initiation  he  went  beneath  a  scaffolding  on 
which  the  bull  was  killed,  and  the  blood  ran  down  on  him. 

The  contributions  of  the  Alexandrine  cult  to  Christian  thought 
and  practices  were  even  more  considerable.  In  the  personality 
of  Horus,  who  was  at  once  the  son  of  Serapis  and  identical  with 
Serapis,  it  was  natural  for  the  Christians  to  find  an  illuminating 
analogue  in  their  struggles  with  the  Pauline  mysteries.  From 
that  to  the  identification  of  Mary  with  Isis,  and  her  elevation  to 
a  rank  quasi-divine — in  spite  of  the  saying  of  Jesus  about  his 
mother  and  his  brothers  that  we  have  already  quoted — was  also 
a  very  natural  step.  Natural,  too,  was  it  for  Christianity  to 
adopt,  almost  insensibly,  the  practical  methods  of  the  popular 
religions  of  the  time.  Its  priests  took  on  the  head-shaving  and 
the  characteristic  garments  of  the  Egyptian  priests,  because  that 
sort  of  thing  seemed  to  be  the  right  way  of  distinguishing  a 
priest.  One  accretion  followed  another.  Almost  insensibly 
the  originally  revolutionary  teaching  was  buried  under  these 
customary  acquisitions.  We  have  already  tried  to  imagine 
Gautama  Buddha  returning  to  Tibet,  and  his  amazement  at 
the  worship  of  his  own  image  in  Lhassa.  We  will  but  suggest 
the  parallel  amazement  of  some  earnest  Nazarene  who  had 
known  and  followed  his  dusty  and  travel-worn  Master  through 
the  dry  sunlight  of  Galilee,  restored  suddenly  to  this  world  and 
visiting,  let  us  say,  a  mass  in  St.  Peter's  at  Rome,  at  learning 


514  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

that  the  consecrated  wafer  upon  the  altar  was  none  other  than 
his  crucified  teacher. 

Religion  in  a  world  community  is  not  many  things  but  one 
thing,  and  it  was  inevitable  that  all  the  living  religious  faiths 
in  the  world  at  the  time,  and  all  the  philosophy  and  religious 
thought  that  came  into  contact  with  Christianity,  should  come 
to  an  account  with  Christianity  and  exchange  phrases  and  ideas. 
The  hopes  of  the  early  Nazarenes  had  identified  Jesus  with  the 
Christ ;  the  brilliant  mind  of  Paul  had  surrounded  his  career 
with  mystical  significance.  Jesus  had  called  men  and  women 
to  a  giant  undertaking,  to  the  renunciation  of  self,  to  the  new 
birth  into  the  kingdom  of  love.  The  line  of  least  resistance  for 
the  flagging  convert  was  to  intellectualize  himself  away  from 
this  plain  doctrine,  this  stark  proposition,  into  complicated 
theories  and  ceremonies — that  would  leave  his  essential  self 
alone.  How  much  easier  is  it  to  sprinkle  oneself  with  blood 
than  to  purge  oneself  from  malice  and  competition;  to  eat 
bread  and  drink  wine  and  pretend  one  had  absorbed  divinity, 
to  give  candles  rather  than  the  heart,  to  shave  the  head  and 
retain  the  scheming  privacy  of  the  brain  inside  it !  The  world 
was  full  of  such  evasive  philosophy  and  theological  stuff  in  the 
opening  centuries  of  the  Christian  era.  It  is  not  for  us  here  to 
enlarge  upon  the  distinctive  features  of  Neoplatonism,  Gnosti- 
cism, Philonism,  and  the  like  teachings  which  abounded  in  the 
Alexandrian  world.  But  it  was  all  one  world  with  that  in 
which  the  early  Christians  were  living.  The  writings  of  such 
men  as  Origen,  Plotinus,  and  Augustine  witness  to  the  inevitable 
give  and  take  of  the  time. 

Jesus  called  himself  the  Son  of  God  and  also  the  Son  of 
Man;  but  he  laid  little  stress  on  who  he  was  or  what  he  was, 
and  much  upon  the  teachings  of  the  Kingdom.  In  declaring 
that  he  was  more  than  a  man  and  divine,  Paul  and  his  other 
followers,  whether  they  were  right  or  wrong,  opened  up  a  vast 
field  of  argument.  Was  Jesus  God  ?  Or  had  God  created  him  ? 
Was  he  identical  with  God  or  separate  from  God  ?  It  is  not 
the  function  of  the  historian  to  answer  such  questions,  but  he 
is  bound  to  note  them,  and  to  note  how  unavoidable  they  were, 
because  of  the  immense,  influence  they  have  had  upon  the  whole 
subsequent  life  of  western  mankind.  By  the  fourth  century 
of  the  Christian  Era  we  find  all  the  Christian  communities  so 
agitated  and  exasperated  by  tortuous  and  elusive  arguments 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  515 

about  the  nature  of  God  as  to  be  largely  negligent  of  the  simpler 
teachings  of  charity,  service,  and  brotherhood  that  Jesus  had 
inculcated. 

The  chief  views  that  the  historian  notices  are  those  of  the 
Arians,  the  Sabellians,  and  the  Trinitarians.  The  Arians  fol- 
lowed Arius,  who  taught  that  Christ  was  less  than  God;  the 
Sabellians  taught  that  he  was  a  mode  or  aspect  of  God;  God 
was  Creator,  Saviour,  and  Comforter  just  as  one  man  may 
be  father,  trustee,  and  guest ;  the  Trinitarians,  of  whom  Atha- 
nasius  was  the  great  leader,  taught  that  the  Father,  the  Son, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost  were  three  distinct  Persons,  but  one  God. 
The  reader  is  referred  to  the  Athanasian  Creed  l  for  the  exact 
expression  of  the  latter  mystery,  and  for  the  alarming  conse- 
quences to  him  of  any  failure  to  grasp  and  believe  it.  To 
Gibbon  he  must  go  for  a  derisive  statement  of  these  controver- 
sies. The  present  writer  can  deal  with  them  neither  with  awe 
nor  derision;  they  seem  to  him,  he  must  confess,  a  disastrous 
ebullition  of  the  human  mind  entirely  inconsistent  with  the  plain 
account  of  Jesus  preserved  for  us  in  the  gospels.  Orthodoxy 
became  a  test  not  only  for  Christian  office,  but  for  Christian 
trade  and  help.  A  small  point  of  doctrine  might  mean  affluence 
or  beggary  to  a  man.  It  is  difficult  to  read  the  surviving  litera- 
ture of  the  time  without  a  strong  sense  of  the  dogmatism,  the 
spites,  rivalries,  and  pedantries  of  the  men  who  tore  Christianity 
to  pieces  for  the  sake  of  these  theological  refinements.  Most  of 
the  Trinitarian  disputants — for  it  is  chiefly  Trinitarian  docu- 
ments that  survive — accuse  their  antagonists,  probably  with 
truth,  of  mean  and  secondary  motives,  but  they  do  so  in  a  man- 
ner that  betrays  their  own  base  spirit  very  clearly.  Arius,  for 
example,  is  accused  of  adopting  heretical  opinions  because  he 
was  not  appointed  Bishop  of  Alexandria.  Eiots  and  excom- 
munications and  banishments  punctuated  these  controversies, 
and  finally  came  official  persecutions.  These  fine  differences 
about  the  constitution  of  the  Deity  interwove  with  politics  and 
international  disputes.  Men  who  quarrelled  over  business  af- 
fairs, wives  who  wished 'to  annoy  their  husbands,  developed 
antagonistic  views  upon  this  exalted  theme.  Most  of  the  bar- 
barian invaders  of  the  empire  were  Arians;  probably  because 

*In  any  prayer  book  of  the  Episcopalian  Church.  The  Athanasian 
Creed  embodies  the  view  of  Athanasius,  but  probably  was  not  composed 
by  him. 


516  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

their  simple  minds  found  the  Trinitarian  position  incompre* 
hensible. 

It  is  easy  for  the  sceptic  to  mock  at  these  disputes.  But  even 
if  we  think  that  these  attempts  to  say  exactly  how  God  was 
related  to  himself  were  presumptuous  and  intellectually  mon- 
strous, nevertheless  we  are  bound  to  recognize  that  beneath  these 
preposterous  refinements  of  impossible  dogmas  there  lay  often 
a  real  passion  for  truth — even  if  it  was  truth  ill  conceived. 
Both  sides  produced  genuine  martyrs.  And  the  zeal  of  these 
controversies,  though  it  is  a  base  and  often  malicious  zeal,  did 
at  any  rate  make  the  Christian  sects  very  energetically  propa- 
gandist and  educational.  Moreover,  because  the  history  of  the 
Christian  body  in  the  fourth  and  fifth  centuries  is  largely  a 
record  of  these  unhappy  disputes,  that  must  not  blind  us  to 
the  fact  that  the  spirit  of  Jesus  did  live  and  ennoble  many  lives 
among  the  Christians.  The  text  of  the  gospels,  though  it  was 
probably  tampered  with  during  this  period,  was  not  destroyed, 
and  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  in  his  own  manifest  inimitable  great- 
ness, still  taught  through  that  text.  Nor  did  these  unhappy 
quarrels  prevent  Christianity  from  maintaining  a  united  front 
against  gladiatorial  shows  and  against  the  degrading  worship  of 
idols  and  of  the  god-Caesar. 

§6 

So  far  as  it  challenged  the  divinity  of  Caesar  and  the  char- 
acteristic institutions  of  the  empire,  Christianity  is  to  be  re- 
garded as  a  rebellious  and  disintegrating  movement,  and  so  it 
was  regarded  by  most  of  the  emperors  before  Constantine  the 
Great.  It  encountered  considerable  hostility,  and  at  last  sys- 
tematic attempts  to  suppress  it.  Decius  was  the  first  emperor 
to  organize  an  official  persecution,  and  the  great  era  of  the 
martyrs  was  in  the  time  of  Diocletian  (303  and  following  years). 
The  persecution  of  Diocletian  was  indeed  the  crowning  strug- 
gle of  the  old  idea  of  the  god-emperor  against  the  already  great 
and  powerful  organization  that  denied  his  divinity.  Diocle- 
tian had  reorganized  the  monarchy  upon  lines  of  extreme 
absolutism;  he  had  abolished  the  last  vestiges  of  republican 
institutions ;  he  was  the  first  emperor  to  surround  himself  com- 
pletely with  the  awe-inspiring  etiquette  of  an  eastern  monarch. 
He  was  forced  by  the  logic  of  his  assumptions  to  attempt  the 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  517 

complete  eradication  of  a  system  that  flatly  denied  them.  The 
test  in  the  persecution  was  that  the  Christian  was  required  to 
offer  sacrifice  to  the  emperor. 

"Though  Diocletian,  still  averse  to  the  effusion  of  blood,  had 
moderated  the  fury  of  Galerius,  who  proposed  that  everyone 
refusing  to  offer  sacrifice  should  immediately  be  burnt  alive, 
the  penalties  inflicted  on  the  obsfinacy  of  the  Christians  might 
be  deemed  sufficiently  rigorous  and  effectual.  It  was  enacted 
that  their  churches,  in  all  the  provinces  of  the  empire,  should 
be  demolished  to  their  foundations;  and  the  punishment  of 
death  was  denounced  against  all  who  should  presume  to  hold 
any  secret  assemblies  for  the  purpose  of  religious  worship.  The 
philosophers,  who  now  assumed  the  unworthy  office  of  directing 
the  blind  zeal  of  persecution,  had  diligently  studied  the  nature 
and  genius  of  the  Christian  religion;  and  as  they  were  not 
ignorant  that  the  speculative  doctrines  of  the  faith  were  sup- 
posed to  be  contained  in  the  writings  of  the  prophets,  of  the 
evangelists,  and  of  the  apostles,  they  most  probably  suggested 
the  order  that  the  bishops  and  presbyters  should  deliver  all  their 
sacred  books  into  the  hands  of  the  magistrates,  who  were  com- 
manded, under  the  severest  penalties,  to  burn  them  in  a  public 
and  solemn  manner.  By  the  same  edict,  the  property  of  the 
church  was  at  once  confiscated ;  and  the  several  parts  of  which 
it  might  consist  were  either  sold  to  the  highest  bidder,  united 
to  the  imperial  domain,  bestowed  on  the  cities  or  corporations, 
or  granted  to  the  solicitations  of  rapacious  courtiers.  After 
taking  such  effectual  measures  to  abolish  the  worship,  and  to 
dissolve  the  government  of  the  Christians,  it  was  thought  neces- 
sary to  subject  to  the  most  intolerable  hardships  the  condition 
of  those  perverse  individuals  who  should  still' reject  the  religion 
of  nature,  of  Rome,  and  of  their  ancestors.  Persons  of  a 
liberal  birth  were  declared  incapable  of  holding  any  honours  or 
employments;  slaves  were  for  ever  deprived  of.  the  hopes  of 
freedom;  and  the  whole  body  of  the  Christians  were  put  out  of 
the  protection  of  the  law.  The  judges  were  authorized  to  hear 
and  to  determine  every  action  that  was  brought  against  a 
Christian;  but  the  Christians  were  not  permitted  to  complain 
of  any  injury  which  they  themselves  Had  suffered;  and  those 
unfortunate  sectaries  were  exposed  to  the  severity,  while  they 
were  excluded  from  the  benefits,  of  public  justice.  .  .  .  This 
edict  was  scarcely  exhibited  to  the  public  view,  in  the  most  con- 


518  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

spicuous  place  in  Nicomedia,  before  it  was  torn  down  by  the 
hands  of  a  Christian,  who  expressed  at  the  same  time,  by  the 
bitterest  of  invectives,  his  contempt  as  well  as  abhorrence  for 
such  impious  and  tyrannical  governors.  His  offence,  according 
to  the  mildest  laws,  amounted  to  treason,  and  deserved  death, 
and  if  it  be  true  that  he  was  a  person  of  rank  and  education, 
those  circumstances  could  serve  only  to  aggravate  his  guilt.  He 
was  burnt,  or  rather  roasted,  by  a  slow  fire;  and  his  execu- 
tioners, zealous  to  revenge  the  personal  insult  which  had  been 
offered  to  the  emperors,  exhausted  every  refinement  of  cruelty 
without  being  able  to  subdue  his  patience,  or  to  alter  the  steady 
and  insulting  smile  which  in  his  dying  agonies  he  still  pre- 
served in  his  countenance."  1 

So  with  the  death  of  this  unnamed  martyr  the  great  persecu- 
tion opened.  But,  as  Gibbon  points  out,  our  information  as  to 
its  severity  is  of  very  doubtful  value.  He  estimates  the  total 
of  victims  as  about,  two  thousand,  and  contrasts  this  with  the 
known  multitudes  of  Christians  martyred  by  their  fellow-Chris- 
tians during  the  period  of  the  Reformation.  Gibbon  was 
strongly  prejudiced  against  Christianity,  and  here  he  seems 
disposed  to  minimize  the  fortitude  and  sufferings  of  the  Chris- 
tians. In  many  provinces,  no  doubt,  there  must  have  been  a 
great  reluctance  to  enforce  the  edict.  But  there  was  a  hunt 
for  the  copies  of  Holy  Writ,  and  in  many  places  a  systematic 
destruction  of  Christian  churches.  There  were  tortures  and 
executions,  as  well  as  a  great  crowding  of  the  gaols  with  Chris- 
tian presbyters  and  bishops.  We  have  to  remember  that  the 
Christian  community  was  now  a  very  considerable  element  of 
the  population,  and  that  an  influential  proportion  of  the  officials 
charged  with  the  execution  of  the  edict  were  themselves  of  the 
proscribed  faith.  Gelerius,  who  was  in  control  of  the  eastern 
provinces,  was  among  the  most  vigorous  of  the  persecutors,  but 
in  the  end,  on  his  death  bed  (371),  he  realized  the  futility  of 
his  attacks  upon  this  huge  community,  and  granted  toleration 
in  an  edict,  the  gist  of  which  Gibbon  translates  as  follows: — 

"Among  the  important  cares  which  have  occupied  our  mind 
for  the  utility  and  preservation  of  the  empire,  it  was  our  inten- 
tion to  correct  and  re-establish  all  things  according  to  the  ancient 
laws  and  public  discipline  of  the  Romans.  We  were  particu- 
larly desirous  of  reclaiming  into  the  way  of  reason  and  nature 
1  Gibbon,  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  chap.  xvi. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  519 

the  deluded  Christians  who  had  renounced  the  religion  and 
ceremonies  instituted  by  their  fathers ;  and  presumptuously  de- 
spising the  practice  of  antiquity,  had  invented  extravagant  laws 
and  opinions  according  to  the  dictates  of  their  fancy,  and  had 
collected  a  various  society  from  the  different  provinces  of  our 
empire.  The  edicts  which  we  have  published  to  enforce  the 
worship  of  the  gods  having  exposed  many  of  the  Christians  to 
danger  and  distress,  many  having  suffered  death,  and  many 
more  who  still  persist  in  their  impious  folly,  being  left  destitute 
of  any  public  exercise  of  religion,  we  are  disposed  to  extend  to 
those  unhappy  men  the  effects  of  our  wonted  clemency.  We 
permit  them,  therefore,  freely  to  profess  their  private  opinions 
and  to  assemble  in  their  conventicles  without  fear  or  molesta- 
tion, provided  always  that,  they  preserve  a  due  respect  to  the 
established  laws  and  government.  By  another  rescript  we  shall 
signify  our  intentions  to  the  judges  and  magistrates;  and  we 
hope  that  our  indulgence  will  engage  the  Christians  to  offer  up 
their  prayers  to  the  deity  whom  they  adore,  for  our  safety  and 
prosperity,  for  their  own,  and  for  that  of  the  republic." 

In  a  few  years  Constantine  the  Great  was  reigning,  first  as 
associated  emperor  (312)  and  then  as  the  sole  ruler  (324), 
and  the  severer  trials  of  Christianity  were  over.  If  Chris- 
tianity was  a  rebellious  and  destructive  force  towards  a  pagan 
Rome,  it  was  a  unifying  and  organizing  force  within  its  own 
communion.  This  fact  the  genius  of  Constantine  grasped. 
The  spirit  of  Jesus,  for  all  the  doctrinal  dissensions  that  pre- 
vailed, made  a  great  freemasonry  throughout  and  even  beyond 
the  limits  of  the  empire.  The  faith  was  spreading  among  the 
barbarians  beyond  the  border ;  it  had  extended  into  Persia  and 
Central  Asia.  It  provided  the  only  hope  of  moral  solidarity  he 
could  discern  in  the  great  welter  of  narrow  views  and  self- 
seeking  over  which  he  had  to  rule.  It,  and  it  alone,  had  the 
facilities  for  organizing  will,  for  the  need  of  which  the  empire 
was  falling  to  pieces  like  a  piece  of  rotten  cloth.  In  312  Con- 
stantine had  to  fight  for  Rome  and  his  position  against  Maxen- 
tius.  He  put  the  Christian  monogram  upon  the  shields  and 
banners  of  his  troops  and  claimed  that  the  God  of  the  Chris- 
tians had  fought  for  him  in  his  complete  victory  at  the  battle 
of  the  Milvian  Bridge  just  outside  Rome.  By  this  act  he 
renounced  all  those  pretensions  to  divinity  that  the  vanity  of 
Alexander  the  Great  had  first  brought  into  the  western  world, 


590  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  with  the  applause  and  enthusiastic  support  of  the  Chris- 
tians he  established  himself  as  a  monarch  more  absolute  even 
than  Diocletian. 

In  a  few  years'  time  Christianity  had  become  the  official 
religion  of  the  empire,  and  in  A.D.  337  Constantine  upon  his 
death-bed  was  baptized  as  a  Christian. 

§  7     . 

The  figure  of  Constantine  the  Great  is  at  least  as  cardinal  in 
history  as  that  of  Alexander  the  Great  or  Augustus  Caesar. 
We  know  very  little  of  his  personality  or  of  his  private  life; 
no  Plutarch,  no  Suetonius,  has  preserved  any  intimate  and 
living  details  about  him.  Abuse  we  have  of  him  from  his 
enemies,  and  much  obviously  fulsome  panegyric  to  set  against 
it ;  but  none  of  these  writers  give  us  a  living  character  of  him ; 
he  is  a  party  symbol  for  them,  a  partisan  flag.  It  is  stated 
by  the  hostile  Zosimus  that,  like  Sargon  I,  he  was  of  illegitimate 
birth;  his  father  was  a  distinguished  general  and  his  mother, 
Helena,  an  inkeeper's  daughter  of  Nish  in  Serbia.  Gibbon, 
however,  is  of  opinion  that  there  was  a  valid  marriage.  In 
any  case  it  was  a  lowly  marriage,  and  the  personal  genius  of 
Constantine  prevailed  against  serious  disadvantages.  He  was 
comparatively  illiterate,  he  knew  little  or  no  Greek.  It  ap- 
pears to  be  true  that  he  banished  his  eldest  son  Crispus,  and 
caused  him  to  be  executed  at  the  instigation  of  the  young  man's 
stepmother,  Fausta;  and  it  is  also  recorded  that  he  was  after- 
wards convinced  of  the  innocence  of  Crispus,  and  caused  Fausta 
to  be  executed — according  to  one  account  by  being  boiled  to 
death  in  her  bath,  and  according  to  another  by  being  exposed 
naked  to  wild  beasts  on  a  desolate  mountain — while  there  is 
also  very  satisfactory  documentary  evidence  that  she  survived 
him.  If  she  was  executed,  the  fact  remains  that  her  three 
sons,  together  with  two  nephews,  became  the  appointed  heirs 
of  Constantine.  Clearly  there  is  nothing  solid  to  be  got  from 
this  libellous  tangle,  and  such  souffle  as  is  possible  with  these 
scanty  materials  is  to  be  found  admirably  done  by  Gibbon 
(chap,  xviii.).  Gibbon,  because  of  his  anti-Christian  animus, 
is  hostile  to  Constantine ;  but  he  admits  that  he  was  temperate 
and  chaste.  He  accuses  him  of  prodigality  because  of  his 
great  public  buildings,  and  of  being  vain  and  dissolute  (!) 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  521 

because  in  his  old  age  he  wore  a  wig — Gibbon  wore  his  own 
hair  tied  with  a  becoming  black  bow — and  a  diadem  and  mag- 
nificent robes.  But  all  the  later  emperors  after  Diocletian  wore 
diadems  and  magnificent  robes. 

Yet  if  the  personality  of  Constantino  the  Great  remains 
phantom-like,  if  the  particulars  of  his  domestic  life  reveal  noth- 
ing but  a  vague  tragedy,  we  can  still  guess  at  much  that  was 
in  his  mind.  It  must,  in  the  closing  years  of  his  life,  have 
been  a  very  lonely  mind.  He  was  more  of  an  autocrat  than 
any  previous  emperor  had  been — that  is  to  say,  he  had  less  coun- 
sel and  help.  No  class  of  public-spirited  and  trustworthy  men 
remained;  no  senate  nor  council  shared  and  developed  his 
schemes.  How  much  he  apprehended  the  geographical  weak- 
ness of  the  empire,  how  far  he  saw  the  complete  disaster  that 
was  now  so  near,  we  can  only  guess.  He  made  his  real  capital 
at  Nicomedia  in  Bithynia;  Constantinople  across  the  Bos- 
phorus  was  still  being  built  when  he  died.  Like  Diocletian,  he 
seems  to  have  realized  the  broken-backed  outline  of  his  domin- 
ions, and  to  have  concentrated  his  attention  on  foreign  affairs 
and  more  particularly  on  the  affairs  of  Hungary,  South 
Russia,  and  the  Black  Sea.  He  reorganized  all  the 
official  machinery  of  the  empire;  he  gave  it  a  new  con- 
stitution and  sought  to  establish  a  dynasty.  He  was  a  rest- 
less remaker  of  things;  the  social  confusion  he  tried  to  fix  by 
assisting  in  the  development  of  a  caste  system.  This  was  fol- 
lowing up  the  work  of  his  great  predecessor,  Diocletian.  He 
tried  to  make  a  caste  of  the  peasants  and  small  cultivators,  and 
to  restrict  them  from  moving  from  their  holdings.  In  fact 
he  sought  to  make  them  serfs.  The  supply  of  slave  labour 
had  fallen  off  because  the  empire  was  no  longer  an  invading 
but  an  invaded  power;  he  turned  to  serfdom  as  the  remedy. 
His  creative  efforts  necessitated  unprecedentedly  heavy  taxa- 
tion. All  these  things  point  to  a  lonely  and  forcible  mind.  It 
is  in  his  manifest  understanding  of  the  need  of  some  unifying 
moral  force  if  the  empire  was  to  hold  together  that  his  claim 
to  originality  lies. 

It  was  only  after  he  had  turned  to  Christianity  that  he  seems 
to  have  realized  the  fierce  dissensions  of  the  theologians.  He 
made  a  great  effort  to  reconcile  these  differences  in  order  to 
have  one  uniform  and  harmonious  teaching  in  the  community, 
and  at  his  initiative  a  general  council  of  the  Church  was  held 


522  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

at  Nicsea,  a  town  near  Nicomedia  and  over  against  Constanti- 
nople, in  325.  Eusebius  gives  a  carious  account  of  this  strange 
gathering,  over  which  the  Emperor,  although  he  was  not  yet 
a  baptized  Christian,  presided.  It  was  not  his  first  council 
of  the  Church,  for  he  had  already  (in  313)  presided  over  a 
council  at  Aries.  He  sat  in  the  midst  of  the  council  of  Nicaea 
upon  a  golden  throne,  and  as  he  had  little  Greek,  we  must  sup- 
pose he  was  reduced  to  watching  the  countenances  and  gestures 
of  the  debaters,  and  listening  to  their  intonations.  The  council 
was  a  stormy  one.  When  old  Arius  rose  to  speak,  one  Nicholas 
of  Myra  struck  him  in  the  face,  and  afterwards  many  ran  out, 
thrusting  their  fingers  into  their  ears  in  affected  horror  at  the 
old  man's  heresies.  One  is  tempted  to  imagine  the  great  Em- 
peror, deeply  anxious  for  the  soul  of  his  empire,  firmly  re*- 
solved  to  end  these  divisions,  bending  towards  his  interpreters 
to  ask  them  the  meaning  of  the  uproar. 

The  views  that  prevailed  at  Nicsea  are  embodied  in  the  Nicene 
Creed,  a  strictly  Trinitarian  statement,  and  the  Emperor  sus- 
tained the  Trinitarian  position.  But  afterwards,  when  Athana- 
sius  bore  too  hardly  upon  the  Arians,  he  had  him  banished  from 
Alexandria;  and  when  the  church  at  Alexandria  would  have 
excommunicated  Arius.  he  obliged  it  to  readmit  him  to 
communion. 

I  8 

This  date  325  A.D.  is  a  very  convenient  date  in  our  history. 
It  is  the  date  of  the  first  complete  general  ("oecumenical") 
council  of  the  entire  Christian  world.  (That  at  Aries  we  have 
mentioned  had  been  a  gathering  of  only  the  western  half.)  It 
marks  the  definite  entry  upon  the  stage  of  human  affairs  of  the 
Christian  church  and  of  Christianity  as  it  is  generally  under- 
stood in  the  wrorld  to-day.  It  marks  the  exact  definition  of 
Christian  teaching  by  the  Nicene  Creed. 

It  is  necessary  that  we  should  recall  the  reader's  attention 
to  the  profound  differences  between  this  fully  developed  Chris-n 
tianity  of  Nicsea  and  the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  All 
Christians  hold  that  the  latter  is  completely  contained  in  the 
former,  but  that  is  a  question  outside  our  province.  What  is 
clearly  apparent  is  that  the  teaching  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  a 
prophetic  teaching  of  the  new  type  that  began  with  the  Hebrew 
prophets.  It  was  not  priestly,  it  had  no  consecrated  temple  and 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  523 

no  altar.  It  had  no  rites  and  ceremonies.  Its  sacrifice  was  "a 
broken  and  a  contrite  heart."  Its  only  organization  was  an 
organization  of  preachers,  and  its  chief  function  was  the  ser- 
mon. But  the  fully  fledged  Christianity  of  the  fourth  century, 
though  it  preserved  as  its  nucleus  the  teachings  of  Jesus  in  the 
gospels,  was  mainly  a  priestly  religion  of  a  type  already  familiar 
to  the  world  for  thousand  of  years.  The  centre  of  its  elaborate 
ritual  was  an  altar,  and  the  essential  act  of  worship  the  sacri- 
fice, by  a  consecrated  priest,  of  the  mass.  And  it  had  a  rapidly 
developing  organization  of  deacons,  priests,  and  bishops. 

But  if  Christianity  had  taken  on  an  extraordinary  outward 
resemblance  to  the  cults  of  Serapis,  Ammon,  or  Bel-Marduk, 
we  must  remember  that  even  its  priestcraft  had  certain  novel 
features.  Nowhere  did  it  possess  any  quasi-divine  image  of 
God.  There  was  no  head  temple  containing  the  god,  because 
God  was  everywhere.  There  was  no  holy  of  holies.  Its  wide- 
spread altars  were  all  addressed  to  the  unseen  universal  Trinity. 
Even  in  its  most  archaic  aspects  there  was  in  Christianity  some- 
thing new. 

A  very  important  thing  for  us  to  note  is  the  role  played  by 
the  Emperor  in  the  fixation  of  Christianity.  Not  only  was  the 
council  of  Nicaea  assembled  by  Constantine  the  Great,  but  all 
the  great  councils,  the  two  at  Constantinople  (381  and  553), 
Ephesus  (431),  and  Chalcedon  (451),  were  called  together  by 
the  imperial  power.  And  it  is  very  manifest  that  in  much  of 
the  history  of  Christianity  at  this  time  the  spirit  of  Constantine 
the  Great  is  as  evident  as,  or  more  evident,  than  the  spirit  of 
Jesus.  He  was,  we  have  said,  a  pure  autocrat.  The  last  ves- 
tiges of  Eoman  republicanism  had  vanished  in  the  days  of 
Aurelian  and  Diocletian.  To  the  best  of  his  lights  he  was 
trying  to  remake  the  crazy  empire  while  there  was  yet 
time,  and  he  worked  without  any  councillors,  any  public 
opinion,  or  any  sense  of  the  need  of  such  aids  and  checks. 
The  idea  of  stamping  out  all  controversy  and  division,  stamp- 
ing out  all  thought,  by  imposing  one  dogmatic  creed  upon  all 
believers,  is  an  altogether  autocratic  idea,  it  is  the  idea  of  the 
single-handed  man  who  feels  that  to  work  at  all  he  must  be 
free  from  opposition  and  criticism.  The  history  of  the  Church 
under  his  influence  becomes  now  therefore  a  history  of  the  vio- 
lent struggles  that  were  bound  to  follow  upon  his  sudden  and 
rough  summons  to  unanimity.  From  him  the  Church  acquired 


$24  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  disposition  to  be  authoritative  and  unquestioned,  to  develop 
a  centralized  organization  and  run  parallel  to  the  empire. 

A  second  great  autocrat  who  presently  contributed  to  the 
stamping  upon  Catholic  Christianity  of  a  distinctly  authorita- 
tive character  was  Theodosius  I,  Theodosius  the  Great  (379- 
395).  He  forbade  the  unorthodox  to  hold  meetings,  handed 
over  all  churches  to  the  Trinitarians,  and  overthrew  the  heathen 
temples,  throughout  the  empire,  and  in  390  he  caused  the  great 
statue  of  Serapis  at  Alexandria  to  be  destroyed.  There  was 
to  be  no  rivalry,  no  qualification  to  the  rigid  unity  of  the 
Church. 

Here  we  cannot  tell  of  the  vast  internal  troubles  of  the 
Church,  its  indigestions  of  heresy;  of  Arians  and  Paulicians, 
of  Gnostics  and  Manicheans.  Had  it  been  less  authoritative 
and  more  tolerant  of  intellectual  variety,  it  might  perhaps  have 
been  a  still  more  powerful  body  than  it  became.  But,  in  spite 
of  all  these  disorders,  it  did  for  some  time  maintain  a  con- 
ception of  human  unity  more  intimate  and  far  wider  than  was 
ever  achieved  before.  By  the  fifth  century  Christendom  was 
already  becoming  greater,  sturdier,  and  more  enduring  than 
any  empire  had  ever  been,  because  it  was  something  not  merely 
imposed  upon  men,  but  interwoven  with  the  texture  of  their 
minds.  It  reached  out  far  beyond  the  utmost  limits  of  the 
empire,  into  Armenia,  Persia,  Abyssinia,  Ireland,  Germany, 
India,  and  Turkestan.  "Though  made  up  of  widely  scattered 
congregations,  it  was  thought  of  as  one  body  of  Christ,  one 
people  of  God.  This  ideal  unity  found  expression  in  many 
ways.  Intercommunication  between  the  various  Christian  com- 
munities was  very  active.  Christians  upon  a  journey  were  al- 
ways sure  of  a  warm  welcome  and  hospitable  entertainment 
from  their  fellow-disciples.  Messengers  and  letters  were  sent 
freely  from  one  church  to  another.  Missionaries  and  evan- 
gelists went  continually  from  place  to  place.  Documents  of 
various  kinds,  including  gospels  and  apostolic  epistles,  circu- 
lated widely.  Thus  in  various  ways  the  feeling  of  unity  found 
expression,  and  the  development  of  widely  separated  parts  of 
Christendom  conformed  more  or  less  closely  to  a  common  type."  1 

Christendom  retained  at  least  the  formal  tradition  of  this 
general  unity  of  spirit  until  1054,  when  the  Latin-speaking 
Western  church  and  the  main  and  original  Greek-speaking 
1  Encyclopedia  Britcwinica,  art.  "Church  History,"  p.  336. 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  525 

church,  the  "Orthodox"  church,  severed  themselves  from  one 
another,  ostensibly  upon  the  question  of  adding  two  words  to 
the  creed.  The  older  creed  had  declared  that  the  "Holy  Ghost 
proceeded  from  the  Father."  The  Latins  wanted  to  add,  and  did 
add  "Filioque"  (—  and  from  the  son),  and  placed  the  Greeks 
out  of  their  communion  because  they  would  not  follow  this  lead. 
But  already  as  early  as  the  fifth  century  the  Christians  in 
Eastern  Syria,  Persia,  Central  Asia — there  were  churches  at 
Merv,  Herat,  and  Samarkand — and  India  had  detached  them- 
selves on  a  similar  score.  These  extremely  interesting  Asiatic 
Christians  are  known  in  history  as  the  Nestorian  Church,  and 
their  influence  extended  into  China.  The  Egyptian  and  Abys- 
sinian churches  also  detached  themselves  very  early  upon  simi- 
larly inexplicable  points.  Long  before  this  formal  separation 
of  the  Latin  and  Greek-speaking  halves  of  the  main  church, 
however,  there  was  a  practical  separation  following  upon  the 
breaking  up  of  the  empire.  Their  conditions  diverged  from 
the  first.  While  the  Greek-speaking  Eastern  Empire  held  to- 
gether and  the  emperor  at  Constantinople  remained  dominant  in 
the  Church,  the  Latin  half  of  the  empire,  as  we  have  already 
told,  collapsed,  and  left  the  Church  free  of  any  such  imperial 
control.  Moreover,  while  ecclesiastical  authority  in  the  empire 
of  Constantinople  was  divided  between  the  high-bishops,  or 
patriarchs,  of  Constantinople,  Antioch,  Alexandria,  and  Jerusa- 
lem, authority  in  the  West  was  concentrated  in  the  Patriarch, 
or  Pope,  of  Rome.  The  Bishop  of  Rome  had  always  been 
recognized  as  first  among  the  patriarchs,  and  all  these  things 
conspired  to  justify  exceptional  pretensions  upon  his  part  to 
a  quasi-imperial  authority.  With  the  final  fall  of  the  Western 
Empire,  he  took  over  the  ancient  title  of  pontifex  maximus 
which  the  emperors  had  held,  and  so  became  the  supreme  sacri- 
ficial priest  of  the  Roman  tradition.  Over  the  Christians  of 
the  West  his  supremacy  was  fully  recognized,  but  from  the 
beginning  it  had  to  be  urged  with  discretion  within  the  domin- 
ions of  the  Eastern  emperor  and  the  jurisdictions  of  the  other 
four  patriarchs. 

Ideas  of  worldly  rule  by  the  Church  were  already  prevalent 
in  the  fourth  century.  St.  Augustine,  a  citizen  of  Hippo 
in  North  Africa,  who  wrote  between  354  and  430,  gave  expres- 
sion to  the  developing  political  ideas  of  the  Church  in  his  book 
The  City  of  God.  The  City  of  God  leads  the  mind  very  di- 


526  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

rectly  towards  the  possibility  of  making  the  world  into  a  theo- 
logical and  organized  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  The  city,  as 
Augustine  puts  it,  is  aa  spiritual  society  of  the  predestined 
faithful,"  but  the  step  from  that  to  a  political  application  was 
not  a  very  wide  one.  The  Church  was  to  be  the  ruler  of  the 
world  over  all  nations,  the  divinely  led  ruling  power  over  a 
great  league  of  terrestrial  states.  In  later  years  these  ideas 
developed  into  a  definite  political  theory  and  policy.  As  the 
barbarian  races  settled  and  became  Christian,  the  Pope  began 
to  claim  an  overlordship  of  their  kings.  In  a  few  centuries 
the  Pope  had  become  in  theory,  and  to  a  certain  extent  in 
practice,  the  high  priest,  censor,  judge,  and  divine  monarch 
of  Christendom;  his  influence  extended  in  the  west  far  be- 
yond the  utmost  range  of  the  old  empire,  to  Ireland,  Norway 
and  Sweden,  and  over  all  Germany.  For  more  than  a  thou- 
sand years  this  idea  of  the  unity  of  Christendom,  of  Christen- 
dom as  a  sort  of  vast  Amphictyony,  whose  members  even  in 
war  time  were  restrained  from  many  extremities  by  the  idea 
of  a  common  brotherhood  and  a  common  loyalty  to  the  Church, 
dominated  Europe.  The  history  of  Europe  from  the  fifth 
century  onward  to  the  fifteenth  is  very  largely  the  history  of 
the  failure  of  this  great  idea  of  a  divine  world  government  to 
realize  itself  in  practice. 

§9 

We  have  already  given  an  account  in  the  previous  chapter 
of  the  chief  irruptions  of  the  barbarian  races.  We  may  now, 
with  the  help  of  a  map,  make  a  brief  review  of  the  political 
divisions  of  Europe  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century.  No 
vestige  of  the  Western  Empire,  the  original  Roman  Empire, 
remained  as  a  distinct  and  separate  political  division.  Po- 
litically it  was  completely  broken  up.  Over  many  parts  of 
Europe  a  sort  of  legendary  overlordship  of  the  Hellenic  East- 
ern Empire  as  the  Empire  held  its  place  in  men's  minds.  The 
emperor  at  Constantinople  was,  in  theory  at  least,  still  emperor. 
In  Britain,  the  quite  barbaric  Teutonic  Angles,  Saxons  and  Jutes 
had  conquered  the  eastern  half  of  England ;  in  the  west  of  the 
island  the  Britons  still  held  out,  but  were  gradually  being 
forced  back  into  Wales  and  Cornwall.  The  Anglo-Saxons 
seem  to  have  been  among  the  most  ruthless  and  effective  of  bar- 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  527 

barian  conquerors,  for,  wherever  they  prevailed,  their  lan- 
guage completely  replaced  the  Keltic  or  Latin  speech — it  is 
not  certain  which — used  by  the  British.  These  Anglo-Saxons 
were  as  yet  not  Christianized.  Most  of  Gaul,  Holland,  and 
the  Rhineland  was  under  the  fairly  vigorous,  Christianized, 
and  much  more  civilized  kingdom  of  the  Franks.  But  the 
Rhone  valley  was  under  the  separate  kingdom  of  the  Bur- 
gundians.  Spain  and  some  of  the  south  of  France  were  under 
the  rule  of  the  Visigoths,  but  the  Suevi  were  in  possession  of 
the  north-west  corner  of  the  peninsula.  Of  the  Vandal  king- 
dom in  Africa  we  have  already  written;  and  Italy,  still  in  its 
population  and  habits  Roman,  came  under  the  rule  of  the  Os- 
trogoths. There  was  no  emperor  left  in  Rome ;  Theodoric  I 
ruled  there  as  the  first  of  a  line  of  Gothic  kings,  and  his  rule 
extended  across  the  Alps  into  Pannonia  and  down  the  Adriatic 
to  Dalmatia  and  Serbia.  To  the  east  of  the  Gothic  kingdom 
the  emperors  of  Constantinople  ruled  definitely.  The  Bulgars 
were  still  at  this  time  a  Mongolian  tribe  of  horse-riding  nomads 
in  the  region  of  the  Volga;  the  Aryan  Serbs  had  recently  come 
southward  to  the  shores  of  the  Black  Sea  into  the  original  home 
of  the  Visigoths;  the  Turko-Finnish  Magyars  were  not  yet 
in  Europe.  The  Lombards  were  as  yet  north  of  the  Danube. 

The  sixth  century  was  marked  by  a  phase  of  vigour  on  the 
part  of  the  Eastern  Empire  under  the  Emperor  Justinian 
(527-565).  The  Vandal  kingdom  was  recovered  in  534;  the 
Goths  were  expelled  from  Italy  in  553.  So  soon  as  Justinian 
was  dead  (565),  the  Lombards  descended  into  Italy  and  set- 
tled in  Lombardy,  but  they  left  Ravenna,  Rome,  Southern 
Italy,  and  North  Africa  under  the  rule  of  the  Eastern 
Empire. 

Such  was  the  political  condition  of  the  world  in  which  the 
idea  of  Christendom  developed.  The  daily  life  of  that  time 
was  going  on  at  a  very  low  level  indeed  physically,  intellectu- 
ally, and  morally.  It  is  frequently  said  that  Europe  in  the 
sixth  and  seventh  centuries  relapsed  into  barbarism,  but  that 
does  not  express  the  reality  of  the  case.  It  is  far  more  cor- 
rect to  say  that  the  civilization  of  the  Roman  empire  had 
passed  into  a  phase  of  extreme  demoralization.  Barbarism  is 
a  social  order  of  an  elementary  type,  orderly  within  its  limits ; 
but  the  state  of  Europe  beneath  its  political  fragmentation  was 
a  social  disorder.  Its  morale  was  not  that  of  a  kraal,  but  that 


528  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  a  slum.  In  a  savage  kraal  a  savage  knows  that  he  belongs 
to  a  community,  and  lives  and  acts  accordingly;  in  a  slum, 
the  individual  neither  knows  of  nor  acts  in  relation  to  any 
greater  being. 

Only  very  slowly  and  weakly  did  Christianity  restore  that 
lost  sense  of  community  and  teach  men  to  rally  about  the  idea 
of  Christendom.  The  social  and  economic  structure  of  the 
Roman  Empire  was  in  ruins.  That  civilization  had  been  a 
civilization  of  wealth  and  political  power  sustained  by  the 
limitation  and  slavery  of  the  great  mass  of  mankind.  It  had 
presented  a  spectacle  of  outward  splendour  and  luxurious  re- 
finement, but  beneath  that  brave  outward  show  were  cruelty, 
stupidity,  and  stagnation.  It  had  to  break  down,  it  had  to  be 
removed  before  anything  better  could  replace  it. 

We  have  already  called  attention  to  its  intellectual  deadness. 
For  three  centuries  it  had  produced  neither  science  nor  litera- 
ture of  any  importance.  It  is  only  where  men  are  to  be  found 
neither  too  rich  and  powerful  to  be  tempted  into  extravagant 
indulgences  nor  too  poor  and  limited  to  care  for  anything  be- 
yond the  daily  need  that  those  disinterested  curiosities  and 
serene  impulses  can  have  play  that  give  sane  philosophy  and 
science  and  great  art  to  the  world,  and  the  plutocracy  of  Rome 
had  made  such  a  class  impossible.  When  men  and  women  are 
unlimited  and  unrestrained,  the  evidence  of  history  shows 
clearly  that  they  are  all  liable  to  become  monsters  of  self- 
indulgence;  when,  on  the  other  hand,  they  are  driven  and 
unhappy,  then  their  impulse  is  towards  immoderate  tragical 
resorts,  towards  wild  revolts  or  towards  the  austerities  and 
intensities  of  religion. 

It  is  not  perhaps  true  to  say  that  the  world  became  miserable 
in  these  "dark  ages"  to  which  we  have  now  come ;  much  nearer 
the  truth  is  it  to  say  that  the  violent  and  vulgar  fraud  of 
Roman  imperialism,  that  world  of  politicians,  adventurers, 
landowners  and  financiers,  collapsed  into  a  sea  of  misery  that 
was  already  there.  Our  histories  of  these  times  are  very 
imperfect:  there  were  few  places  where  men  could  write,  and 
little  encouragement  to  write  at  all;  no  one  was  sure  even 
of  the  safety  of  his  manuscript  or  the  possibility  of  its  being 
read.  But  we  know  enough  to  tell  that  this  age  was  an  age 
not  merely  of  war  and  robbery,  but  of  famine  and  pestilence. 
No  effective  sanitary  organization  had  yet  come  into  the  world, 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY 


529 


and  the  migrations  of  the  time  must  have  destroyed  whatever 
hygenic  balance  had  been  established.  Attila's  ravages  in 
North  Italy  were  checked  by  an  outbreak  of  fever  in  452.  There 
was  a  great  epidemic  of  bubonic  plague  towards  the  end  of 
the  reign  of  Justinian  (565)  which  did  much  to  weaken  the 
defence  of  Italy  against  the  Lombards.  In  543  ten  thousand 


of  EUROPE  aboufSOO AD. 


people  had  died  in  one  day  in  Constantinople.  (Gibbon  says 
"each  day.")  Plague  was  raging  in  Rome  in  590.  The 
seventh  century  was  also  a  plague-stricken  century.  The  Eng- 
lishman Bede,  one  of  the  few  writers  of  the  time,  records  pesti- 
lences in  England  in  664,  672,  678,  and  683,  no  fewer  .'than 
four  in  twenty  years !  Gibbon  couples  the  Justinian  epidemic 
with  the  great  comet  of  531,  and  with  the  very  frequent  and 
serious  earthquakes  of  that  reign.  "Many  cities  of  the  east 
were  left  vacant,  and  in  several  districts  of  Italy  the  harvest 
and  the  vintage  withered  on  the  ground."  He  alleges  "a 


530  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

visible  decrease  of  the  human  species  which  has  never  been 
made  good  in  some  of  the  fairest  countries  of  the  globe."  To 
many  in  those  dark  days  it,  seemed  that  all  learning  and  all  that 
made  life  seemly  and  desirable  was  perishing. 

How  far  the  common  lot  was  unhappier  under  these  condi- 
tions of  squalor  and  insecurity  than  it  had  been  under  the  grind- 
ing order  of  the  imperial  system  it  is  impossible  to  say.  There 
was  possibly  much  local  variation,  the  rule  of  violent  bullies 
here  and  a  good-tempered  freedom  there,  famine  this  year  and 
plenty  the  next.  If  robbers  abounded,  tax-gatherers  and  credf 
itors  had  disappeared.  Such  kings  as  those  of  the  Frankisll 
and  Gothic  kingdoms  were  really  phantom  lulers  to  most  of 
their  so-called  subjects;  the  life  of  each  district,  went  on  at  a 
low  level,  with  little  trade  or  travel.  Greater  or  lesser  areas 
of  countryside  would  be  dominated  by  some  able  person,  claim;- 
ing  with  more  or  less  justice  the  title  of  lord  or  count  or  duke 
•from  the  tradition  of  the  later  empire  or  from  the  king.  Such 
local  nobles  would  assemble  bands  of  retainers  and  build  them- 
selves strongholds.  Often  they  adapted  pre-existing  buildings. 
The  Colosseum  at  Rome,  for  example,  the  arena  of  many  great 
gladiatorial  shows,  was  converted  into  a  fortress,  and  so  was 
the  amphitheatre  at  Aries.  So  also  was  the  great  tomb  of 
Hadrian  at  Rome.  In  the  decaying  and  now  insanitary  towns 
and  cities  shrunken  bodies  of  artisans  would  hold  together 
and  serve  the  needs  of  the  cultivating  villages  about  them  by 
their  industry,  placing  themselves  under  the  protection  of 
some  adjacent  noble. 

§  10 

A  very  important  share  in  the  social  recrystallization  that 
went  on  in  the  sixth  and  seventh  centuries  after  the  breakdown 
and  fusion  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  was  taken  by  the  Christian 
monastic  orders  that  were  now  arising  in  the  Western  world. 

Monasteries  had  existed  in  the  world  before  Christianity. 
During  the  period  of  social  unhappinr^s  among  the  Jews  be- 
fore the  time  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  there  was  a  sect  of  Esbcnes 
who  lived  apart  in  communities  vowed  to  austere  lives  of  soli- 
tude, purity,  and  self-denial.  Buddhism,  too,  had  develo,pe,d 
its  communities  of  men  who  withdrew  from  the  general  effort 
and  commerce  of  the  world  to  lead  lives  of  austerity  and  con- 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  531 

templation.  Indeed,  the  story  of  Buddha  as  we  have  told  it, 
shows  that  such  ideas  must  have  prevailed  in  India  long  be- 
fore his  time,  and  that  at  last  he  repudiated  them.  Quite 
early  in  the  history  of  Christianity  there  arose  a  similar  move- 
ment away  from  the  competition  and  heat  and  stress  of  the 
daily  life  of  men.  In  Egypt,  particularly,  great  numbers  of 
men  and  women  went  out  into  the  desert  and  there  lived  soli- 
tary lives  of  prayer  and  contemplation,  living  in  absolute  pov- 
erty in  caves  or  under  rocks,  and  subsisting  on  the  chance  alms 
of  those  whom  their  holiness  impressed.  Such  lives  would 
signify  little  to  the  historian,  they  are  indeed  of  their  very 
nature  lives  withdrawn  from  history,  were  it  not  for  the  turn 
this  monastic  tendency  presently  took  among  the  more  ener- 
getic and  practical  Europeans. 

One  of  the  central  figures  in  the  story  of  the  development 
of  monasticism  in  Europe  is  St.  Benedict,  who  lived  between 
480  and  544.  He  was  born  at  Spoleto  in  Italy,  and  he  was  a 
young  man  of  good  family  and  ability.  The  shadow  of  the 
times  fell  upon  him,  and,  like  Buddha,  he  took  to  the  religious 
life  and  at  first  set  no  limit  to  his  austerities.  Fifty  miles 
from  Home  is  Subiaco,  and  there  at  the  end  of  a  gorge  of  the 
Anio,  beneath  a  jungle  growth  of  weeds  and  bushes,  rose  a 
deserted  palace  built  by  the  Emperor  Nero,  overlooking  an 
artificial  lake  that  had  been  made  in  those  days  of  departed 
prosperity  by  damming  back  the  waters  of  the  river.  Here, 
with  a  hair  shirt  as  his  chief  possession,  Benedict  took  up  his 
quarters  in  a  cave  in  the  high  southward-looking  cliff  that  over- 
hangs the  stream,  in  so  inaccessible  a  position  that  his  food 
had  to  be  lowered  to  him  on  a  cord  by  a  faithful  admirer. 
Three  years  he  lived  here,  and  his  fame  spread  as  Buddha's  did 
nearly  a  thousand  years  before  under  similar  circumstances. 

As  in  the  case  of  Buddha,  the  story  of  Benedict  has  been 
overlaid  by  foolish  and  credulous  disciples  with  a  mass  of  silly 
stories  of  miracles  and  manifestations.  But  presently  we  find 
him,  no  longer  engaged  in  self-torment,  but  controlling  a  group 
of  twelve  monasteries,  and  the  resort  of  a  great  number  of  peo- 
ple. Youths  are  brought  to  him  to  be  educated,  and  the  whole 
character  of  his  life  has  changed. 

From  Subiaco  he  moved  further  southward  to  Monte  Cas- 
sino,  half-way  between  Kome  and  Naples,  a  lonely  and  beauti- 
ful mountain,  in  the  midst  of  a  great  circle  of  majestice  heights. 


532  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Here,  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  the  sixth  century  A.D. 
he  found  a  temple  of  Apollo  and  a  sacred  grove  and  the  coun« 
tryside  still  worshipping  at  this  shrine.  His  first  labours 
had  to  be  missionary  labours,  and  it  was  with  difficulty  that 
he  persuaded  the  simple  pagans  to  demolish  their  temple  and 
cut  down  their  grove.  The  establishment  upon  Monte  Cas- 
sino  became  a  famous  and  powerful  centre  within  the  lifetime 
of  its  founder.  Mixed  up  with  the  imbecile  inventions  of 
marvel-loving  monks  about  demons  exorcised,  disciples  walking 
on  the  water,  and  dead  children  restored  to  life,  we  can  still 
detect  something  of  the  real  spirit  of  Benedict.  Particularly 
significant  are  the  stories  that  represent  him  as  discouraging 
extreme  mortification.  He  sent  a  damping  message  to  a  soli- 
tary who  had  invented  a  new  degree  in  saintliness  by  chain- 
ing himself  to  a  rock  in  a  narrow  cave.  "Break  thy  chain," 
said  Benedict,  "for  the  true  servant  of  God  is  chained  not  to 
rocks  by  iron,  but  to  righteousness  by  Christ." 

And  next  to  the  discouragement  of  solitary  self-torture  it 
is  Benedict's  distinction  that  he  insisted  upon  hard  work. 
Through  the  legends  shines  the  clear  indication  of  the  trouble 
made  by  his  patrician  students  and  disciples  who  found  them- 
selves obliged  to  toil  instead  of  leading  lives  of  leisurely  austerity 
under  the  ministrations  of  the  lower  class  brethren.  A  third 
remarkable  thing  about  Benedict  was  his  political  influence.  He 
set  himself  to  reconcile  Goths  and  Italians,  and  it  is  clear  that 
Totila,  his  Gothic  king,  came  to  him  for  counsel  and  was  greatly 
influenced  by  him.  When  Totila  retook  Naples  from  the  Greeks, 
the  Goths  protected  the  women  from  insult  and  treated  even 
the  captured  soldiers  with  humanity.  When  Belisarius,  Jus- 
tinian's general,  had  taken  the  same  place  ten  years  previously, 
he  had  celebrated  his  triumph  by  a  general  massacre. 

Now  the  monastic  organization  of  Benedict  was  a  very 
great  beginning  in  the  western  world.  One  of  his  prominent 
followers  was  Pope  Gregory  the  Great  (540-604),  the  first 
monk  to  become  pope  (590)  ;  he  was  one  of  the  most  capable 
and  energetic  of  the  popes,  sending  successful  missions  to  the 
unconverted,  and  particularly  to  the  Anglo-Saxons.  He  ruled 
in  Rome  like  an  independent  king,  organizing  armies,  mak- 
ing treaties.  To  his  influence  is  due  the  imposition  of  the 
Benedictine  rule  upon  nearly  the  whole  of  Latin  monasticism. 

Closely  associated  with  these  two  names  in  the  development 


THE  BEGINNINGS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  53S 

of  a  civilizing  monasticism  out  of  the  merely  egotistic  mortifica- 
tions of  the  early  recluses  is  that  of  Cassiodorus  (490-585). 
He  was  evidently  much  senior  to  Pope  Gregory,  and  younger 
by  ten  years  than  Benedict,  and,  like  these  two,  he  belonged 
to  a  patrician  family,  a  Syrian  family  settled  in  Italy.  He 
had  a  considerable  official  career  under  the  Gothic  kings;  and 
when,  between  545  and  553,  the  overthrow  of  those  kings 
and  the  great  pestilence  paved  the  way  for  the  new  barbaric  rule 
of  the  Lombards,  he  took  refuge  in  a  monastic  career.  He 
founded  a  monastery  upon  his  private  estates,  and  set  the 
monks  he  gathered  to  work  in  quite  the  Benedictine  fashion, 
though  whether  his  monks  actually  followed  the  Benedictine 
rule  that  was  being  formulated  about  the  same  time  from  Monte 
Cassino  we  do  not  know.  But  there  can  be  no  question  of  his 
influence  upon  the  development  of  this  great  working,  teach- 
ing, and  studying  order.  It  is  evident  that  he  was  profoundly 
impressed  by  the  universal  decay  of  education  and  the  possible 
loss  of  all  learning  and  of  the  ancient  literature  by  the  world ; 
and  from  the  first  he  directed  his  brethren  to  the  task  of 
preserving  and  restoring  these  things.  He  collected  ancient 
MSS.  and  caused  them  to  be  copied.  He  made  sundials,  water 
clocks,  and  similar  apparatus,  a  little  last  gleam  of  experi- 
mental science  in  the  gathering  darkness.  He  wrote  a  history 
of  the  Gothic  kings,  and,  what  is  more  significant  of  his  sense 
of  the  needs  of  the  time,  he  produced  a  series  of  school  books 
on  the  liberal  arts  and  a  grammar.  Probably  his  influence  was 
even  greater  than  that  of  St.  Benedict  in  making  monasticism 
into  a  powerful  instrument  for  the  restoration  of  social  order 
in  the  Western  world. 

The  spread  of  monasteries  of  the  Benedictine  order  or  type 
in  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries  was  very  considerable. 
Everywhere  we  find  them  as  centres  of  light,  restoring,  main- 
taining, and  raising  the  standard  of  cultivation,  preserving 
some  sort  of  elementary  education,  spreading  useful  arts,  mul- 
tiplying and  storing  books,  and  keeping  before  the  eyes  of  the 
world  the  spectacle  and  example  of  a  social  backbone.  For 
eight  centuries  thenceforth  the  European  monastic  system  re- 
mained a  system  of  patches  and  fibres  of  enlightenment  in 
what  might  otherwise  have  been  a  wholly  chaotic  world  Closely 
associated  with  the  Benedictine  monasteries  were  the  schools 
that  grew  presently  into  the  mediaeval  universities.  The  schools 


534  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  the  Roman  world  had  been  altogether  swept  away  in  the 
general  social  breakdown.  There  was  a  time  when  very  few 
priests  in  Britain  or  Gaul  could  read  the  gospel  or  their  serv- 
ice books.  Only  gradually  was  teaching  restored  to  the  world. 
But  when  it  was  restored,  it  came  back  not  as  the  duty  work 
of  a  learned  slave,  but  as  the  religious  service  of  a  special  class 
of  devoted  men. 

In  the  east  also  there  was  a  breach  of  educational  continuity, 
but  there  the  cause  was  not  so -much  social  disorder  as  religious 
intolerance,  and  the  break  was  by  no  means  so  complete.  Jus- 
tinian closed  and  dispersed  the  schools  of  Athens  (529),  but 
he  did  this  very  largely  in  order  to  destroy  a  rival  to  the  new 
school  he  was  setting  up  in  Constantinople,  which  was  more 
directly  under  imperial  control.  Since  the  new  Latin  learning 
of  the  developing  western  universities  had  no  text-books  and 
literature  of  its  own,  it  had,  in  spite  of  its  strong  theological 
bias  to  the  contrary,  to  depend  very  largely  upon  the  Latin  clas- 
sics and  the  Latin  translations  of  the  Greek  literature.  It 
was  obliged  to  preserve  far  more  of  that  splendid  literature 
than  it  had  a  mind  to  do. 


XXX 

SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  (CIECA  50  B.C. 
TO  A.D.  650) 

1.  Justinian  the  Great.  §  2.  The  Sassanid  Empire  in  Per- 
sia. §  3.  The  Decay  of  Syria  under  the  Sassanids.  §  4. 
The  First  Message  from  Islam.  §  5.  Zoroaster  and  Mani. 
§  6.  Hunnish  Peoples  in  Central  Asia  and  India.  §  7. 
The  Great  Age  of  China.  §  8.  Intellectual  Fetters  of  China. 
§  9.  The  Travels  of  Yuan  Chwang. 


IN  the  preceding  two  chapters  we  have  concentrated  our 
attention  chiefly  on  the  collapse  in  the  comparatively  short 
space  of  four  centuries  of  the  political  and  social  order 
of  the  western  part  of  the  great  Roman  Empire  of  Csesar 
and  Trajan.  We  have  dwelt  upon  the  completeness  of  that 
collapse.  To  any  intelligent  and  public-spirited  mind  living 
in  the  time  and  under  the  circumstances  of  St.  Benedict  or 
Cassiodorus,  it  must  have  seemed,  indeed,  as  if  the  light  of 
civilization  was  waning  and  near  extinction.  But  with  the 
longer  views  a  study  of  universal  history  gives  us,  we  can 
view  those  centuries  of  shadow  as  a  phase,  and  prohably  a 
necessary  phase,  in  the  onward  march  of  social  and  political 
ideas  and  understandings.  And  if,  during  that  time,  a  dark 
sense  of  calamity  rested  upon  Western  Europe,  we  must  re- 
member that  over  large  portions  of  the  world  there  was  no 
retrogression. 

With  their  Western  prepossessions  European  writers  are 
much  too  prone  to  underrate  the  tenacity  of  the  Eastern  em- 
pire that  centred  upon  Constantinople.  This  empire  embodied 
a  tradition  much  more  ancient  than  that  of  Rome.  If  the 
reader  will  look  at  the  map  we  have  given  of  its  extent  in  the 
sixth  century,  and  if  he  will  reflect  that  its  official  language 
had  then  become  Greek,  he  will  realize  that  what  we  are  dealing 

535 


536  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

with  here  is  only  nominally  a  branch  of  the  Roman  Empire; 
it  is  really  the  Hellenic  Empire  of  which  Herodotus  dreamt 
and  which  Alexander  the  Great  founded.  True  it  called  itself 
Roman  and  its  people  "Romans/7  and  to  this  day  modern 
Greek  is  called  "Romaic."  True  also  that  Constantine  the 
Great  knew  no  Greek  and  that  Justinian's  accent  was  bad. 
These  superficialities  of  name  and  form  cannot  alter  the  fact 
that  the  empire  was  in  reality  Hellenic,  with  a  past  of  six 
centuries  at  the  time  of  Constantine  the  Great,  and  that  while 
the  real  Roman  Empire  crumpled  up  completely  in  four  cen- 
turies, this  Hellenic  "Roman  Empire"  held  out  for  more  than 
eleven — from  312,  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of  Constantine 
the  Great,  to  1453,  when  Constantinople  fell  to  the  Ottoman 
Turks. 

And  while  we  have  had  to  tell  of  something  like  a  complete 
social  collapse  in  the  west,  there  were  no  such  equivalent  break- 
downs in  the  east.  Towns  and  cities  flourished,  the  country- 
side was  well  cultivated,  trade  went  on.  For  many  centuries 
Constantinople  was  the  greatest  and  richest  city  in  the  world. 
We  will  not  trouble  ourselves  here  with  the  names  and  follies, 
the  crimes  and  intrigues,  of  its  tale  of  emperors.  As  with 
most  monarchs  of  great  states,  they  did  not  guide  their  em- 
pire; they  were  carried  by  it.  We  have  already  dealt  at  some 
length  with  Constantine  the  Great  (312-337),  we  have  men- 
tioned Theodosius  the  Great  (379-395),  who  for  a  little 
while  reunited  the  empire,  and  Justinian  I  (527-565).  Pres- 
ently we  shall  tell  something  of  Heraclius  (610-641). 
Justinian,  like  Constantine,  may  have  had  Slav  blood  in  his 
veins.  He  was  a  man  of  great  ambition  and  great  organizing 
power,  and  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  married  to  a  woman 
of  equal  or  greater  ability,  the  Empress  Theodora,  who  had 
in  her  youth  been  an  actress  of  doubtful  reputation.  But  his 
ambitious  attempts  to  restore  the  ancient  greatness  of  the  em- 
pire probably  overtaxed  its  resources.  As  we  have  told,  he 
reconquered  the  African  province  from  the  Vandals  and  most 
of  Italy  from  the  Goths.  He  also  recovered  the  South  of 
Spain.  He  built  the  great  and  beautiful  church  of  Sancta 
Sophia  in  Constantinople,  founded  a  university,  and  codified 
the  law.1  But  against  this  we  must  set  his  closing  of  the  schools 

1  Great  importance  is  attached  to  this  task  by  historians,  including  one 
of  the  editors  of  this  history.  We  are  told  that  the  essential  contribution 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  537 

of  Athens.  Meanwhile  a  great  plague  swept  the  world,  and 
at  his  death  this  renewed  and  expanded  empire  of  his  col- 
lapsed like  a  pricked  bladder.  The  greater  part  of  his  Italian 
conquests  was  lost  to  the  Lombards.  Italy  was  indeed  at  that 
time  almost  a  desert;  the  Lombard  historians  assert  they  came 
into  an  empty  country.  The  Avars  and  Slavs  struck  down  from 
the  Danube  country  towards  the  Adriatic,  Slav  populations  es- 
tablishing themselves  in  what  is  now  Serbia,  Croatia,  and  Dal- 
matia,  to  become  the  Yugo-Slavs  of  to-day.  Moreover,  a  great 
and  exhausting  struggle  began  with  the  Sassanid  Empire  in 
Persia. 

But  before  we  say  anything  of  this  struggle,  in  which  the 
Persians  thrice  came  near  to  taking  Constantinople,  and  which 
was  decided  by  a  great  Persian  defeat  at  Nineveh  (627),  it 
is  necessary  to  sketch  very  briefly  the  history  of  Persia  from 
the  Parthian  days. 


We  have  already  drawn  a  comparison  between  the  brief 
four  centuries  of  Roman  imperialism  and  the  obstinate  vitality 
of  the  imperialism  of  the  Euphrates-Tigris  country.  We  have 
glanced  very  transitorily  at  the  Hellenized  Bactrian  and  Seleu- 
cid  monarchies  that  flourished  in  the  eastern  half  of  Alex- 
ander's area  of  conquest  for  three  centuries,  and  told  how  the 
Parthians  came  down  into  Mesopotamia  in  the  last  century  B.C. 
We  have  described  the  battle  of  CarrhaB  and  the  end  of  Cras- 
sus.  Thereafter  for  two  centuries  and  a  half  the  Parthian 
dynasty  of  the  Arsacids  ruled  in  the  east  and  the  Roman 
in  the  west,  with  Armenia  and  Syria  between  them,  and  the 
boundaries  shifted  east  and  west  as  either  side  grew  stronger. 

of  Rome  to  the  inheritance  of  mankind  is  the  idea  of  society  founded 
on  law,  and  that  this  exploit  of  Justinian  was  the  crown  of  the  gift. 
The  writer  is  ill-equipped  to  estimate  the  peculiar  value  of  Roman  legalism 
to  mankind.  Existing  law  seems  to  him  to  be  based  upon  a  confused 
foundation  of  conventions,  arbitrary  assumptions,  and  working  fictions 
about  human  relationship,  and  to  be  a  very  impracticable  and  antiquated 
system  indeed;  he  is  persuaded  that  a  time  will  come  when  the  whole 
theory  and  practice  of  law  will  be  recast  in  the  light  of  a  well-developed 
science  of  social  psychology  in  accordance  with  a  scientific  conception  of 
human  society  as  one  developing  organization  and  in  definite  relationship 
to  a  system  of  moral  and  intellectual  education.  He  contemplates  the 
law  and  lawyers  of  to-day  with  a  temperamental  lack  of  appreciation. 
This  may  have  made  him  negligent  of  Justinian  and  unjust  to  Rome  as  a 
whole. 


538  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

We  have  marked  the  utmost  eastward  extension  of  the  Roman 
Empire  under  Trajan  (see  map  to  Chap.  XXVIII,  §3),  and 
we  have  noted  that  about  the  same  time  the  Indo-Scythians 
(Chap.  XXVIII,  §  4)  poured  down  into  India. 

In  227  occurred  a  revolution,  and  the  Arsacid  dynasty  gave 
way  to  a  more  vigorous  line,  the  Sassanid,  a  national  Persian 
line  under  Ardashir  I.  In  one  respect  the  empire  of  Ardashir 
I  presented  a  curious  parallelism  with  that  of  Constantine 
the  Great  a  hundred  years  later.  Ardashir  attempted  to  con- 
solidate it  by  insisting  upon  religious  unity,  and  adopted  as 
the  state  religion  the  old  Persian  faith  of  Zoroaster,  of  which 
we  shall  have  more  to  say  later. 

This  new  Sassanid  Empire  immediately  became  aggressive, 
and  under  Sapor  I,  the  son  and  successor  of  Ardashir,  took 
Antioch.  We  have  already  noted  how  the  Emperor  Valerian 
was  defeated  (260)  and  taken  prisoner.  But  as  Sapor  was 
retiring  from  a  victorious  march  into  Asia  Minor,  he  was 
fallen  upon  and  defeated  by  Odenathus,  the  Arab  king  of  a  great 
desert-trading  centre,  Palmyra. 

For  a  brief  time  under  Odenathus,  and  then  under  his  widow 
Zenobia,  Palmyra  was  a  considerable  state,  wedged  between  the 
two  empires.  Then  it  fell  to  the  Emperor  Aurelian,  who  car- 
ried off  Zenobia  in  chains  to  grace  his  triumph  at  Rome  (272). 

We  will  not  attempt  to  trace  the  fluctuating  fortunes  of  the 
Sassanids  during  the  next  three  centuries.  Throughout  that 
time  war  between  Persia  and  the  empire  of  Constantinople 
wasted  Asia  Minor  like  a  fever.  Christianity  spread  widely 
and  was  persecuted,  for  after  the  Christianization  of  Rome 
the  Persian  monarch  remained  the  only  god-monarch  on  earth, 
and  he  saw  in  Christianity  merely  the  propaganda  of  his 
Byzantine  rival.  Constantinople  became  the  protector  of  the 
Christians  and  Persia  of  the  Zoroastrians ;  in  a  treaty  of  422, 
the  one  empire  agreed  to  tolerate  Zoroastrianism  and  the  other 
Christianity.  In  483,  the  Christians  of  the  east  split  off  from 
the  Orthodox  church  and  became  the  Nestor ian  church;  which, 
as  we  have  already  noted,  spread  its  missionaries  far  and 
wide  throughout  Central  and  Eastern  Asia.  This  separa- 
tion from  Europe,  since  it  freed  the  Christian  bishops  of 
the  east  from  the  rule  of  the  Byzantine  patriarchs,  and 
so  lifted  from  the  Nestorian  church  the  suspicion  of  po- 
litical disloyalty,  led  to  a  complete  toleration  of  Chris- 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  539 

tianity  in  Persia.  With  Chosroes  I  (531-579)  came  a  last 
period  of  Sassanid  vigour.  He  was  the  contemporary  and 
parallel  of  Justinian.  He  reformed  taxation,  restored  the 
orthodox  Zoroastrianism,  extended  his  power  into  Southern 
Arabia  (Yemen),  which  he  rescued  from  the  rule  of  Abys- 
sinian Christians,  pushed  his  northern  frontier  into  Western 
Turkestan,  and  carried  on  a  series  of  wars  with  Justinian. 
His  reputation  as  an  enlightened  ruler  stood  so  high,  that  when 
Justinian  closed  the  schools  of  Athens,  the  last  Greek  philoso- 
phers betook  themselves  to  his  court.  They  sought  in  him  the 
philosopher  king— that  mirage  which,  as  we  have  noted,  Con- 
fucius and  Plato  had  sought  in  their  day.  The  philosophers 
found  the  atmosphere  of  orthodox  Zoroastrianism  even  less  to 
their  taste  than  orthodox  Christianity,  and  in  549  Chosroes 
had  the  kindness  to  insert  a  clause  in  an  armistice  with  Jus- 
tinian, permitting  their  return  to  Greece,  and  ensuring  that 
they  should  not  be  molested  for  their  pagan  philosophy  or  their 
transitory  pro-Persian  behaviour. 

It  is  in  connection  with  Chosroes  that  we  hear  now  of  a  new 
Hunnish  people  in  Central  Asia,  the  Turks,  who  are,  we  learn, 
first  in  alliance  with  him  and  then  with  Constantinople. 

Chosroes  II  (590-628),  the  grandson  of  Chosroes  I,  experi- 
enced extraordinary  fluctuations  of  fortune.  At  the  outset  of 
his  career  he  achieved  astonishing  successes  against  the  empire 
of  Constantinople.  Three  times  (in  608,  615,  and  627)  his 
armies  reached  Chalcedon,  which  is  over  against  Constantino- 
ple ;  he  took  Antioch,  Damascus,  and  Jerusalem  (614),  and  from 
Jerusalem  he  carried  off  a  cross,  said  to  be  the  true  cross  on 
which  Jesus  was  crucified,  to  his  capital  Ctesiphon.  (But  some 
of  this  or  some  other  true  cross  had  already  got  to  Rome.  It 
had  been  brought  from  Jerusalem,  it  was  said,  by  the  "Empress 
Helena,"  the  idealized  and  canonized  mother  of  Constantine, 
a  story  for  which  Gibbon  displayed  small  respect.1)  In  619, 
Chosroes  II  conquered  that  facile  country,  Egypt.  This  career 
of  conquest  was  at  last  arrested  by  the  Emperor  Heraclius 
(610),  who  set  about  restoring  the  ruined  military  power  of 
Constantinople.  For  some  time  Heraclius  avoided  a  great  bat- 
tle while  he  gathered  his  forces.  He  took  the  field  in  good 
earnest  in  623.  The  Persians  experienced  a  series  of  de- 
feats culminating  in  the  battle  of  Nineveh  (627)  ;  but  neither 
1  The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  chap,  xxiii. 


540  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

side  had  the  strength  for  the  complete  defeat  of  the  other. 
At  the  end  of  the  struggle  there  was  still  an  undefeated  Persian 
army  upon  the  Bosphorus,  although  there  were  victorious  By- 
zantine forces  in  Mesopotamia.  In  628  Chosroes  II  was  de- 
posed and  murdered  by  his  son.  An  indecisive  peace  was  con- 
cluded between  the  two  exhausted  empires  a  year  or  so  later, 
restoring  their  old  boundaries ;  and  the  true  cross  was  sent  back 
to  Heraclius,  who  replaced  it  in  Jerusalem  with  much  pomp 
and  ceremony. 

§  3 

So  we  give  briefly  the  leading  events  in  the  history  of  the 
Persian  as  of  the  Byzantine  Empire.  What  is  more  interesting 
for  us  and  less  easy  to  give  are  the  changes  that  went  on  in  the 
lives  of  the  general  population  of  those  great  empires  during 
that  time.  The  present  writer  can  find  little  of  a  definite  char- 
acter about  the  great  pestilences  that  we  know  swept  the  world 
in  the  second  and  sixth  centuries  of  this  era.  Certainly  they 
depleted  population,  and  probably  they  disorganized  social 
order  in  these  regions  just  as  much  as  we  know  they  did  in  the 
Roman  and  Chinese  empires. 

The  late  Sir  Mark  Sykes,  whose  untimely  death  in  Paris 
during  the  influenza  epidemic  of  1919  was  an  irreparable  loss 
to  Great  Britain,  wrote  in  The  Caliplis  Last  Heritage  a  vivid 
review  of  the  general  life  of  Nearer  Asia  during  the  period  we 
are  considering.  In  the  opening  centuries  of  the  present  era, 
he  says :  "The  direction  of  military  administration  and  imperial 
finance  became  entirely  divorced  in  men's  minds  from  practical 
government;  and  notwithstanding  the  vilest  tyranny  of  sots, 
drunkards,  tyrants,  lunatics,  savages,  and  abandoned  women, 
who  from  time  to  time  held  the  reins  of  government,  Mesopo- 
tamia, Babylonia,  and  Syria  contained  enormous  populations, 
huge  canals  and  dykes  were  kept  in  repair,  and  commerce  and 
architecture  flourished,  in  spite  of  a  perpetual  procession  of  hos- 
tile armies  and  a  continual  changing  of  the  nationality  of  the 
governor.  Each  peasant's  interest  was  centred  in  his  ruling 
town ;  each  citizen's  interest  was  in  the  progress  and  prosperity 
of  his  city ;  and  the  advent  of  an  enemy's  army  may  have  some- 
times been  looked  on  even  with  satisfaction,  if  his  victory  was 
assured  and  the  payment  of  his  contracts  a  matter  of  certainty. 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA 


541 


"A  raid  from  the  north,1  on  the  other  hand,  must  hu?e  been 
a  matter  for  dread.  Then  the  villagers  had  need  to  take 
refuge  behind  the  walls  of  the  cities,  from  whence  they  coul' 
descry  the  smoke  which  told  of  the  wreck  and  damage  caused 
by  the  nomads.  So  long,  however,  as  the  canals  were  not 
destroyed  (and,  indeed,  they  were  built  with  such  solidity  and 


caution  that  their  safety  was  assured),  no  irreparable  damage 
could  be  effected.  .  .  . 

"In  Armenia  and  Pontus  the  condition  of  life  was  quite 
otherwise.  These  were  mountain  districts,  containing  fierce 
tribes  headed  by  powerful  native  nobility  under  recognized 
ruling  kings,  while  in  the  valleys  and  plains  the  peaceful  cul- 
tivator provided  the  necessary  economic  resources.  .  .  .  Cilicia 
and  Cappadocia  were  now  thoroughly  subject  to  Greek  i^nflu- 
ence,  and  contained  numerous  wealthy  and  highly  civilized 
towns,  besides  possessing  a  considerable  merchant  marine. 
Passing  from  Cilicia  to  the  Hellespont,  the  whole  Mediter- 
ranean coast  was  crowded  with  wealthy  cities  and  Greek  col- 
1  Turanians  from  Turkestan  or  Avars  from  the  Caucasus. 


542  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

onies,  entirely  cosmopolitan  in  thought  and  speech,  with  those 
municipal  and  local  ambitions  which  seem  natural  to  the  Gre- 
cian character.  The  Grecian  Zone  extended  from  Caria  to 
the  Bosphorus,  and  followed  the  coast  as  far  as  Sinope  on  the 
Black  Sea,  where  it  gradually  faded  away. 

" Syria  was  broken  up  into  a  curious  quilt-like  pattern  of 
principalities  and  municipal  kingdoms;  beginning  with  the  al- 
most barbarous  states  of  Commagene  and  Edessa  (Urfa)  in 
the  north.  South  of  these  stood  Bambyce,  with  its  huge  tem- 
ples and  priestly  governors.  Towards  the  coast  a  dense  popu- 
lation in  villages  and  towns  clustered  around  the  independent 
cities  of  Antioch,  Apamea,  and  Emesa  (Horns)  ;  while  out  in 
the  wilderness  the  great  Semitic  merchant  city  of  Palmyra  was 
gaining  wealth  and  greatness  as  the  neutral  trading-ground  be- 
tween Parthia  and  Rome.  Between  the  Lebanon  and  Anti- 
Lebanon  we  find,  at  the  height  of  its  glory,  Heliopolis  (Baal- 
bek), the  battered  fragments  of  which  even  now  command  our 
admiration.  .  .  .  Bending  in  towards  Galilee  we  find  the  won- 
drous cities  of  Gerasa  and  Philadelphia  (Amman)  connected 
by  solid  roads  of  masonry  and  furnished  with  gigantic  aque- 
ducts. .  .  .  Syria  is  still  so  rich  in  ruins  and  remains  of  the 
period  that  it  is  not  difficult  to  picture  to  oneself  the  nature 
of  its  civilization.  The  arts  of  Greece,  imported  long  before, 
had  been  developed  into  magnificence  that  bordered  on  vulgar- 
ity. The  richness  of  ornamentation,  the  lavish  expense,  the 
flaunting  wealth,  all  tell  that  the  tastes  of  the  voluptuous  and 
artistic  Semites  were  then  as  now.  I  have  stood  in  the  colon- 
nades of  Palmyra  and  I  have  dined  in  the  Hotel  Cecil,  and, 
save  that  the  latter  is  built  of  iron,  daubed  with  sham  wood, 
sham  stucco,  sham  gold,  sham  velvet,  and  sham  stone,  the  effect 
is  identical.  In  Syria  there  were  slaves  in  sufficient  quantity 
to  make  real  buildings,  but  the  artistic  spirit  is  as  debased  as 
anything  made  by  machinery.  Over  against  the  cities  the  vil- 
lage folk  must  have  dwelt  pretty  much  as  they  do  now,  in 
houses  of  mud  and  dry  stone  wall ;  while  out  in  the  distant  pas- 
tures the  Bedouin  tended  their  flocks  in  freedom  under  the 
rule  of  the  Nabatean  kings  of  their  own  race,  or  performed 
the  office  of  guardians  and  agents  of  the  great  trading  caravans. 

"Beyond  the  herdsmen  lay  the  parching  deserts,  which  acted 
as  the  impenetrable  barrier  and  defence  of  the  Parthian  Em- 
pire behind  the  Euphrates,  where  stood  the  great  cities  of 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA 


543 


Ctesiphon,  Seleucia,  Hatra,  Nisibin,  Harran,  and  hundreds 
more  whose  very  names  are  forgotten.  These  great  townships 
subsisted  on  the  enormous  cereal  wealth  of  Mesopotamia, 
watered  as  it  then  was  by  canals,  whose  makers'  names  were 
even  then  already  lost  in  the  mists  of  antiquity.  Babylon  and 
Nineveh  had  passed  away;  the  successors  of  Persia  and  Mace- 
don  had  given  place  to  Parthia ;  but  the  people  and  the  culti- 


of  ASIAMINOR,  STRIA  &  MESOPOTAMIA 


J-'Gerasa. 
'/    ^Philadelphia. 
I/ 


vation  were  the  same  as  when  Cyrus  the  Conqueror  had  first 
subdued  the  land.  The  language  of  many  of  the  towns  was 
Greek,  and  the  cultured  citizens  of  Seleucia  might  criticize  the 
philosophies  and  tragedies  of  Athens;  but  the  millions  of  the 
agricultural  population  knew  possibly  no  more  of  these  things 
than  does  many  an  Essex  peasant  of  to-day  know  of  what 
passes  in  the  metropolis." 

Compare  with  this  the  state  of  affairs  at  the  end  of  the 
seventh  century. 
/.."Syria  was  now  an  impoverished  and  stricken  land,  and  her 


544  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

great  cities,  though  still  populated,  must  have  been  encum- 
bered with  ruins  which  the  public  funds  were  not  sufficient  to 
remove.  Damascus  and  Jerusalem  themselves  had  not  recov- 
ered from  the  effects  of  long  and  terrible  sieges;  Amman  and 
Gerash  had  declined  into  wretched  villages  under  the  sway 
and  lordship  of  the  Bedouin.  The  Hauran,  perhaps,  still 
showed  signs  of  the  prosperity  for  which  it  had  been  noted  in 
the  days  of  Trajan;  but  the  wretched  buildings  and  rude  in- 
scriptions of  this  date  all  point  to  a  sad  and  depressing  decline. 
Out  in  the  desert,  Palmyra  stood  empty  and  desolate  save  for  a 
garrison  in  the  castle.  On  the  coasts  and  in  the  Lebanon  a 
shadow  of  the  former  business  and  wealth  was  still  to  be  seen ; 
but  in  the  north,  ruin,  desolation,  and  abandonment  must  have 
been  the  common  state  of  the  country,  which  had  been  raided 
with  unfailing  regularity  for  one  hundred  years  and  had  been 
held  by  an  enemy  for  fifteen.  Agriculture  must  have  declined, 
and  the  population  notably  decreased  through  the  plagues  and 
distresses  from  which  it  had  suffered. 

"Cappadocia  had  insensibly  sunk  into  barbarism;  and  the 
great  basilicas  and  cities,  which  the  rude  countrymen  could 
neither  repair  nor  restore,  had  been  leveled  with  the  ground. 
The  Anatolian  peninsula  had  been  ploughed  and  harrowed  by 
the  Persian  armies;  the  great  cities  had  been  plundered  and 
sacked." 

§  4 

It  was  while  Heraclius  was  engaged  in  restoring  order  in 
this  already  desolated  Syria  after  the  death  of  Chosroes  II 
and  before  the  final  peace  with  Persia,  that  a  strange  message 
was  brought  to  him.  The  bearer  had  ridden  over  to  the  im- 
perial outpost  at  Bostra  in  the  wilderness  south  of  Damascus. 
The  letter  was  in  Arabic,  the  obscure  Semitic  language  of  the 
nomadic  peoples  of  the  southern  desert;  and  probably  only 
an  interpretation  reached  him — presumably  with  deprecatory 
notes  by  the  interpreter. 

It  was  an  odd,  florid  challenge  from  someone  who  called 
himself  "Muhammad,  the  Prophet  of  God."  This  Muhammad, 
it  appeared,  called  upon  Heraclius  to  acknowledge  the  one  true 
God  and  to  serve  him.  Nothing  else  was  definite  in  the 
document. 

There  is  no  record  of  the  reception  of  this  missive,  and 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  545 

presumably  it  went  unanswered.  The  emperor  probably 
shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  was  faintly  amused  at  the  incident. 

But  at  Ctesiphon  they  knew  more  about  this  Muhammad, 
lie  was  said  to  be  a  tiresome  false  prophet,  who  had  incited 
Yemen,  the  rich  province  of  Southern  Arabia,  to  rebel  against 
the  King  of  Kings.  Kavadh  was  much  occupied  with  affairs. 
He  had  deposed  and  murdered  his  father  Chosroes  II,  and  he 
was  attempting  to  reorganize  the  Persian  military  forces.  To 
him  also  came  a  message  identical  with  that  sent  to  Heraclius. 
The  thing  angered  them.  He  tore  up  the  letter,  flung  the 
fragments  at  the  envoy,  and  bade  him  begone. 

When  this  was  told  to  the  sender  far  away  in  the  squalid 
little  town  of  Medina,  he  was  very  angry.  "Even  so,  O  Lord !" 
he  cried;  "rend  Thou  his  kingdom  from  him."  (A.D.  628.) 

§  5 

But  before  we  go  on  to  tell  of  the  rise  of  Islam  in  the  world, 
it  will  be  well  to  complete  our  survey  of  the  condition  of  Asia 
in  the  dawn  of  the  seventh  century.  And  a  word  or  so  is  due 
to  religious  developments  in  the  Persian  community  during 
the  Sassanid  period. 

From  the  days  of  Cyrus  onward  Zoroastrianism  had  pre- 
vailed over  the  ancient  gods  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon.  Zoroas- 
ter (the  Greek  spelling  of  the  Iranian  "Zarathustra"),  like 
Buddha,  was  an  Aryan.  We  know  nothing  of  the  age  in  which 
he  lived;  some  authorities  make  him  as  early  as  1000  B.C., 
others  make  him  contemporary  with  Buddha  or  Confucius; 
and  as  little  do  we  know  of  his  place  of  birth  or  his  exact 
nationality.  His  teachings  are  preserved  to  us  in  the  Zend 
Avesta,  but  here,  since  they  no  longer  play  any  great  part  in 
the  world's  affairs,  we  cannot  deal  with  them  in  any  detail. 
The  opposition  of  a  good  god,  Ormuzd,  the  god  of  light,  truth, 
frankness,  and  the  sun,  and  a  bad  god,  Ahriman,  god  of  secrecy, 
cunning,  diplomacy,  darkness,  and  night,  formed  a  very  cen- 
tral part  of  his  religion.  As  we  find  it  in  history,  it  is  already 
surrounded  by  a  ceremonial  and  sacerdotal  system;  it  has  no 
images,  but  it  has  priests,  temples,  and  altars,  on  which  burn  a 
sacred  fire  and  at  which  sacrificial  ceremonies  are  performed. 
Among  other  distinctive  features  is  its  prohibition  of  either 
the  burning  or  the  burial  of  the  dead.  The  Parsees  of  India, 


546  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  last  surviving  Zoroastrians,  still  lay  their  dead  out  within 
certain  open  towers,  the  Towers  of  Silence,  to  which  the  vul- 
tures come. 

Under  the  Sassanid  kings  from  Ardashir  onward  (227), 
this  religion  was  the  official  religion;  its  head  was  the  second 
person  in  the  state  next  to  the  king,  and  the  king  in  quite  the 
ancient  fashion  was  supposed  to  be  divine  or  semi-divine  and 
upon  terms  of  peculiar  intimacy  with  Ormuzd. 

But  the  religious  fermentation  of  the  world  did  not  leave 
the  supremacy  of  Zoroastrianism  undisputed  in  the  Persian 
Empire.  Not  only  was  there  a  great  eastward  diffusion  of 
Christianity,  to  which  we  have  already  given  notice,  but  new 
sects  arose  in  Persia,  incorporating  the  novel  ideas  of  the  time. 
One  early  variant  or  branch  of  Zoroastrianism,  Mithraism,  we 
have  already  named.  It  had  spread  into  Europe  by  the  first 
century  B.C.,  after  the  eastern  campaigns  of  Pompey  the  Great. 
It  became  enormously  popular  with  the  soldiers  and  common 
people,  and,  until  the  time  of  Constantine  the  Great,  continued 
to  be  a  serious  rival  to  Christianity.  Indeed,  one  of  his  suc- 
cessors, the  Emperor  Julian  (361-363),  known  in  Christian 
history  as  "Julian  the  Apostate,"  made  a  belated  attempt  to 
substitute  it  for  the  accepted  faith.  Mithras  was  a  god  of 
light,  "proceeding"  from  Ormuzd  and  miraculously  born,  in 
much  the  same  way  that  the  third  person  in  the  Christian 
Trinity  proceeds  from  the  first.  Of  this  branch  of  the  Zoroas- 
trian  stem  we  need  say  no  more.  In  the  third  century  A.D., 
however,  another  religion,  Manicha3ism,  arose,  which  deserves 
some  notice  now. 

Mani,  the  founder  of  Manichgeism,  was  born  the  son  of  a 
good  family  of  Ecbatana,  the  old  Median  capital  (A.D.  216). 
He  was  educated  at  Ctesiphon.  His  father  was  some  sort  of 
religious  sectary,  and  he  was  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of 
religious  discussion.  There  came  to  him  that  persuasion  that 
he  at  last  had  the  complete  light,  which  is  the  moving  power 
of  all  religious  initiators.  He  was  impelled  to  proclaim  his 
doctrine.  In  A.D.  242,  at  the  accession  of  Sapor  I,  the  second 
Sassanid  monarch,  he  began  his  teaching. 

It  is  characteristic  of  the  way  in  which  men's  minds  were 
moving  in  those  days  that  his  teaching  included  a  sort  of 
theocrasia.  He  was  not,  he  declared,  proclaiming  anvthine 
new.  The  great  religious  founders  before  him  had  all  been 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  547 

right:  Moses,  Zoroaster,  Buddha,  Jesus  Christ — all  had  been 
true  prophets,  but  to  him  it  was  appointed  to  clarify  and 
crown  their  imperfect  and  confused  teaching.  This  he  did  in 
Zoroastrian  language.  He  explains  the  perplexities  and  con- 
tradictions of  life  as  a  conflict  of  light  and  darkness,  Ormuzd 
was  God  and  Ahriman  Satan.  But  how  man  was  created,  how 
he  fell  from  light  into  darkness,  how  he  is  being  disentangled 
and  redeemed  from  the  darkness,  and  of  the  part  played  by 
Jesus  in  this  strange  mixture  of  religions  we  cannot  explain 
here  even  if  we  would.  Our  interest  with  the  system  is  his- 
torical and  not  theological. 

But  of  the  utmost  historical  interest  is  the  fact  that  Mani 
not  only  went  about  Iran  preaching  these  new  and  to  him  these 
finally  satisfying  ideas  of  his,  but  into  Turkestan,  into  India, 
and  over  the  passes  into  China.  This  freedom  of  travel  is  to 
be  noted.  It  is  interesting  also  because  it  brings  before  us 
the  fact  that  Turkestan  was  no  longer  a  country  of  dangerous 
nomads,  but  a  country  in  which  cities  were  flourishing  and  men 
had  the  education  and  leisure  for  theological  argument.  The 
ideas  of  Mani  spread  eastward  and  westward  with  great 
rapidity,  and  they  were  a  most  fruitful  rootstock  of  heresies 
throughout  the  entire  Christian  world  for  nearly  a  thousand 
years. 

Somewhen  about  A.D.  270  Mani  came  back  to  Ctesiphon  and 
made  many  converts.  This  brought  him  into  conflict  with  the 
official  religion  and  the  priesthood.  In  277  the  reigning  mon- 
arch had  him  crucified  and  his  body,  for  some  unknown  reason, 
flayed,  and  there  began  a  fierce  persecution  of  his  adherents. 
Nevertheless,  Manichseism  held  its  own  in  Persia  with  N"es- 
torian  Christianity  and  orthodox  Zoroastrianism  (Mazdaism) 
for  some  centuries. 

§  6 

It  becomes  fairly  evident  that  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries 
A.D.  not  merely  Persia,  but  the  regions  that  are  now  Turkestan 
and  Afghanistan  were  far  more  advanced  in  civilization  than 
were  the  French  and  English  of  that  time.  The  obscurity  of 
the  history  of  these  regions  has  been  lifted  in  the  last  two 
decades,  and  a  very  considerable  literature  written  in  lan- 
guages of  the  Turkish  group  has  been  discovered.  These  ex- 


548  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tant  manuscripts  date  from  the  seventh  century  onward.  The 
alphabet  is  an  adaptation  of  the  Syrian,  introduced  by 
Manichsean  missionaries,  and  many  of  the  MSS.  discovered — 
parchments  have  been  found  in  windows  in  the  place  of  glass 
— are  as  beautifully  written  as  any  Benedictine  production. 
Mixed  up  with  a  very  extensive  Manichaean  literature  are 
translations  of  the  Christian  scriptures  and  Buddhistic  writ- 
ings. Much  of  this  early  Turkish  material  still  awaits 
examination. 

Everything  points  to  the  conclusion  that  those  centuries, 
which  were  centuries  of  disaster  and  retrogression  in  Europe, 
were  comparatively  an  age  of  progress  in  Middle  Asia  east- 
ward into  China. 

A  steady  westward  drift  to  the  north  of  the  Caspian  of 
Hunnish  peoples,  who  were  now  called  Tartars  and  Turks,  was 
still  going  on  in  the  sixth  century,  but  it  must  be  thought  of 
as  an  overflow  rather  than  as  a  migration  of  whole  peoples. 
The  world  from  the  Danube  to  the  Chinese  frontiers  was  still 
largely  a  nomadic  world,  with  towns  and  cities  growing  up 
upon  the  chief  trade  routes.  We  need  not  tell  in  any  detail 
here  of  the  constant  clash  of  the  Turkish  peoples  of  Western 
Turkestan  with  the  Persians  to  the  south  of  them,  the  age- 
long bickering  of  Turanian  and  Iranian.  We  hear  nothing 
of  any  great  northward  marches  of  the  Persians,  but  there 
were  great  and  memorable  raids  to  the  south  both  by  the 
Turanians  to  the  east  and  the  Alans  to  the  west  of  the  Caspian 
before  the  big  series  of  movements  of  the  third  and  fourth  cen- 
tury westward  that  carried  the  Alans  and  Huns  into  the  heart 
of  Europe.  There  was  a  nomadic  drift  to  the  east  of  Persia 
and  southward  through  Afghanistan  towards  India,  as  well  as 
this  drift  to  the  north-west.  These  streams  of  nomads  flowed 
by  Persia  on  either  side.  We  have  already  mentioned  the 
Yue-Chi  (Chap,  xxviii,  §  4),  who  finally  descended  into  India 
as  the  In  do-Scythians  in  the  second  century.  A  backward, 
still  nomadic  section  of  these  Yue-Chi  remained  in  Central 
Asia,  and  became  numerous  upon  the  steppes  of  Turkestan,  as 
the  Ephthalites  or  White  Huns.  After  being  a  nuisance  and 
a  danger  to  the  Persians  for  three  centuries,  they  finally  began 
raiding  into  India  in  the  footsteps  of  their  kinsmen  about  the 
year  470,  about  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  the  death  of  Attila. 
They  did  not  migrate  into  India;  they  went  to  and  fro,  looting 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA 


549 


in  India  and  returning  with  their  loot  to  their  own  country, 
just  as  later  the  Huns  established  themselves  in  the  great  plain 
of  the  Danube  and  raided  all  Europe. 

The  history  of  India  during  these  seven  centuries  we  are 
now  reviewing  is  punctuated  by  these  two  invasions  of  the  Yue- 
Chi,  the  Indo-Scythians  who,  as  we  have  said,  wiped  out  the 
last  traces  of  Hellenic  rule,  and  the  Ephthalites.  Before  the 
former  of  these,  the  Indo-Scythians,  a  wave  of  uprooted  popu- 
lations, the  Sakas,  had  been  pushed;  so  that  altogether  India 
experienced  three  waves  of  barbaric  invasion,  about  A.D.  100, 
about  A.D.  120,  and  about  A.D.  470.  But  only  the  second  of 
these  invasions  was  a  permanent  conquest  and  settlement.  The 
Indo  -  Scythians 
made  their  head- 
quarters on  the 
North-west  Fron- 
tier and  set  up  a 
dynasty,  the 
Kushan  dynasty, 
which  ruled  most 
of  North  India  as 
far  east  as  Benares. 

The  chief  among 
these  Kushan  mon- 
archs  was  Kanishka  (date  unknown),  who  added  to  North  India 
Kashgar,  Yarkand,  and  Khotan.  Like  Asoka,  he  was  a  great 
and  vigorous  promoter  of  Buddhism,  and  these  conquests,  this 
great  empire  of  the  North-west  Frontier,  must  have  brought 
India  into  close  and  frequent  relations  with  China  and  Tibet. 

We  will  not  trouble  to  record  here  the  divisions  and  coales- 
cences of  power  in  India,  nor  the  dynasties  that  followed  the 
Kushans,  because  these  things  signify  very  little  to  us  from 
our  present  point  of  view.  Sometimes  all  India  was  a  patch- 
work quilt  of  states;  sometimes  such  empires  as  that  of  the 
Guptas  prevailed  over  great  areas.  These  things  made  little 
difference  in  the  ideas,  the  religion,  and  the  ordinary  way  of 
life  of  the  Indian  peoples.  Brahminism  held  its  own  against 
Buddhism,  and  the  two  religions  prospered  side  by  side.  The 
mass  of  the  population  was  living  then  very  much  as  it  lives 
to-day;  dressing,  cultivating,  and  building  its  houses  in  much 
the  same  fashion. 


J.CK. 


Tin 


Coin,..,* 


550  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  irruption  of  the  Ephthalites  is  memorable  not  so  much 
because  of  its  permanent  effects  as  because  of  the  atrocities 
perpetrated  by  the  invaders.  These  Ephthalites  very  closely 
resembled  the  Huns  of  Attila  in  their  barbarism ;  they  merely 
raided,  they  produced  no  such  dynasty  as  the  Kushan  mon- 
archy ;  and  their  chiefs  retained  their  headquarters  in  Western 
Turkestan.  Mihiragula,  their  most  capable  leader,  has  been 
called  the  Attila  of  India.  One  of  his  favourite  amusements, 
we  are  told,  was  the  expensive  one  of  rolling  elephants  down 
precipitous  places  in  order  to  watch  their  sufferings.  His 
abominations  roused  his  Indian  tributary  princes  to  revolt,  and 
he  was  overthrown  (528).  But  the  final  ending  of  the 
Ephthalite  raids  into  India  was  effected  not.  by  Indians,  but 
by  the  destruction  of  their  central  establishment  of  the  Ephtha- 
lites on  the  Oxus  (565)  by  the  growing  power  of  the  Turks, 
working  in  alliance  with  the  Persians.  After  this  break-up, 
the  Ephthalites  dissolved  very  rapidly  and  completely  into  the 
surrounding  populations,  much  as  the  European  Huns  did  after 
the  death  of  Attila  a  hundred  years  -earlier.  Nomads  without 
central  grazing  lands  must  disperse;  nothing  else  is  possible. 
Some  of  the  chief  Rajput  clans  of  to-day  in  Rajputana  in 
North  India  are  descended,  it  is  said,  from  these  White  Huns. 

§7 

These  seven  centuries  which  saw  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  the  emperors  in  Rome  and  the  complete  breakdown  and 
recasting  of  the  social,  economic,  political,  and  religious  life 
of  Western  Europe,  saw  also  very  profound  changes  in  the 
Chinese  world.  It  is  too  commonly  assumed  by  both  Chinese, 
Japanese,  and  European  historians,  that  the  Han  dynasty, 
under  which  we  find  China  at  the  beginning  of  this  period,  and 
the  Tang  dynasty,  with  which  it.  closed,  were  analogous  as- 
cendancies controlling  a  practically  similar  empire,  and  that 
the  four  centuries  of  division  that  elapsed  between  the  end  of 
the  Han  dynasty  (220)  and  the  beginning  of  the  Tang  period 
(619)  were  centuries  of  disturbance  rather  than  essential 
change.  The  divisions  of  China  are  supposed  to  be  merely 
political  and  territorial;  and,  deceived  by  the  fact  that  at  the 
close  as  at  the  commencement  of  these  four  centuries,  China 
occupied  much  the  same  wide  extent  of  Asia,  and  was  still 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  551 

recognizably  China,  still  with  a  common  culture,  a  common 
script,  and  a  common  body  of  ideas,  they  ignore  the  very  funda- 
mental breaking  down  and  reconstruction  that  went  on,  and 
the  many  parallelisms  to  the  European  experience  that  China 
displayed. 

It  is  true  that  the  social  collapse  was  never  so  complete  in 
the  Chinese  as  in  the  European  world.  There  remained, 
throughout  the  whole  period  considerable  areas  in  which  the 
elaboration  of  the  arts  of  life  could  go  on.  There  was  no  such 
complete  deterioration  in  cleanliness,  decoration,  artistic  and 
literary  production  as  we  have  to  record  in  the  West,  and 
no  such  abandonment  of  any  search  for  grace  and  pleasure. 
We  note,  for  instance,  that  "tea"  appeared  in  the  world,  and 
its  use  spread  throughout  China.  China  began  to  drink  tea 
in  the  sixth  century  A.D.  And  there  were  Chinese  poets  to 
write  delightfully  about  the  effects  of  the  first  cup  and  the 
second  cup  and  the  third  cup,  and  so  on.  China  continued  to 
produce  beautiful  paintings  long  after  the  fall  of  the  Han  rule. 
In  the  second,  third,  and  fourth  centuries  some  of  the  most 
lovely  landscapes  were  painted  that  have  ever  been  done  by 
men.  A  considerable  production  of  beautiful  vases  and  carv- 
ings also  continued.  Fine  building  and  decoration  went  on. 
Printing  from  wood  blocks  began  about  the  same  time  as  tea- 
drinking,  and  with  the  seventh  century  came  a  remarkable 
revival  of  poetry. 

Certain  differences  between  the  great  empires  of  the  East 
and  West  were  all  in  favour  of  the  stability  of  the  former. 
China  had  no  general  coinage.  The  cash  and  credit  system 
of  the  Western  world,  at  once  efficient  and  dangerous,  had  not 
strained  her  economic  life.  Not  that,  the  monetary  idea  was 
unknown.  For  small  transactions  the  various  provinces  were 
using  perforated  zinc  and  brass  "cash,"  but  for  larger  there 
was  nothing  but  stamped  ingots  of  silver.  This  great  empire 
was  still  carrying  on  most  of  its  business  on  a  basis  of  barter  like 
that  which  prevailed  in  Babylon  in  the  days  of  the  Aramean 
merchants.  And  so  it  continued  to  do  to  the  dawn  of  the 
twentieth  century. 

We  have  seen  how  under  the  Roman  republic  economic  and 
social  order  was  destroyed  by  the  too  great  fluidity  of  property 
that  money  brought  about.  Money  became  abstract,  and  lost 
touch  with  the  real  values  it  was  supposed  to  represent.  In- 


552 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


dividuals  and  communities  got  preposterously  into  debt,  and 
the  world  was  saddled  by  a  class  of  rich  men  who  were  creditors, 
men  who  did  not  handle  and  administer  any  real  wealth,  but 
who  had  the  power  to  call  up  money.  No  such  development  of 
"finance"  occurred  in  China.  Wealth  in  China  remained  real 
and  visible.  And  China  had  no  need  for  any  Licinian  law, 
nor  for  a  Tiberius  Gracchus.  The  idea  of  property  in  China 
did  not  extend  far  beyond  tangible  things.  There  was  no 


2K*  CHINESE  EMPIRE  uiufer  &* 


"labour"  slavery,  no  gang  servitude.1  The  occupier  and  user 
of  the  land  was  in  most  instances  practically  the  owner  of  it, 
subject  to  a  land  tax.  There  was  a  certain  amount  of  small 
scale  landlordism,  but  no  great  estates.  Landless  men  worked 
for  wages  paid  mostly  in  kind — as  they  were  in  ancient 
Babylon. 

These  things  made  for  stability  and  the  geographical  form 
of  China  for  unity;  nevertheless,  the  vigour  of  the  Han 
dynasty  declined,  and  when  at  last  at  the  close  of  the  second 
century  A.D.  the  world  catastrophe  of  the  great  pestilence  struck 

*  There  were  girl  slaves  who  did  domestic  work  and  women  who  were 
bought  and  sold. — J.  J.  L.  D. 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  553 

the  system,  the  same  pestilence  that  inaugurated  a  century  of 
confusion  in  the  Roman  empire,  the  dynasty  fell  like  a  rotten 
tree  before  a  gale.  And  the  same  tendency  to  break  up  into  a 
number  of  warring  states,  and  the  same  eruption  of  barbaric 
rulers,  was  displayed  in  East  and  West  alike.  In  China,  as 
in  the  Western  empire,  faith  had  decayed.  Mr.  Fu  ascribes 
much  of  the  political  nervelessness  of  China  in  this  period  to 
Epicureanism,  arising,  he  thinks,  out  of  the  sceptical  indi- 
vidualism of  Lao  Tse.  This  phase  of  division  is  known  as  the 
"Three  Kingdom  Period."  The  fourth  century  saw  a  dynasty 
of  more  or  less  civilized  Huns  established  as  rulers  in  the  prov- 
ince of  Shen-si.  This  Hunnish  kingdom  included  not  merely 
the  north  of  China,  but.  great  areas  of  Siberia;  its  dynasty 
absorbed  the  Chinese  civilization,  and  its  influence  carried  Chi- 
nese trade  and  knowledge  to  the  Arctic  circle.  Mr.  Fu  com- 
pares this  Siberian  monarchy  to  the  empire  of  Charlemagne 
in  Europe;  it  was  the  barbarian  becoming  "Chinized"  as 
Charlemagne  was  a  barbarian  becoming  Romanized.  Out  of  a 
fusion  of  these  Siberian  with  native  north  Chinese  elements 
arose  the  Suy  dynasty,  which  conquered  the  south.  This  Suy 
dynasty  marks  the  beginning  of  a  renascence  of  China.  Under 
a  Suy  monarch  the  Lu-chu  isles  were  annexed  to  China,  and 
there  was  a  phase  of  great  literary  activity.  The  number  of 
volumes  at  this  time  in  the  imperial  library  was  increased, 
we  are  told,  to  54,000.  The  dawn  of  the  seventh  century  saw 
the  beginning  of  the  great  Tang  dynasty,  which  was  to  endure 
for  three  centuries. 

The  renascence  of  China  that  began  with  Suy  and  culmi- 
nated in  Tang  was,  Mr.  Fu  insists,  a  real  new  birth.  "The 
spirit/7  he  writes,  "was  a  new  one ;  it  marked  the  Tang  civiliza- 
tion with  entirely  distinctive  features.  Four  main  factors  had 
been  brought  together  and  fused:  (1)  Chinese  liberal  culture; 
(2)  Chinese  classicism;  (3)  Indian  Buddhism;  and  (4) 
Northern  bravery.  A  new  China  had  come  into  being.  The 
provincial  system,  the  central  administration,  and  the  military 
organization  of  the  Tang  dynasty  were  quite  different  from 
those  of  their  predecessors.  The  arts  had  been  much  influenced 
and  revivified  by  Indian  and  Central  Asiatic  influences.  The 
literature  was  no  mere  continuation  of  the  old ;  it.  was  a  new  pro- 
duction. The  religious  and  philosophical  schools  of  Buddhism 
were  fresh  features.  It  was  a  period  of  substantial  change. 


554  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

"It  may  be  interesting  to  compare  this  making  of  China  with 
the  fate  of  the  Roman  Empire  in  her  later  days.  As  the 
Roman  world  was  divided  into  the  eastern  and  western  halves, 
so  was  the  Chinese  world  into  the  southern  and  the  northern. 
The  barbarians  in  the  case  of  Rome  and  in  the  case  of  China 
made  similar  invasions.  They  established  dominions  of  a 
similar  sort.  Charlemagne's  empire  corresponded  to  that  of 
the  Siberian  dynasty  (Later  Wei),  the  temporary  recovery  of 
the  Western  empire  by  Justinian  corresponded  to  the  tem- 
porary recovery  of  the  north  by  Liu  Yu.  The  Byzantine  line 
corresponded  to  the  southern  dynasties.  But  from  this  point 
the  two  worlds  diverged.  China  recovered  her  unity ;  Europe 
has  still  to  do  so." 

The  dominions  of  the  emperor,  Tai-tsung  (627),  the  second 
Tang  monarch,  extended  southward  into  Annam  and  westward 
to  the  Caspian  sea.  His  southern  frontier  in  that  direction 
marched  with  that  of  Persia.  His  northern  ran  along  the 
Altai  from  the  Kirghis  steppe,  north  of  the  desert  of  Gobi. 
But  it  did  not  include  Corea,  which  was  conquered  and  made 
tributary  by  his  son.  This  Tang  dynasty  civilized  and  in- 
corporated into  the  Chinese  race  the  whole  of  the  southward 
population,  and  just  as  the  Chinese  of  the  north  call  them- 
selves the  "men  of  Han,"  so  the  Chinese  of  the  south  call  them- 
selves the  "men  of  Tang."  The  law  was  codified,  the  literary 
examination  system  was  revised,  and  a  complete  and  accurate 
edition  of  all  the  Chinese  classics  was  produced.  To  the  court 
of  Tai-tsung  came  an  embassy  from  Byzantium,  and,  what  is 
more  significant,  from  Persia  came  a  company  of  Nestorian 
missionaries  (635).  These  latter  Tai-tsung  received  with 
great  respect;  he  heard  them  state  the  chief  articles  of  their 
creed,  and  ordered  the  Christian  scriptures  to  be  translated 
into  Chinese  for  his  further  examination.  In  638  he  an- 
nounced that  he  found  the  new  religion  entirely  satisfactory, 
and  that  it  might  be  preached  within  the  empire.  He  also 
allowed  the  building  of  a  church  and  the  foundation  of  a 
monastery. 

A  still  more  remarkable  embassy  also  came  to  the  court  of 
Tai-tsung  in  the  year  628,  five  years  earlier  than  the  Nes- 
torians.  This  was  a  party  of  Arabs,  who  came  by  sea  to  Can- 
ton in  a  trading  vessel  from  Yanbu,  the  port  of  Medina  in 
Arabia.  (Incidentally  it  is  interesting  to  know  that  there 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  555 

were  such  vessels  engaged  in  an  east  and  west  trade  at  this 
time.)  These  Arabs  had  been  sent  by  that  Muhammad  we 
have  already  mentioned,  who  styled  himself  "The  Prophet  of 
God/'  and  the  message  they  brought  to  Tai-tsung  was  probably 
identical  with  the  summons  which  was  sent  in  the  same  year 
to  the  Byzantine  emperor  Heraclius  and  to  Kavadh  in  Ctesi- 
phon.  But  the  Chinese  monarch  neither  neglected  the  message 
as  Heraclius  did,  nor  insulted  the  envoys  after  the  fashion  of 
the  parricide  Kavadh.  He  received  them  well,  expressed  great 
interest  in  their  theological  views,  and  assisted  them,  it  is  said, 
to  build  a  mosque  for  the  Arab  traders  in  Canton — a  mosque 
which  survives  to  this  day.  It  is  one  of  the  oldest  mosques 
in  the  world. 

§  8 

The  urbanity,  the  culture,  and  the  power  of  China  under 
the  early  Tang  rulers  are  in  so  vivid  a  contrast  with  the  decay, 
disorder,  and  divisions  of  the  Western  world,  as  at  once  to 
raise  some  of  the  most  interesting  questions  in  the  history  of 
civilization.  Why  did  not  China  keep  this  great  lead  she  had 
won  by  her  rapid  return  to  unity  and  order  ?  Why  does  she 
not  to  this  day  dominate  the  world  culturally  and  politically? 

For  a  long  time  she  certainly  did  keep  ahead.  It  is  only  a 
thousand  years  later,  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
with  the  discovery  of  America,  the  spread  of  printed  .books  and 
education  in  the  West,  and  the  dawn  of  modern  scientific  dis- 
covery, that  we  can  say  with  confidence  that  the  Western  world 
began  to  pull  ahead  of  China.  Under  the  Tang  rule,  her 
greatest  period,  and  then  again  under  the  artistic  but  rather 
decadent  Sung  dynasty  (960-1279),  and  again  during  the 
period  of  the  cultured  Mings  (1358-1644),  China  presented  a 
spectacle  of  prosperity,  happiness,  and  artistic  activity  far  in 
front  of  any  contemporary  state.  And  seeing  that  she  achieved 
so  much,  why  did  she  not  achieve  more?  Chinese  shipping  was 
upon  the  seas,  and  there  was  a  considerable  overseas  trade 
during  that  time.1  Why  did  the  Chinese  never  discover  Amer- 

*It  is  doubtful  if  the  Chinese  knew  of  the  mariner's  compass.  Hirth, 
Ancient  History  of  China,  p.  126  sqq.,  comes  to  the  conclusion,  after  a 
careful  examination  of  all  data,  that,  although  it  is  probable  something 
like  the  compass  was  known  in  high  antiquity,  the  knowledge  of  it  was 
lost  for  a  long  time  afterwards,  until,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  it  reappears 
as  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  geomancers  (people  who  selected  favour- 


556  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ica  or  Australia?  There  was  much  isolated  observation,  in- 
genuity, and  invention.  The  Chinese  knew  of  gunpowder  in 
the  sixth  century,  they  used  coal  and  gas  heating  centuries 
before  these  things  were  used  in  Europe ;  their  bridge-building, 
their  hydraulic  engineering  was  admirable;  the  knowledge  of 
materials  shown  in  their  enamel  and  lacquer  ware  is  very  great. 
Why  did  they  never  organize  the  system  of  record  and  co-opera- 
tion in  inquiry  that  has  given  the  world  modern  science  ?  And 
why,  in  spite  of  their  general  training  in  good  manners  and  self- 
restraint,  did  intellectual  education  never  soak  down  into  the 
general  mass  of  the  population  ?  Why  are  the  masses' of  China 
to-day,  and  why  have  they  always  been,  in  spite  of  'an  excep- 
tionally high  level  of  natural  intelligence,  illiterate? 

It  is  customary  to  meet  such  questions  with  rather  platitudi- 
nous answers.  We  are  told  that  the  Chinaman  is  the  most 
conservative  of  human  beings,  that,  in  contrast  with  the  Euro- 
pean races,  his  mind  is  twisted  round  towards  the  past,  that  he 
is  the  willing  slave  of  etiquette  and  precedent  to  a  degree  in- 
conceivable to  Western  minds.  He  is  represented  as  having  a 
mentality  so  distinct  that,  one  might  almost  expect  to  find  a 
difference  in  brain  structure  to  explain  it.  The  appeals  of 
Confucius  to  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients  are  always  quoted  to 
clinch  this  suggestion. 

If,  however,  we  examine  this  generalization  more  closely,  it 
dissolves  into  thin  air.  The  superior  intellectual  initiative,  the 
liberal  enterprise,  the  experimental  disposition  that  is  supposed 
to  characterize  the  Western  mind,  is  manifest  in  the  history  of 
that  mind  only  during  certain  phases  and  under  exceptional 
circumstances.  For  the  rest,  the  Western  world  displays  itself 
as  traditional  and  conservative  as  China.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  Chinese  mind  has,  under  conditions  of  stimulus, 
shown  itself  quite  as  inventive  and  versatile  as  the  European, 
and  the  very  kindred  Japanese  mind  even  more  so.  For,  take  the 
case  of  the  Greeks,  the  whole  swing  of  their  mental  vigour  falls 
into  the  period  between  the  sixth  century  B.C.  and  the  decay 

able  sites  for  graves,  etc.).  The  earliest  unmistakable  mention  of  its 
use  as  a  guide  to  mariners  occurs  in  a  work  of  the  12th  century  and 
refers  to  its  use  on  foreign  ships  trading  between  China  and  Sumatra. 
Hirth  is  rather  inclined  to  assume  that  Arab  travellers  may  have  seen 
it  in  the  hands  of  Chinese  geomancers  and  applied  its  use  to  navigation, 
so  that  it  was  afterwards  brought  back  by  them  to  China  as  the  "mariner's 
compass." — J.  J.  L.  D. 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA        .  557 

of  the  Alexandrian  Museum  under  the  later  Ptolemies  in  the 
second  century  B.C.  There  were  Greeks  before  that  time  and 
Greeks  since,  but  a  history  of  a  thousand  years  of  the  Byzantine 
Empire  showed  the  Hellenic  world  at  least  as  intellectually 
stagnant  as  China.  Then  we  have  already  drawn  attention  to 
the  comparative  sterility  of  the  Italian  mind  during  the  Roman 
period  and  its  abundant  fertility  since  the  Renaissance  of  learn- 
ing. The  English  mind  again  had  a  phase  of  brightness  in 
the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries,  and  it  did  not  shine  again 
until  the  fifteenth.  Again,  the  mind  of  the  Arabs,  as  we  shall 
presently  tell,  blazed  out  like  a  star  for  half  a  dozen  generations 
after  the  appearance  of  Islam,  having  never  achieved  anything 
of  importance  before  or  since.  On  the  other  hand,  there  was 
always  a  great  deal  of  scattered  inventiveness  in  China,  and 
the  progress  of  Chinese  art  witnesses  to  new  movements  and 
vigorous  innovations.  We  exaggerate  the  reverence  of  the  Chi- 
nese for  their  fathers;  parricide  was  a  far  commoner  crime 
among  the  Chinese  emperors  than  it  was  even  among  the  rulers 
of  Persia.  Moreover,  there  have  been  several  liberalizing  move- 
ments in  China,  several  recorded  struggles  against  the  "ancient 
ways." 

It  has  already  been  suggested  that  phases  of  real  intellectual 
progress  in  any  community  seem  to  be  connected  with  the  exist- 
ence of  a  detached  class  of  men,  sufficiently  free  not  to  be  obliged 
to  toil  or  worry  exhaustively  about  mundane  needs,  and  not  rich 
and  powerful  enough  to  be  tempted  into  extravagances  of  lust, 
display,  or  cruelty.  They  must  have  a  sense  of  security,  but 
not  a  conceit  of  superiority.  This  class,  we  have  further  in- 
sinuated, must  be  able  to  talk  freely  and  communicate  easily. 
It  must  not  be  watched  for  heresy  or  persecuted  for  any 
ideas  it  may  express.  Such  a  happy  state  of  affairs  certainly 
prevailed  in  Greece  during  its  best  days.  A  class  of  intelli- 
gent, free  gentlefolk  is  indeed  evident  in  history  whenever 
there  is  a  record  of  bold  philosophy  or  effective  scientific 
advances. 

In  the  days  of  T'ang  and  Sung  and  Ming  there  must  have 
been  an  abundance  of  pleasantly  circumstanced  people  in  China 
of  just  the  class  that  supplied  most  of  the  young  men  of  the 
Academy  at  Athens,  or  the  bright  intelligences  of  Renaissance 
Italy,  or  the  members  of  the  London  Royal  Society,  that  mother 
society  of  modern  science;  and  yet  China  did  not  produce  in 


558  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

these  periods  of  opportunity  any  such  large  beginnings  of  re- 
corded and  analyzed  fact 

If  we  reject  the  idea  that  there  is  some  profound  racial  dif- 
ference between  China  and  the  West  which  makes  the  Chinese 
by  nature  conservative  and  the  West  by  nature  progressive,  then 
we  are  forced  to  look  for  the  operating  cause  of  this  difference 
in  progressiveness  in  some  other  direction.  Many  people  are 
disposed  to  find  that  operating  cause  which  has,  in  spite  of 
her  original  advantages,  retarded  China  so  greatly  during  the 
last  four  or  five  centuries,  in  the  imprisonment  of  the  Chinese 
mind  in  a  script  and  in  an  idiom  of  thought  so  elaborate  and 
so  difficult  that  the  mental  energy  of  the  country  has  been  largely 
consumed  in  acquiring  it.  This  view  deserves  examination. 

We  have  already  given  an  account  in  Chap,  xvi  of  the 
peculiarities  of  Chinese  writing  and  of  the  Chinese  language. 
The  Japanese  writing  is  derived  from  the  Chinese,  and  consists 
of  a  more  rapidly  written  system  of  forms.  A  great  number 
of  these  forms  are  ideograms  taken  over  from  the  Chinese  and 
used  exactly  as  the  Chinese  ideograms  are  used,  but  also  a 
number  of  signs  are  used  to  express  syllables ;  there  is  a  Japa- 
nese syllabary  after  the  fashion  of  the  Sumerian  syllabary 
we  have  described  in  Chap.  xvi.  The  Japanese  writing  re- 
mains a  clumsy  system,  as  clumsy  as  cuneiform,  though  not  so 
clumsy  as  Chinese;  and  there  has  been  a  movement  in  Japan 
to  adopt  a  Western  alphabet.  Korea  long  ago  went  a  step 
farther  and  developed  a  true  alphabet  from  the  same  Chinese 
origins.  With  these  exceptions  all  the  great  writing  systems 
now  in  use  in  the  world  are  based  on  the  Mediterranean  alpha- 
bets, and  are  beyond  comparison  more  easily  learnt  arid  mastered 
than  the  Chinese.  This  means  that  while  other  peoples  learn 
merely  a  comparatively  simple  and  straightforward  method  of 
setting  down  the  language  with  which  they  are  familiar,  the 
Chinaman  has  to  master  a  great  multitude  of  complex  word 
signs  and  word  groups.  He  must  not  simply  learn  the  signs, 
but  the  established  grouping  of  those  signs  to  represent  various 
meanings.  He  must  familiarize  himself,  therefore,  with  a 
number  of  exemplary  classical  works.  Consequently  in  China, 
while  you  will  find  great  numbers  of  people  who  know  the 
significance  of  certain  frequent  and  familiar  characters,  you 
discover  only  a  few  whose  knowledge  is  sufficiently  extensive 
to  grasp  the  meaning  of  a  newspaper  paragraph,  and  still  fewer 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  559 

who  can  read  any  subtlety  of  intention  or  fine  shades  of  mean- 
ing. In  a  lesser  degree  this  is  true  also  of  Japan.  No  doubt 
European  readers,  especially  of  such  word-rich  languages  as 
English  or  Russian,  vary  greatly  among  themselves  in  regard 
to  the  extent  of  books  they  can  understand  and  how  far  they 
understand  them ;  their  power  varies  according  to  their  vocabu- 
laries; but  the  corresponding  levels  of  understanding  among 
the  Chinese  represent  a  far  greater  expenditure  of  time  and 
labour  upon  their  attainment.  A  mandarin's  education  in 
China  is,  mainly,  learning  to  read. 

And  it  may  be  that  the  consequent  preoccupation  of  the  edu- 
cated class  during  its  most  susceptible  years  upon  the  Chinese 
classics  gave  it  a  bias  in  favour  of  this  traditional  learning  upon 
which  it  had  spent  so  much  time  and  energy.  Few  men  who 
have  toiled  to  build  up  any  system  of  knowledge  in  their  minds 
will  willingly  scrap  it  in  favour  of  something  strange  and  new ; 
this  disposition  is  as  characteristic  of  the  West  as  of  the  East ; 
it  is  shown  as  markedly  by  the  scholars  of  the  British  and 
American  universities  as  by  any  Chinese  mandarins,  and  the 
British  at  the  present  time,  in  spite  of  the  great  and  manifest 
advantages  in  popular  education  and  national  propaganda  the 
change  would  give  them,  refuse  to  make  any  move  from  their 
present  barbaric  orthography  towards  a  phonetic  alphabet  and 
spelling.  The  peculiarities  of  the  Chinese  script,  and  the  edu- 
cational system  arising  out  of  that  script,  must  have  acted  age 
after  age  as  an  invincible  filter  that  favoured  the  plastic  and 
scholarly  mind  as  against  the  restive  and  orginating  type,  and 
kept  the  latter  out  of  positions  of  influence  and  authority.  There 
is  much  that  is  plausible  in  this  explanation. 

There  have  been  several  attempts  to  simplify  the  Chinese 
writing  and  to  adopt  an  alphabetical  system.  In  the  early  days 
of  Buddhism  in  China,  when  there  was  a  considerable  amount 
of  translation  from  Sanscrit,  Indian  influences  came  near  to 
achieving  this  end ;  two  Chinese  alphabets  were  indeed  in- 
vented, and  each  had  some  little  use.  But  what  hindered  the 
general  adoption  of  these,  and  what  stands  in  the  way  of  any 
phonetic  system  of  Chinese  writing  to-day,  is  this,  that  while 
the  literary  script  and  phraseology  is  the  same  from  one  end 
of  China  to  the  other,  the  spoken  language  of  the  common 
people,  both  in  pronunciation  and  in  its  familiar  idioms,  varies 
so  widely  that  men  from  one  province  may  be  incomprehensible 


560  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  men  from  another.  There  is,  however,  a  "standard  Chinese," 
a  rather  bookish  spoken  idiom,  which  is  generally  understood 
by  educated  people;  and  it  is  upon  the  possibility  of  applying 
an  alphabetical  system  of  writing  to  this  standard  Chinese  that 
the  hopes  of  modern  educational  reformers  in  China  are  based 
at  the  present  time.  For  fresh  attempts  are  now  being  made  to 
release  the  Chinese  mind  from  this  ancient  entanglement. 

A  Chinese  alphabet  has  been  formed ;  it  is  taught  in  the  com- 
mon schools,  and  newspapers  and  pamphlets  are  issued  in  it. 
And  the  rigid  examination  system  that  killed  all  intellectual 
initiatives  has  been  destroyed.  There  has  also  been  a  consider- 
able simplification  in  the  direction  of  introducing  spoken  idioms 
into  written  Chinese.  This  makes  for  ease  and  lucidity;  even 
in  the  old  characters  such  Chinese  is  more  easily  read  and  writ- 
ten, and  it  is  far  better  adapted  than  classical  Chinese  to  the 
needs  of  modern  literary  expression. 

The  very  success  and  early  prosperity  and  general  content- 
ment of  China  in  the  past  must  have  worked  to  justify  in  that 
land  all  the  natural  self-complacency  and  conservatism  of  man- 
kind. No  animal  will  change  when  its  conditions  are  "good 
enough"  for  present  survival.  And  in  this  matter  man  is  still 
an  animal.  Until  the  nineteenth  century,  for  more  than  two 
thousand  years,  there  was  little  in  the  history  of  China  that 
could  cause  any  serious  doubts  in  the  mind  of  a  Chinaman  of 
the  general  superiority  of  his  own  civilization  to  that  of  the  rest 
of  the  world,  and  there  was  no  reason  apparent  therefore  for  any 
alteration.  China  produced  a  profusion  of  beautiful  art,  some 
delightful  poetry,  astonishing  cookery,  and  thousands  of  mil- 
lions of  glowingly  pleasant  lives  generation  after  generation. 
Her  ships  followed  her  marvellous  inland  waterways,  and  put 
to  sea  but  rarely,  and  then  only  to  India  or  Borneo  as  their 
utmost  adventure.1  (Until  the  sixteenth  century  we  must  re- 
member European  seamen  never  sailed  out  into  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.  The  Norse  discovery  of  America,  the  Phrenician  cir- 
cumnavigation of  Africa,  were  exceptional  feats.)  And  these 
things  were  attained  without  any  such  general  boredom,  servi- 
tude, indignity,  and  misery  as  underlay  the  rule  of  the  rich 
in  the  Roman  Empire.  There  was  much  poverty,  much  dis- 
content, but  it  was  not  massed  poverty,  it  was  not  a  necessary 

1  But  Mr.  Vogan  tells  me  that  rock  carvings  of  a  distinctively  Chinese 
character  have  been  found  in  New  Zealand  and  New  Caledonia. 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  561 

popular  discontent.  For  a  thousand  years  the  Chinese  system, 
though  it  creaked  and  swayed  at  times,  seemed  proof  against 
decay.  Dynastic  changes  there  were,  rebellions,  phases  of  dis- 
order, famines,  pestilences;  two  great  invasions  that  set  foreign 
dynasties  upon  the  throne  of  the  Son  of  Heaven,  but  no  such 
shock  as  to  revolutionize  the  order  of  the  daily  round.  The 
emperors  and  dynasties  might  come  and  go ;  the  mandarins,  the 
examinations,  the  classics,  and  the  traditions  and  habitual  life 
remained.  China's  civilization  had  already  reached  its  culmina- 
tion in  the  seventh  century  A.D.,  its  crowning  period  was  the 
Tang  period;  and  though  it  continued  to  spread  slowly  and 
steadily  into  Annam,  into  Cambodia,  into  Siam,  into  Tibet, 
into  Nepal,  Korea,  Mongolia,  and  Manchuria,  there  is  hence- 
forth little  more  than  such  geographical  progress  to  record  of 
it  in  this  history  for  a  thousand  years. 

§9 

In  the  year  629,  the  year  after  the  arrival  of  Muhammad's 
envoys  at  Canton  and  thirty  odd  years  after  the  landing  of 
Pope  Gregory's  missionaries  in  England,  a  certain  learned  and 
devout  Buddhist  named  Yuan  Chwang  started  out  from  Sian-fu, 
Tai-tsung's  capital,  upon  a  great  journey  to  India.  He  was 
away  sixteen  years,  he  returned  in  645,  and  he  wrote  an  ac- 
count of  his  travels  which  is  treasured  as  a  Chinese  classic. 
One  or  two  points  about  his  experiences  are  to  be  noted  here 
because  they  contribute  to  our  general  review  of  the  state  of 
the  world  in  the  seventh  century  A.D. 

Yuan  Chwang  was  as  eager  for  marvels  and  as  credulous  as 
Herodotus,  and  without  the  latter  writer's  fine  sense  of  history ; 
he  could  never  pass  a  monument  or  ruin  without  learning  some 
fabulous  story  about  it ;  Chinese  ideas  of  the  dignity  of  literature 
perhaps  prevented  him  from  telling  us  much  detail  of  how  he 
travelled,  who  were  his  attendants,  how  he  was  lodged,  or  what 
he  ate  and  how  he  paid  his  expenses — details  precious  to  the 
historian;  nevertheless,  he  gives  us  a  series  of  illuminating 
flashes  upon  China,  Central  Asia,  and  India  in  the  period  now 
under  consideration. 

His  journey  was  an  enormous  one.  He  went  and  came  back 
by  way  of  the  Pamirs.  He  went  by  the  northern  route,  crossing 
the  desert  of  Gobi,  passing  along  the  southern  slopes  of  the 


562 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Thien  Shan,  skirting  the  great  deep  blue  lake  of  Issik  Kul,  and 
so  to  Tashkend  and  Samarkand,  and  then  more  or  less  in  the 
footsteps  of  Alexander  the  Great  southward  to  the  Khyber  Pass 
and  Peshawar.  He  returned  by  the  southern  route,  crossing 
the  Pamirs  from  Afghanistan  to  Kashgar,  and  so  along  the 
line  of  retreat  the  Yue-Chi  had  followed  in  the  reverse  direc- 
tion seven  centuries  before,  and  by  Yrarkand,  along  the  slopes  of 
the  Kuen  Lun  to  rejoin  his  former  route  near  the  desert,  end  of 


the  Great  Wall.  Each  route  involved  some  hard  mountaineer- 
ing. His  journeyings  in  India  are  untraceable;  he  was  there 
fourteen  years,  and  he  went  all  over  the  peninsula  from  Nepal 
to  Ceylon. 

At  that  time  there  was  an  imperial  edict  forbidding  foreign 
travel,  so  that  Yuan  Chwang  started  from  Sian-fu  like  an  es- 
caping criminal.  There  was  a  pursuit  to  prevent  him  carrying 
out  his  project.  How  he  bought  a  lean  red-coloured  horse  that 
knew  the  desert  paths  from  a  strange  grey-beard,. how  he  dodged 
a  frontier  guard-house  with  the  help  of  a  "foreign  person"  who 
made  him  a  bridge  of  brushwood  lower  down  the  river,  how  he 
crossed  the  desert  guided  by  the  bones  of  men  and  cattle,  how 
he  saw  a  mirage,  and  how  twice  he  narrowly  escaped  being  shot 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  563 

by  arrows  when  he  was  getting  water  near  the  watch-towers  on 
the  desert  track,  the  reader  will  find  in  the  Life.  He  lost  his 
way  in  the  desert  of  Gobi,  and  for  four  nights  and  five  days 
he  had  no  water;  when  he  was  in  the  mountains  among  the 
glaciers,  twelve  of  his  party  were  frozen  to  death.  All  this 
is  in  the  Life;  he  tells  little  of  it  in  his  own  account  of  his 
travels. 

He  shows  us  the  Turks,  this  new  development  of  the  Hun 
tradition,  in  possession  not  only  of  what  is  now  Turkestan,  but 
all  along  the  northern  route.  He  mentions  many  cities  and 
considerable  cultivation.  He  is  entertained  by  various  rulers, 
allies  of  or  more  or  less  nominally  tributaries  to  China,  and 
among  others  by  the  Khan  of  the  Turks,  a  magnificent  person 
in  green  satin,  with  his  long  hair  tied  with  silk. 

"The  gold  embroidery  of  this  grand  tent  shone  with  a  daz- 
zling splendour ;  the  ministers  of  the  presence  in  attendance  sat 
on  mats  in  long  rows  on  either  side  all  dressed  in  magnificent 
brocade  robes,  while  the  rest  of  the  retinue  on  duty  stood  be- 
hind. You  saw  that  although  it  was  a  case  of  a  frontier  ruler, 
yet  there  was  an  air  of  distinction  and  elegance.  The  Khan 
came  out  from  his  tent  about  thirty  paces  to  meet  Yuan  Chwang, 
who,  after  a  courteous  greeting-,  entered  the  tent.  .  .  .  After  a 
short  interval  envoys  from  China  and  Kao-chang  were  admitted 
and  presented  their  despatches  and  credentials,  which  the  Khan 
perused.  He  was  much  elated,  and  caused  the  envoys  to  be 
seated;  then  he  ordered  wine  and  music  for  himself  and  them 
and  grape-syrup  for  the  pilgrim.  Hereupon  all  pledged  each 
other,  and  the  filling  and  draining  of  the  winecups  made  a  din 
and  bustle,  while  the  mingled  music  of  various  instruments  rose 
loud:  although  the  airs  were  the  popular  strains  of  foreigners, 
yet  they  pleased  the  senses  and  exhilarated  the  mental  faculties. 
After  a  little,  piles  of  roasted  beef  and  mutton  were  served  for 
the  others,  and  lawful  food,  such  as  cakes,  milk,  candy,  honey, 
and  grapes,  for  the  pilgrim.  After  the  entertainment,  grape- 
syrup  was  again  served  and  the  Khan  invited  Yuan  Chwang  to 
improve  the  occasion,  whereupon  the  pilgrim  expounded  the 
doctrines  of  the  'ten  virtues,7  compassion  for  animal  life,  and 
the  paramitas  and  emancipation.  The  Khan,  raising  his  hands, 
bowed,  and  gladly  believed  and  accepted  the  teaching." 

Yuan  Chwang's  account  of  Samarkand  is  of  a  large  and  pros- 
perous city,  "a  great  commercial  entrepot,  the  country  about  it 


564  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

very  fertile,  abounding  in  trees  and  flowers  and  yielding  many 
fine  horses.  Its  inhabitants  were  skilful  craftsmen,  smart  and 
energetic."  At  that  time  we  must  remember  there  was  hardly 
such  a  thing  as  a  town  in  Anglo-Saxon  England. 

As  his  narrative  approached  his  experiences  in  India,  how- 
ever, the  pious  and  learned  pilgrim  in  Yuan  Chwang  got  the 
better  of  the  traveller,  and  the  book  becomes  congested  with 
monstrous  stories  of  incredible  miracles.  Nevertheless,  we  get 
an  impression  of  houses,  clothing,  and  the  like,  closely  re- 
sembling those  of  the  India  of  to-day.  Then,  as  now,  the 
kaleidoscopic  variety  of  an  Indian  crowd  contrasted  with  the 
blue  uniformity  of  the  multitude  in  China.  In  the  time  of 
Buddha  it  is  doubtful  if  there  were  reading  and  writing  in 
India;  now  reading  and  writing  were  quite  common  accom- 
plishments. Yuan  Chwang  gives  an  interesting  account  of  a 
great  Buddhist  university  at  Nalanda,  where  ruins  have  quite 
recently  been  discovered  and  excavated.  Nalanda  and  Taxilla 
seem  to  have  been  considerable  educational  centres  as  early  as 
the  opening  of  the  schools  of  Athens.  The  caste  system  Yuan 
Chwang  found  fully  established  in  spite  of  Buddha,  and  the 
Brahmins  were  now  altogether  in  the  ascendant.  He  names 
the  four  main  castes  we  have  mentioned  in  Chap,  xviii.,  §  4 
(<?.#.),  but  his  account  of  their  functions  is  rather  different.  The 
Sudras,  he  says,  were  the  tillers  of  the  soil.  Indian  writers  say 
that  their  function  was  to  wait  upon  the  three  "twice  born" 
castes  above  them. 

But,  as  we  have  already  intimated,  Yuan  Chwang7  s  account 
of  Indian  realities  is  swamped  by  his  accumulation  of  legends 
and  pious  inventions.  For  these  he  had  come,  and  in  these  he 
rejoiced.  The  rest,  as  we  shall  see,  was  a  task  -that  had  been 
set  him.  The  faith  of  Buddha  which  in  the  days  of  Asoka, 
and  even  so  late  as  Kaniska,  was  still  pure  enough  to  be  a 
noble  inspiration,  we  now  discover  absolutely  lost  in  a  wilder- 
ness of  preposterous  rubbish,  a  philosophy  of  endless  Buddhas, 
tales  of  manifestations  and  marvels  like  a  Christmas  pantomime, 
immaculate  conceptions  by  six-tusked  elephants,  charitable 
princes  giving  themselves  up  to  be  eaten  by  starving  tigresses, 
temples  built  over  a  sacred  nail-paring,  and  the  like.  We  can- 
not give  such  stories  here;  if  the  reader  likes  that  sort  of  thing, 
he  must  go  to  the  publications  of  the  Royal  Asiatic  Society  or 
the  India  Society,  where  he  will  find  a  delirium  of  such  imagi- 


SEVEN  CENTURIES  IN  ASIA  565 

nations.  And  in  competition  with  this  Buddhism,  intellectually 
undermined  as  it  now  was  and  smothered  in  gilded  decoration, 
Brahminism  was  everywhere  gaining  ground  again,  as  Yuan 
Chwang  notes  with  regret. 

Side  by  side  with  these  evidences  of  a  vast  intellectual  decay 
in  India  we  may  note  the  repeated  appearance  in  Yuan 
Chwang' s  narrative  of  ruined  and  deserted  cities.  Much  of 
the  country  was  still  suffering  from  the  ravages  of  the  Ephtha- 
lites  and  the  consequent  disorders.  Again  and  again  we  find 
such  passages  as  this:  "He  went  north-east  through  a  great 
forest,  the  road  heing  a  narrow,  dangerous  path,  with  wild 
buffalo  and  wild  elephants,  and  robbers  and  hunters  always  in 
wait  to  kill  travellers,  and  emerging  from  the  forest  he  reached 
the  country  of  Kou-shih-na-ka-lo  (Kusinagara).  The  city  walls 
were  in  ruins,  and  the  towns  and  villages  were  deserted.  The 
brick  foundations  of  the  'old  city'  (that  is,  the  city  which  had 
been  the  capital)  were  above  ten  li  in  circuit;  there  were  very 
few  inhabitants,  the  interior  of  the  city  being  a  wild  waste." 
This  ruin  was,  however,  by  no  means  universal;  there  is  at 
least  as  much  mention  of  crowded  cities  and  villages  and  busy 
cultivations. 

The  Life  tells  of  many  hardships  upon  the  return  journey: 
he  fell  among  robbers;  the  great  elephant  that  was  carrying 
the  bulk  of  his  possessions  was  drowned ;  he  had  much  difficulty 
in  getting  fresh  transport.  Here  we  cannot  deal  with  these 
adventures. 

The  return  of  Yuan  Chwang  to  Sian-fu,  the  Chinese  capital, 
was,  we  gather,  a  triumph.  Advance  couriers  must  have  told 
of  his  coming.  There  was  a  public  holiday;  the  streets  were 
decorated  by  gay  banners  and  made  glad  with  music.  He  was 
escorted  into  the  city  with  great  pomp  and  ceremony.  Twenty 
horses  were  needed  to  carry  the  spoils  of  his  travels;  he  had 
brought  with  him  hundreds  of  Buddhist  books  written  in  San- 
scrit,-and  made  of  trimmed  leaves  of  palm  and  birch  bark  strung 
together  in  layers;  he  had  many  images  great  and  small  of 
Buddha,  in  gold,  silver,  crystal,  and  sandal-wood ;  he  had  holy 
pictures,  and  no  fewer  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  well  authen- 
ticated true  relics  of  Buddha.  Yuan  Chwang  was  presented  to 
the  emperor,  who  treated  him  as  a  personal  friend,  took  him 
into  the  palace,  and  questioned  him  day  by  day  about  the  won- 
ders of  these  strange  lands  in  which  he  had  stayed  so  long. 


566  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

But  while  the  emperor  asked  ahout  India,  the  pilgrim  was 
disposed  only  to  talk  ahout  Buddhism. 

The  subsequent  history  of  Yuan  Chwang  contains  two  inci- 
dents that  throw  light  upon  the  mental  workings  of  this  great 
monarch,  Tai-tsung,  who  was  probably  quite  as  much  a  Moslem 
as  he  was  a  Christian  or  a  Buddhist.  The  trouble  about  all 
religious  specialists  is  that  they  know  too  much  about  their 
own  religion  and  how  it  differs  from  others;  the  advantage,  or 
disadvantage,  of  such  creative  statesmen  as  Tai-tsung  and  Con- 
stantine  the  Great  is  that  they  know  comparatively  little  of 
such  matters.  Evidently  the  fundamental  good  of  all  these 
religions  seemed  to  Tai-tsung  to  be  much  the  same  fundamental 
good.  So  it  was  natural  to  him  to  propose  that  Yuan  Chwang 
should  now  give  up  the  religious  life  and  come  into  his  foreign 
office,  a  proposal  that  Yuan  Chwang  would  not  entertain  for  a 
moment.  ,  The  emperor  then  insisted  at  least  upon  a  written 
account  of  the  travels,  and  so  got  this  classic  we  treasure.  And 
finally  Tai-tsung  proposed  to  this  highly  saturated  Buddhist 
that  he  should  now  use  his  knowledge  of  Sanscrit  in  translating 
the  works  of  the  great  Chinese  teacher,  Lao  Tse,  so  as  to  make 
them  available  for  Indian  readers.  It  seemed,  no  doubt,  to 
the  emperor  a  fair  return  and  a  useful  service  to  the  funda- 
mental good  that  lies  beneath  all  religions.  On  the  whole,  he 
thought  Lao  Tse  might  very  well  rank  with  or  even  a  little 
above  Buddha,  and  therefore  that  if  his  work  was  put  before 
the  Brahmins,  they  would  receive  it  gladly.  In  much  the  same 
spirit  Constantine  the  Great  had  done  his  utmost  to  make  Arius 
and  Athanasius  settle  down  amicably  together.  But  naturally 
enough  this  suggestion  was  repulsed  by  Yuan  Chwang.  He 
retired  to  a  monastery  and  spent  the  rest  of  his  years  translating 
as  much  as  he  could  of  the  Buddhist  literature  he  had  brought 
with  him  into  elegant  Chinese  writing. 


XXXI 

MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM 

1.  Arabia  Before  Muhammad.  §  2.  Life  of  Muhammad  to 
the  Hegira.  §  3.  Muhammad  Becomes  a  Fighting  Prophet. 
§  4.  The  Teachings  of  Islam.  §  5.  The  Caliphs  Abu  Bekr 
and  Omar.  §  6.  The  Great  Days  of  the  Omayyads.  §  7. 
The  Decay  of  Islam  Under  the  Abbasids.  §  8.  The  Intel- 
lectual Life  of  Arab  Islam. 


WE  have  already  described  how  in  A.D.  628  the  courts  of 
Heraclius,  of  Kavadh,  and  of  Tai-tsung  were  visited 
by  Arab  envoys  sent  from  a  certain  Muhammad,  "The 
Prophet  of  God,"  at  the  small  trading  town  of  Medina  in  Arabia. 
We  must  tell  now  who  this  prophet  was  who  had  arisen  among 
the  nomads  and  traders  of  the  Arabian  desert. 

From  time  immemorial  Arabia,  except  for  the  fertile  strip 
of  the  Yemen  to  the  south,  had  been  a  land  of  nomads,  the 
headquarters  and  land  of  origin  of  the  Semitic  peoples.  From 
Arabia  at  various  times  waves  of  these  nomads  had  drifted 
north,  east,  and  west  into  the  early  civilizations  of  Egypt,  the 
Mediterranean  coast,  and  Mesopotamia.  We  have  noted  in 
this  history  how  the  Sumerians  were  swamped  and  overcome 
by  such  Semitic  waves,  how  the  Semitic  Phoenicians  and 
Canaanites  established  themselves  along  the  eastern  shores  of 
the  Mediterranean,  how  the  Babylonians  and  Assyrians  were 
settled  Semitic  peoples,  how  the  Hyksos  conquered  Egypt,  how 
the  Arameans  established  themselves  in  Syria  with  Damascus 
as  their  capital,  and  how  the  Hebrews  partially  conquered  their 
"Promised  Land."  At  some  unknown  date  the  Chaldeans 
drifted  in  from  Eastern  Arabia  and  settled  in  the  old  southern 
Sumerian  lands.  With  each  invasion  first  this  and  then  that 
section  of  the  Semitic  peoples  comes  into  history.  But  each  of 

567 


568  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

such  swarmings  still  leaves  a  tribal  nucleus  behind  to  supply 
fresh  invasions  in  the  future. 

The  history  of  the  more  highly  organized  empires  of  the 
horse  and  iron  period,  the  empires  of  roads  and  writing,  shows 
Arabia  thrust  like  a  wedge  between  Egypt,  Palestine,  and  the 
Euphrates-Tigris  country,  and  still  a  reservoir  of  nomadic  tribes 
who  raid  and  trade  and  exact  tribute  for  the  immunity  and 
protection  of  caravans.  There  are  temporary  and  flimsy  subju- 
gations. Egypt,  Persia,  Macedonia,  Rome,  Syria,  Constanti- 
nople, and  again  Persia  claim  some  unreal  suzerainty  in  turn 
over  Arabia,  profess  some  unsubstantial  protection.  Under 
Trajan  there  was  a  Roman  province  of  "Arabia,"  which  in- 
cluded the  then  fertile  region  of  the  Hauran  and  extended  as 
far  as  Petra.  Now  and  then  some  Arab  chief  and  his  trading 
city  rises  to  temporary  splendour.  Such  was  that  Odenathus 
of  Palmyra,  whose  brief  career  we  have  noted  and  another 
such  transitory  desert  city  whose  ruins  still  astonish  the  traveller 
was  Baalbek. 

After  the  destruction  of  Palmyra,  the  desert  Arabs  began 
to  be  spoken  of  in  the  Roman  and  Persian  records  as  Saracens. 

In  the  time  of  Chosroes  II,  Persia  claimed  a  certain  ascend- 
ancy over  Arabia,  arid  maintained  officials  and  tax  collectors  in 
the  Yemen.  Before  that  time  the  Yemen  had  been  under  the 
rule  of  the  Abyssinian  Christians  for  some  years,  and  before 
that  for  seven  centuries  it  had  had  native  princes  professing, 
be  it  noted,  the  Jewish  faith. 

Until  the  opening  of  the  seventh  century  A.D.  there  were  no 
signs  of  any  unwonted  or  dangerous  energy  in  the  Arabian 
deserts.  The  life  of  the  country  was  going  on  as  it  had  gone 
on  for  long  generations.  Wherever  there  were  fertile  patches, 
wherever,  that  is,  there  was  a  spring  or  a  well,  a  scanty  agri- 
cultural population  subsisted,  living  in  walled  towns  because 
of  the  Bedouin  who  wandered  with  their  sheep,  cattle,  and 
horses  over  the  desert.  Upon  the  main  caravan  routes  the  chief 
towns  rose  to  a  certain  second-rate  prosperity,  and  foremost 
among  them  were  Medina  and  Mecca.  In  the  beginning  of  the 
seventh  century  Medina  was  a  town  of  about  15,000  inhabitants 
all  told ;  Mecca  may  have  had  twenty  or  twenty  five  thousand. 
Medina  was  a  comparatively  well-watered  town,  and  possessed 
abundant  date  groves;  its  inhabitants  were  Yemenites,  from 
the  fertile  land  to  the  south.  Mecca  was  a  town  of  a  different 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM 


569 


character,  built  about  a  spring  of  water  with  a  bitter  taste,  and 
inhabited  by  recently  settled  Bedouin. 

Mecca  was  not  merely  nor  primarily  a  trading  centre ;  it  was 
a  place  of  pilgrimage.  Among  the  Arab  tribes  there  had  long 
existed  a  sort  of  Amphictyony  centering  upon  Mecca  and  cer- 
tain other  sanctuaries;  there  were  months  of  truce  to  war  and 


blood  feuds,  and  customs  of  protection  and  hospitality  for  .the 
pilgrim.  In  addition  there  had  grown  up  an  Olympic  element 
in  these  gatherings ;  the  Arabs  were  discovering  possibilities  of 
beauty  in  their  language,  and  there  were  recitations  of  war 
poetry  and  love  songs.  The  sheiks  of  the  tribes,  under  a  "king 
of  the  poets,"  sat  in  judgment  and  awarded  prizes;  the  prize 
sonars  were  sung  through  all  Arabia. 

The  Kaaba,  the  sanctuary  at  Mecca,  was  of  very  ancient  date. 
Tt  was  a  small  square  temple  of  black  stones,  which  had  for  its 
corner-stone  a  meteorite.  This  meteorite  was  regarded  as  a 


570  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

god,  and  all  the  little  tribal  gods  of  Arabia  were  under  his  pro- 
tection. The  permanent  inhabitants  of  Mecca  were  a  tribe  of 
Bedouin  who  had  seized  this  temple  and  constituted  themselves 
its  guardians.  To  them  there  came  in  the  months  of  truce  a 
great  incourse  of  people,  who  marched  about  the  Kaaba  cere- 
monially, bowed  themselves,  and  kissed  the  stone,  and  also  en- 
gaged in  trade  and  poetical  recitations.  The  Meccans  profited 
much  from  these  visitors. 

All  of  this  is  very  reminiscent  of  the  religious  and  political 
state  of  affairs  in  Greece  fourteen  centuries  earlier.  But  the 
paganism  of  these  more  primitive  Arabs  was  already  being 
assailed  from  several  directions.  There  had  been  a  great 
proselytizing  of  Arabs  during  the  period  of  the  Maccabaans  and 
Herods  in  Judea;  and,  as  we  have  already  noted,  the  Yemen 
had  been  in  succession  under  the  rule  of  Jews  (Arab  proselytes 
to  Judaism,  i.e.),  Christians,  and  Zoroastrians.  It  is  evident 
that  there  must  have  been  plenty  of  religious  discussion  during 
the  pilgrimage  fairs  at  Mecca  and  the  like  centres.  Naturally 
enough  Mecca  was  a  stronghold  of  the  old  pagan  cult  which 
gave  it  its  importance  and  prosperity;  Medina,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  Jewish  proclivities,  and  there  were  Jewish  settle- 
ments near  by.  It  was  inevitable  that  Mecca  and  Medina  should 
be  in  a  state  of  rivalry  and  bickering  feud. 

§  2 

It  was  in  Mecca  about  the  year  A.D.  570  that  Muhammad, 
the  founder  of  Islam,  was  born.  He  was  born  in  considerable 
poverty,  and  even  by  the  standards  of  the  desert  he  was  unedu- 
cated; it,  is  doubtful  if  he  ever  learnt  to  write.  He  was  for 
some  years  a  shepherd's  boy;  then  he  became  the  servant  of  a 
certain  Kadi j a,  the  widow  of  a  rich  merchant.  Probably  he 
had  to  look  after  her  camels  or  help  in  her  trading  operations ; 
and  he  is  said  to  have  travelled  with  caravans  t®  the  Yemen  and 
to  Syria.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  been  a  very  useful  trader, 
but  he  had  the  good  fortune  to  find  favour  in  the  lady's  eyes, 
and  she  married  him,  to  the  great  annoyance  of  her  family.  He 
was  then  only  twenty-five  years  old.  It  is  uncertain  if  his  wife 
was  much  older,  though  tradition  declares  she  was  forty.  After 
the  marriage  he  probably  made  no  more  long  journeys.  There 
were  several  children,  one  of  whom  was  named  Abd  Manif — 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  571 

that  is  to  say,  the  servant  of  the  Meccan  god  Manif,  which  dem- 
onstrates that  at  that  time  Muhammad  had  made  no  religious 
discoveries. 

Until  he  was  forty  he  did  indeed  live  a  particularly  undis- 
tinguished life  in  Mecca,  as  the  husband  of  a  prosperous  wife. 
There  may  be  some  ground  for  the  supposition  that  he  became 
partner  in  a  business  in  agricultural  produce.  To  anyone  visit- 
ing Mecca  about  A.D.  600  he  would  probably  have  seemed  some- 
thing of  a  loafer,  a  rather  shy,  good-looking  individual,  sitting 
about  and  listening  to  talk,  a  poor  poet,  and  an  altogether 
second-rate  man. 

About  his  internal  life  we  can  only  speculate.  Imaginative 
writers  have  supposed  that  he  had  great  spiritual  struggles,  that 
he  went  out  into  the  desert  in  agonies  of  doubt  and  divine  desire. 
"In  the  silence  of  the  desert  night,  in  the  bright  heat  of  noon- 
tide desert  day,  he,  as  do  all  men,  had  known  and  felt  him- 
self alone  yet  not  in  solitude,  for  the  desert  is  of  God,  and  in 
the  desert  no  man  may  deny  Him."  l  Maybe  that  was  so,  but 
there  is  no  evidence  of  any  such  desert  trips.  Yet  he  was  cer- 
tainly thinking  deeply  of  the  things  about  him.  Possibly  he 
had  seen  Christian  churches  in  Syria ;  almost  certainly  he 
knew  much  of  the  Jews  and  their  religion,  and  he  heard  their 
scorn  for  this  black  stone  of  the  Kaaba  that  ruled  over  the  three 
hundred  odd  tribal  gods  of  Arabia.  He  saw  the  pilgrimage 
crowds,  and  noted  the  threads  of  insincerity  and  superstition 
in  the  paganism  of  the  town.  It  oppressed  his  mind.  The 
Jews  had  perhaps  converted  him  to  a  belief  in  the  One  True 
God,  without  his  knowing  what  had  happened  to  him. 

At  last  he  could  keep  these  feelings  to  himself  no  longer. 
When  he  was  forty  he  began  to  talk  about  the  reality  of  God,  at 
first  apparently  only  to  his  wife  and  a  few  intimates.  He 
produced  certain  verses,  which  he  declared  had  been  revealed 
to  him  by  an  angel.  They  involved  an  assertion  of  the  unity 
of  God  and  some  acceptable  generalizations  about  righteousness. 
He  also  insisted  upon  a  future  life,  the  fear  of  hell  for  the 
negligent  and  evil,  and  the  reservation  of  paradise  for  the  be- 
liever in  the  One  God.  Except  for  his  claim  to  be  a  new 
prophet,  there  does  not  seem  to  have  been  anything  very  new 
about  these  doctrines  at  the  time,  but  this  was  seditious  teach- 
ing for  Mecca,  which  partly  subsisted  upon  its  polytheistic  cult, 

'Mark  Sykes. 


572  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  which  was  therefore  holding  on  to  idols  when  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  was  giving  them  up.  Like  Mani,  Muhammad 
claimed  that  the  prophets  before  him,  and  especially  Jesus 
and  Abraham,  had  been  divine  teachers,  but  that  he  crowned 
and  completed  their  teaching.  Buddhism,  however,  he  did  not 
name,  probably  because  he  had  never  heard  of  Buddha.  Desert 
Arabia  was  in  a  theological  backwater. 

For  some  years  the  new  religion  was  the  secret  of  a  small 
group  of  simple  people,  Kadi j  a,  the  Prophet's  wife,  Ali,  an 
adopted  son,  Zeid,  a  slave,  and  Abu  Bekr,  a  friend  and  admirer. 
For  some  years  it  was  an  obscure  sect  in  a  few  households  of 
Mecca,  a  mere  scowl  and  muttering  at  idolatry,  so  obscure  and 
unimportant  that  the  leading  men  of  the  town  did  -not  trouble 
about  it  in  the  least.  Then  it  gathered  strength.  Muhammad 
began  to  preach  more  openly,  to  teach  the  doctrine  of  a  future 
life,  and  to  threaten  idolaters  and  unbelievers  with  hell  fire. 
He  seems  to  have  preached  with  considerable  effect.  It  ap- 
peared to  many  that  he  was  aiming  at  a  sort  of  dictatorship  in 
Mecca,  and  drawing  many  susceptible  and  discontented  people 
to  his  side ;  and  an  attempt  was  made  to  discourage  and  suppress 
the  new  movement. 

Mecca  was  a  place  of  pilgrimage  and  a  sanctuary ;  no  blood 
could  be  shed  within  its  walls ;  nevertheless,  things  were  made 
extremely  disagreeable  for  the  followers  of  the  new  teacher. 
Boycott  and  confiscation  were  used  against  them.  Some  were 
driven  to  take  refuge  in  Christian  Abyssinia.  But  the  Prophet 
himself  went  unscathed  because  he  was  well  connected,  and 
his  opponents  did  not  want  to  begin  a  blood  feud.  We  cannot 
follow  the  fluctuations  of  the  struggle  here,  but  it  is  necessary 
to  note  one  perplexing  incident  in  the  new  Prophet's  career, 
which,  says  Sir  Mark  Sykes,  "proves  him  to  have  been  an  Arab 
of  the  Arabs."  After  all  his  insistence  upon  the  oneness  of 
God,  he  wavered.  He  came  into  the  courtyard  of  the  Kaaba, 
and  declared  that  the  gods  and  goddesses  of  Mecca  might, 
after  all,  be  real,  might  be  a  species  of  saints  with  a  power  of 
intercession. 

His  recantation  was  received  with  enthusiasm,  but  he  had 
no  sooner  made  it  than  he  repented,  and  his  repentance  shows 
that  he  had  indeed  the  fear  of  God  in  him.  His  lapse  from 
honesty  proves  him  honest.  He  did  all  he  could  to  repair  the 
evil  he  had  done.  He  said  that  the  devil  had  possessed  his 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  573 

tongue,  and  denounced  idolatry  again  with  renewed  vigour. 
The  struggle  against  the  antiquated  deities,  after  a  brief  interval 
of  peace,  was  renewed  again  more  grimly,  and  with  no  further 
hope  of  reconciliation. 

For  a  time  the  old  interests  had  the  upper  hand.  At  the 
end  of  ten  years  of  prophesying,  Muhammad  found  himself  a 
man  of  fifty,  and  altogether  unsuccessful  in  Mecca.  Kadi j a,  his 
first  wife,  was  dead,  and  several  of  his  chief  supporters  had  also 
recently  died.  He  sought  a  refuge  at  the  neighbouring  town  of 
Tayf,  but  Tayf  drove  him  out  with  stones  and  abuse.  Then, 
when  the  world  looked  darkest  to  him,  opportunity  opened  be- 
fore him.  He  found  he  had  been  weighed  and  approved  in  an 
unexpected  quarter.  The  city  of  Medina  was  much  torn  by 
internal  dissension,  and  many  of  its  people,  during  the  time  of 
pilgrimage  to  Mecca,  had  been  attracted  by  Muhammad's  teach- 
ing. Probably  the  numerous  Jews  in  Medina  had  shaken  the 
ancient  idolatry  of  the  people.  An  invitation  was  sent  to  him 
to  come  and  rule  in  the  name  of  his  God  in  Medina. 

He  did  not  go  at  once.  He  parleyed  for  two  years,  sending  a 
disciple  to  preach  in  Medina  and  destroy  the  idols  there.  Then 
he  began  sending  such  followers  as  he  had  in  Mecca  to  Medina 
to  await  his  coming  there;  he  did  not  want  to  trust  himself  to 
unknown  adherents  in  a  strange  city.  This  exodus  of  the  faith- 
ful continued,  until  at  last  only  he  and  Abu  Bekr  remained. 

In  spite  of  the  character  of  Mecca  as  a  sanctuary,  he  was 
very  nearly  murdered  there.  The  elders  of  the  town  evidently 
knew  of  what  was  going  on  in  Medina,  and  they  realized  the 
danger  to  them  if  this  seditious  prophet  presently  found  him- 
self master  of  a  town  on  their  main  caravan  route  to  Syria. 
Custom  must  bow  to  imperative  necessity,  they  thought;  and 
they  decided  that,  blood  feud  or  no  blood  feud,  Muhammad 
must  die.  They  arranged  that  he  should  be  murdered  in  his 
bed;  and  in  order  to  share  the  guilt  of  this  breach  of  sanctuary 
they  appointed  a  committee  to  do  this,  representing  every 
family  in  the  city  except  Muhammad's  own.  But  Muhammad 
had  already  prepared  his  flight;  and  when  in  the  night  they 
rushed  into  his  room,  they  found  Ali,  his  adopted  son,  sleeping, 
or  feigning  sleep,  on  his  bed. 

The  flight  (the  Hegira)  was  an  adventurous  one,  the  pursuit 
being  pressed  hard.  Expert  desert  trackers  sought  for  the 
spoor  to  the  north  of  the  town,  but  Muhammad  and  Abu  Bekr 


574  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

had  gone  south  to  certain  caves  where  camels  and  provisions 
were  hidden,  and  thence  he  made  a  great  detour  to  Medina. 
There  he  and  his  faithful  companion  arrived,  and  were  received 
with  great  enthusiasm  on  September  20,  622.  It  was  the  end 
of  his  probation  and  the  beginning  of  his  power. 

§o 
3 

Until  the  Hegira,  until  he  was  fifty-one,  the  character  of 
the  founder  of  Islam  is  a  matter  of  speculation  and  dispute. 
Thereafter  he  is  in  the  light.  We  discover  a  man  of  great 
imaginative  power  but  tortuous  in  the  Arab  fashion,  and  with 
most  of  the  virtues  and  defects  of  the  Bedouin. 

The  opening  of  his  reign  was  "very  Bedouin."  The  rule  of 
the  One  God  of  all  the  earth,  as  it  was  interpreted  by  Muham- 
mad, began  with  a  series  of  raids — which  for  more  than  a  year 
were  invariably  unsuccessful — upon  the  caravans  of  Mecca. 
Then  came  a  grave  scandal,  the  breaking  of  the  ancient  cus- 
tomary truce  of  the  Arab  Amphictyony  in  the  sacred  month  of 
Rahab.  A  party  of  Moslems,  in  this  season  of  profound  peace, 
treacherously  attacked  a  small  caravan  and  killed  a  man.  It 
was  their  only  success,  and  they  did  it  by  the  order  of  the 
Prophet. 

Presently  came  a  battle.  A  force  of  seven  hundred  men  had 
come  out  from  Mecca  to  convoy  home  another  caravan,  and  they 
encountered  a  large  raiding  party  of  three  hundred.  •  There 
was  a  fight,  the  battle  of  Badr,  and  the  Meccans  got  the  worst 
of  it.  They  lost  about  fifty  or  sixty  killed  and  as  many 
wounded.  Muhammad  returned  in  triumph  to  Medina,  and 
was  inspired  by  Allah  and  this  success  to  order  the  assassina- 
tion of  a  number  of  his  opponents  among  the  Jews  in  the  town 
who  had  treated  his  prophetic  claims  with  a  disagreeable  levity. 

But  Mecca  resolved  to  avenge  Badr,  and  at  the  battle  of 
IThud,  near  Medina,  inflicted  an  indecisive  defeat  upon  the 
Prophet's  followers.  Muhammad  was  knocked  down  and  nearly 
killed,  and  there  was  much  running  away  among  his  followers. 
The  Meccans,  however,  did  not  push  their  advantage  and  enter 
Medina. 

For  some  time  all  the  energies  of  the  Prophet  were  concen- 
trated upon  rallying  his  followers,  who  were  evidently  much 
dispirited.  The  Koran  records  the  chastened  feelings  of  those 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  575 

days.  "The  suras  of  the  Koran/7  says  Sir  Mark  Sykes,  "which 
are  attributed  to  this  period,  excel  nearly  all  the  others  in  their 
majesty  and  sublime  confidence."  Here,  for  the  judgment  of 
the  reader,  is  an  example  of  these  majestic  utterances,  from 
the  recent  orthodox  translation  by  the  Maulvi  Muhammad  Ali.1 

"Oh,  you  who  believe !  If  you  obey  those  who  disbelieve, 
they  will  turn  you  back  upon  your  heels,  so  you  will  turn  back 
losers. 

"Nay!  Allah  is  your  Patron,  and  He  is  the  best  of  the 
helpers. 

"We  will  cast  terror  into  the  hearts  of  those  who  disbelieve, 
because  they  set  up  with  Allah  that  for  which  He  has  sent  down 
no  authority,  and  their  abode  is  the  fire;  and  evil  is  the  abode 
of  the  unjust. 

"And  certainly  Allah  made  good  to  you  his  promise,  when 
you  slew  them  by  His  permission,  until  when  you  became  weak- 
hearted  and  disputed  about  the  affair  and  disobeyed  after  He 
had  shown  you  that  which  you  loved;  of  you  were  some  who 
desired  this  world,  and  of  you  were  some  who  desired  the  here- 
after; then  He  turned  you  away  from  them  that  He  might 'try 
you ;  and  He  has  certainly  pardoned  you,  and  Allah  is  Gracious 
to  the  believers. 

"When  you  ran  off  precipitately,  and  did  not  wait  for  any- 
one, and  the  Apostle  was  calling  you  from  your  rear,  so  He 
gave  you  another  sorrow  instead  of  your  sorrow,  so  that  you 
might  not  grieve  at  what  had  escaped  you,  nor  at  what  befell 
you ;  and  Allah  is  aware  of  what  you  do. 

"Then  after  sorrow  he  sent  down  security  upon  you,  a  calm 
coming  upon  a  party  of  you,  and  there  was  another  party  whom 
their  own  souls  had  rendered  anxious;  they  entertained  about 
Allah  thoughts  of  ignorance  quite  unjustly,  saying:  We  have 
no  hand  in  this  affair.  Say,  surely  the  affair  is  wholly  in  the 
hands  of  Allah.  They  conceal  within  their  souls  what  they 
would  not  reveal  to  you.  They  say:  Had  we  any  hand  in  the 
affair,  we  would  not  have  been  slain  here.  Say:  had  you  re- 
mained in  your  houses,  those  for  whom  slaughter  was  ordained 
would  certainly  have  gone  forth  to  the  places  where  they  would 
be  slain,  and  that  Allah  might  test  what  was  in  your  breasts 
and  that  He  might  purge  what  was  in  your  hearts ;  and  Allah 
knows  what  is  in  the  breasts. 

1  Published  by  the  Islamic  Review. 


576  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

"As  for  those  of  you  who  turned  back  on  the  day  when  the 
two  armies  met,  only  the  devil  sought  to  cause  them  to  make 
a  slip  on  account  of  some  deeds  they  had  done,  and  cer- 
tainly Allah  has  pardoned  them;  surely  Allah  is  Forgiving, 
Forbearing." 

Inconclusive  hostilities  continued  for  some  years,  and  at  last 
Mecca  made  a  crowning  effort  to  stamp  out  for  good  and  all  the 
growing  power  of  Medina.  A  mixed  force  of  no  fewer  than 
10,000  men  was  scraped  together,  an  enormous  force  for  the 
time  and  country.  It  was,  of  course,  an  entirely  undisciplined 
force  of  footmen,  horsemen,  and  camel  riders,  and  it  was  pre- 
pared for  nothing  but  the  usual  desert  scrimmage.  Bows, 
spears,  and  swords  were  its  only  weapons.  When  at  last  it 
arrived  amid  a  vast  cloud  of  dust  in  sight  of  the  hovels  and 
houses  of  Medina,  instead  of  a  smaller  force  of  the  same  kind 
drawn  up  for  battle,  as  it  had  expected,  it  found  a  new  and 
wntirehy  disconcerting  phenomenon,  a  trench  and  a  wall.  As- 
sisted by  a  Persian  convert,  Muhammad  had  entrenched  himself 
in  Medina ! 

This  trench  struck  the  Bedouin  miscellany  as  one  of  the 
most  unsportsmanlike  things  that  had  ever  been  known  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  They  rode  about  the  place.  They 
shouted  their  opinion  of  the  whole  business  to  the  besieged. 
They  discharged  a  few  arrows,  and  at  last  encamped  to  argue 
about  this  amazing  outrage.  They  could  arrive  at  no  decision. 
Muhammad  would  not  come  out;  the  rains  began  to  fall,  the 
tents  of  the  allies  got  wet  and  the  cooking  difficult,  views  be- 
came divergent  and  tempers  gave  way,  and  at  last  this  great 
host  dwindled  again  into  its  constituent  parts  without  ever  hav- 
ing given  battle  (627).  The  bands  dispersed  north,  east,  and 
south,  became  clouds  of  dust,  and  ceased  to  matter.  Near 
Medina  was  a  castle  of  Jews,  against  whom  Muhammad  was 
already  incensed  because  of  their  disrespect  for  his  theology. 
They  had  shown  a  disposition  to  side  with  the  probable  victor 
in  this  last  struggle,  and  Muhammad  now  fell  upon  them,  slew 
all  the  men,  nine  hundred  of  them,  and  enslaved  the  women  and 
children.  Possibly  many  of  their  late  allies  were  among  the 
bidders  for  these  slaves.  Never  again  after  this  quaint  failure 
did  Mecca  make  an  effective  rally  against  Muhammad,  and  one 
by  one  its  leading  men  came  over  to  his  side. 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  577 

We  need  not  follow  the  windings  of  the  truce  and  the  treaty 
that  finally  extended  the  rule  of  the  Prophet  to  Mecca.  The 
gist  of  the  agreement  was  that  the  faithful  should  turn  towards 
Mecca  when  they  prayed  instead  of  turning  towards  Jerusalem, 
as  they  had  hitherto  done,  and  that  Mecca  should  be  the  pil- 
grimage centre  of  the  new  faith.  So  long  as  the  pilgrimage 
continued,  the  men  of  Mecca,  it  would  seem,  did  not  care  very 
much  whether  the  crowd  assembled  in  the  name  of  one  god  or 
many.  Muhammad  was  getting  more  and  more  hopeless  of  any 
extensive  conversion  of  the  Jews  and  Christians,  and  he  was 
ceasing  to  press  his  idea  that  all  these  faiths  really  worshipped 
the  same  One  God.  Allah  was  becoming  more  and  more  his  own 
special  God;  tethered  now  by  this  treaty  to  the  meteoric  stone  of 
the  Kaaba,  and  less  and  less  the  father  of  all  mankind.  Already 
the  Prophet  had  betrayed  a  disposition  to  make  a  deal  with 
Mecca,  and  at  last  it  was  effected.  The  lordship  of  Mecca  was 
well  worth  the  concession.  Of  comings  and  goings  and  a  final 
conflict  we  need  not  tell.  In  629  Muhammad  came  to  the  town 
as  its  master.  The  image  of  Manif,  the  god  after  whom  he  had 
once  named  his  son,  was  smashed  under  his  feet  as  he  entered 
the  Kaaba. 

Thereafter  his  power  extended,  there  were  battles,  treacheries, 
massacres ;  but  on  the  whole  he  prevailed,  until  he  was  master 
of  all  Arabia ;  and  when  he  was  master  of  all  Arabia  in  632,  at 
the  age  of  sixty-two,  he  died. 

Throughout  the  concluding  eleven  years  of  his  life  after  the 
Hegira,  there  is  little  to  distinguish  the  general  conduct  of 
Muhammad  from  that  of  any  other  welder  of  peoples  into  a 
monarchy.  The  chief  difference  is  his  use  of  a  religion  of  his 
own  creation  as  his  cement.  He  was  diplomatic,  treacherous, 
ruthless,  or  compromising  as  the  occasion  required  and  as  any 
other  Arab  king  might  have  been  in  his  place;  and  there  was 
singularly  little  spirituality  in  his  kingship.  Nor  was  his  do- 
mestic life  during  his  time  of  power  and  freedom  one  of  excep- 
tional edification.  Until  the  death  of  Kadi j  a,  when  he  was 
fifty,  he  seems  to  have  been  the  honest  husband  of  one  wife; 
but  then,  as  many  men  do  in  their  declining  years,  he  developed 
a  disagreeably  strong  interest  in  women. 

He  married  two  wives  after  the  death  of  Kadi  j  a,  one  being 
the  young  Ayesha,  who  became  and  remained  his  favourite  and 
most  influential  partner;  and  subsequently  a  number  of  other 


578  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

women,  wives  and  concubines,  were  added  to  his  establishment. 
This  led  to  much  trouble  and  confusion,  and  in  spite  of  many 
special  and  very  helpful  revelations  on  the  part  of  Allah,  these 
complications  still  require  much  explanation  and  argument 
from  the  faithful.  There  was,  for  example,  a  scanda-1  aboujb 
Ayesha;  she  was  left  behind  on  one  occasion  when  the  howdah 
and  the  camel  went  on,  while  she  was  looking  for  her  necklace 
among  the  bushes;  and  so  Allah  had  to  intervene  with  some 
heat  and  denounce  her  slanderers.  Allah  also  had  to  speak  very 
plainly  about  the  general  craving  among  this  household  of 
women  for  "this  world's  life  and  its  ornature"  and  for  "finery." 
Then  there  was  much  discussion  because  the  Prophet  first  mar- 
ried his  young  cousin  Zainib  to  his  adopted  son  Zaid,  and  after- 
wards, "when  Zaid  had  accomplished  his  want  of  her,"  the 
Prophet  took  her  and  married  her — but,  as  the  inspired  book 
makes  clear,  only  in  order  to  show  the  difference  between  an 
adopted  and  a  real  son.  "We  gave  her  to  you  as  a  wife,  so  that 
there  should  be  no  difficulty  for  the  believers  in  respect  of  the 
wives  of  their  adopted  sons,  when  they  have  accomplished  their 
want  of  them,  and  Allah's  command  shall  be  performed."  Yet 
surely  a  simple  statement  in  the  Koran  should  have  sufficed  with- 
out this  excessively  practical  demonstration.  There  was,  more- 
over, a  mutiny  in  the  harem  on  account  of  the  undue  favours 
shown  by  the  Prophet  to  an  Egyptian  concubine  who  had  borne 
him  a  boy,  a  boy  for  whom  he  had  a  great  affection,  since  none 
of  Kadija's  sons  had  survived.  These  domestic  troubles  mingle 
inextricably  with  our  impression  of  the  Prophet's  personality. 
One  of  his  wives  was  a  Jewess,  Safiyya,  whom  he  had  married 
on  the  evening  of  the  battle  in  which  her  husband  had  been 
captured  and  executed.  He  viewed  the  captured  women  at  the 
end  of  the  day,  and  she  found  favour  in  his  eyes  and  was  taken 
to  his  tent. 

These  are  salient  facts  in  these  last  eleven  years  of  Muham- 
mad's career.  Because  he,  too,  founded  a  great  religion,  there 
are  those  who  write  of  this  evidently  lustful  and  rather  shifty 
leader  as  though  he  were  a  man  to  put  beside  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
or  Gautama  or  Mani.  But  it  is  surely  manifest  that  he  was  a 
being  of  a  commoner  clay ;  he  was  vain,  egotistical,  tyrannous, 
and  a  self-deceiver;  and  it  would  throw  all  our  history  out  of 
proportion  if,  out  of  an  insincere  deference  to  the  possible 
Moslem  reader,  we  were  to  present  him  in  any  other  light. 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  579 

Yet,  unless  we  balance  it,  this  insistence  upon  his  vanity, 
egotism,  self-deception,  and  hot  desire  does  not  complete  the 
justice  of  the  case.  We  must  not  swing  across  from  the  repudia- 
tion of  the  extravagant  pretensions  of  the  faithful  to  an  equally 
extravagant  condemnation.  Can  a  man  who  has  no  good  quali- 
ties hold  a  friend  ?  Because  those  who  knew  Muhammad  best 
believed  in  him  most.  Kadi  j  a  for  all  her  days  believed  in  him 
—  but  she  may  have  been  a  fond  woman.  Abu  Bekr  is  a  better 
witness,  and  he  never  wavered  in  his  devotion.  Abu  Bekr  be- 
lieved in  the  Prophet,  and  it  is  very  hard  for  anyone  who  reads 
the  history  of  these  times  not  to  believe  in  Abu  Bekr.  Ali 
again  risked  his  life  for  the  Prophet  in  his  darkest  days. 
Muhammad  was  no  impostor,  at  any  rate,  though  at  times  his 
vanity  made  him  behave  as  though  Allah  was  at  his  beck  and 
call,  and  as  if  his  thoughts  were  necessarily  God's  thoughts. 
And  if  his  bloodstained  passion  with  Safiyya  amazes  and  dis- 
gusts our  modern  minds,  his  love  for  little  Ibrahim,  the  son  of 
Mary  the  Egyptian,  and  his  passionate  grief  when  the  child 
died,  reinstate  him  in  the  fellowship  of  all  those  who  have 
known  love  and  loss. 

He  smoothed  the  earth  over  the  little  grave  with  his  own 
hands.  "This  eases  the  afflicted  heart,"  he  said.  "Though  it 
neither  profits  nor  injures  the  dead,  yet  it  is  a  comfort  to  the 
living." 


But  the  personal  quality  of  Muhammad  is  one  thing  and  the 
quality  of  Islam,  the  religion  he  founded,  is  quite  another. 
Muhammad  was  not  pitted  against  Jesus  or  Mani,  and  his  rela- 
tive stature  is  only  a  very  secondary  question  for  us  ;  it  is  Islam 
which  was  pitted  against  the  corrupted  Christianity  of  the 
seventh  century  and  against  the  decaying  tradition  of  the  Zoro- 
astrian  Magi  with  which  the  historian  has  the  greater  concern. 
And  whether  it  was  through  its  Prophet  or  whether  it  was  in 
spite  of  its  Prophet,  and  through  certain  accidents  in  its  ori- 
gin and  certain  qualities  of  the  desert  from  which  it  sprang, 
there  can  be  no  denying  that  Islam  possesses  many  fine  and 
noble  attributes.  It  is  not  always  through  sublime  persons 
that  great  things  come  into  human  life.  It  is  the  folly  of  the 
simple  disciple  which  demands  miraculous  frippery  on  the 
majesty  of  truth  and  immaculate  conceptions  for  righteousness. 


580  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A  year  before  his  death,  at  the  end  of  the  tenth  year  of  the 
Hegira,  Muhammad  made  his  last  pilgrimage  from  Medina  to 
Mecca.  He  made  then  a  great  sermon  to  his  people  of  which 
the  tradition  is  as  follows.  There  are,  of  course,  disputes  as 
to  the  authenticity  of  the  words,  but  there  can  be  no  dispute 
that  the  world  of  Islam,  a  world  still  of  three  hundred  mil- 
lion people,  receives  them  to  this  day  as  its  rule  of  life,  and  to 
a  great  extent  observes  it.  The  reader  will  note  that  the  first 
paragraph  sweeps  away  all  plunder  and  blood  feuds  among  the 
followers  of  Islam.  The  last  .makes  the  believing  Negro  the 
equal  of  the  Caliph.  They  may  not  be  sublime  words,  as  cer- 
tain utterances  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  are  sublime;  but  they  es- 
tablished in  the  world  a  great  tradition  of  dignified  fair  dealing, 
they  breathe  a  spirit  of  generosity,  and  ,they  are  human  and 
workable.  They  created  a  society  more  free  from  widespread 
cruelty  and  social  oppression  than  any  society  had  ever  been 
in  the  world  before. 

"Ye  people :  Hearken  to  my  words ;  for  I  know  not  whether, 
after  this  year,  I  shall  ever  be  amongst  you  here  again.  Your 
lives  and  property  are  sacred  and  inviolable  amongst  one 
another  until  the  end  of  time. 

"The  Lord  hath  ordained  to  every  man  the  share  of  his  in- 
heritance; a  testament  is  not  lawful  to  the  prejudice  of  heirs. 

"The  child  belongeth  to  the  parent ;  and  the  violator  of  wed- 
lock shall  be  stoned. 

"Whoever  claimeth  falsely  another  for  his  father,  or  another 
for  his  master,  the  curse  of  God  and  the  angels  and  of  all  man- 
kind shall  rest  upon  him. 

"Ye  people !  Ye  have  rights  demandable  of  your  wives,  and 
they  have  rights  demandable  of  you.  Upon  them  it  is  incum- 
bent not  to  violate  their  conjugal  faith  nor  commit  any  act 
of  open  impropriety ;  which  things  if  they  do,  ye  have  authority 
to  shut  them  up  in  separate  apartments  and  to  beat  them  with 
stripes,  yet  not  severely.  But  if  they  refrain  therefrom,  clothe 
them  and  feed  them  suitably.  And  treat  your  women  well,  for 
they  are  with  you  as  captives  and  prisoners;  they  have  not 
power  over  anything  as  regards  themselves.  And  ye  have  verily 
taken  them  on  the  security  of  God,  and  have  made  their  persons 
lawful  unto  you  by  the  words  of  God. 

"And  your  slaves,  see  that  ye  feed  them  with  such  food  as 
ye  eat  yourselves,  and  clothe  them  with  the  stuff  ye  wear.  And 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  581 

if  they  commit  a  fault  which  ye  are  not  inclined  to  forgive, 
then  sell  them,  for  they  are  the  servants  of  the  Lord,  and  are 
not  to  be  tormented. 

"Ye  people !  hearken  to  my  speech  and  comprehend  the  same. 
Know  that  every  Moslem  is  the  brother  of  every  other  Moslem. 
All  of  you  are  on  the  same  equality.'7 

This  insistence  upon  kindliness  and  consideration  in  the  daily 
life  is  one  of  the  main  virtues  of  Islam,  but  it  is  not  the  only 
one.  Equally  important  is  the  uncompromising  monotheism, 
void  of  any  Jewish  exclusiveness,  which  is  sustained  by  the 
Koran.  Islam  from  the  outset  was  fairly  proof  against  the 
theological  elaborations  that  have  perplexed  and  divided  Chris- 
tianity and  smothered  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  And  its  third  source 
of  strength  has  been  in  the  meticulous  prescription  of  methods 
of  prayer  and  worship,  and  its  clear  statement  of  the  limited 
and  conventional  significance  of  the  importance  ascribed  to 
Mecca.  All  sacrifice  was  barred  to  the  faithful;  no  loophole 
was  left  for  the  sacrificial  priest  of  the  old  dispensation  to  come 
back  into  the  new  faith.  It  was  not  simply  a  new  faith,  a  purely 
prophetic  religion,  as  the  religion  of  Jesus  was  in  the  time 
of  Jesus,  or  the  religion  of  Gautama  in  the  lifetime  of  Gautama, 
but  it  was  so  stated  as  to  remain  so.  Islam 'to  this  day  has 
learned  doctors,  teachers,  and  preachers;  but  it  has  no  priests. 

It  was  full  of  the  spirit  of  kindliness,  generosity,  and  broth- 
erhood ;  it  was  a  simple  and  understandable  religion ;  it  was  in- 
stinct with  the  chivalrous  sentiment  of  the  desert ;  and  it  made 
its  appeal  straight  to  the  commonest  instincts  in  the  composi- 
tion of  ordinary  men.  Against  it  were  pitted  Judaism,  which 
had  made  a  racial  hoard  of  God;  Christianity  talking  and 
preaching  endlessly  now  of  trinities,  doctrines,  and  heresies 
no  ordinary  man  could  make  head  or  tail  of;  and  Mazdaism, 
the  cult  of  the  Zoroastrian  Magi,  who  had  inspired  the  crucifix- 
ion of  Mani.  The  bulk  of  the  people  to  whom  the  challenge  of 
Islam  came  did  not  trouble  very  much  whether  Muhammad 
was  lustful  or  not,  or  whether  he  had  done  some  shifty  and 
questionable  things ;  what  appealed  to  them  was  that  this  God, 
Allah,  he  preached,  was  by  the  test  of  the  conscience  in  their 
hearts  a  God  of  righteousness,  and  that  the  honest  acceptance 
of  his  doctrine  and  method  opened  the  door  wide  in  a  world  of 
uncertainty,  treachery,  and  intolerable  divisions  to  a  great  and 
increasing  brotherhood  of  trustworthy  men  on  earth,  and  to  a 


582  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

paradise  not  of  perpetual  exercises  in  praise  and  worship,  in 
which  saints,  priests,  and  anointed  kings  were  still  to  have 
the  upper  places,  but  of  equal  fellowship  and  simple  and  under- 
standable delights  such  as  their  souls  craved  for.  Without  any 
ambiguous  symbolism,  without  any  darkening  of  altars  or  chant- 
ing of  priests,  Muhammad  had  brought  home  those  attractive 
doctrines  to  the  hearts  of  mankind. 


The  true  embodiment  of  the  spirit  of  Islam  was  not  Muham- 
mad, but  his  close  friend  and  supporter,  Abu  Bekr.  There  can 
be  little  doubt  that  if  Muhammad  was  the  mind  and  imagina- 
tion of  primitive  Islam,  Abu  Bekr  was  its  conscience  and  its 
will.  Throughout  their  life  together  it  was  Muhammad  who 
said  the  thing,  but  it  was  Abu  Bekr  who  believed  the  thing. 
When  Muhammad  wavered,  Abu  Bekr  sustained  him.  Abu 
Bekr  was  a  man  without  doubts,  his  beliefs  cut  down  to  acts 
cleanly  as  a  sharp  knife  cuts.  We  may  feel  sure  that  Abu 
Bekr  would  never  have  temporized  about  the  minor  gods  of 
Mecca,  or  needed  inspirations  from  Allah  to  explain  his  private 
life.  When  in  «the  eleventh  year  of  the  Hegira  (632)  the 
Prophet  sickened  of  a  fever  and  died,  it  was  Abu  Bekr  who 
succeeded  him  as  Caliph  and  leader  of  the  people  (Kalifa  = 
Successor),  and  it  was  the  unflinching  confidence  of  Abu  Bekr 
in  the  righteousness  of  Allah  which  prevented  a  split  between 
Medina  and  Mecca,  which  stamped  down  a  widespread  insur- 
rection of  the  Bedouin  against  taxation  for  the  common  cause, 
and  carried  out  a  great  plundering  raid  into  Syria  that  the 
dead  Prophet  had  projected.  And  then  Abu  Bekr,  with  that 
faith  which  moves  mountains,  set  himself  simply  and  sanely 
to  organize  the  subjugation  of  the  whole  world  to  Allah — with 
little  armies  of  3,000  or  4,000  Arabs — according  to  those  let- 
ters the  Prophet  had  written  from  Medina  in  628  to  all  the 
monarchs  of  the  world. 

And  the  attempt  came  near  to  succeeding.  Had  there  been 
in  Islam  a  score  of  men,  younger  men  to  carry  on  his  work, 
of  Abu  Bekr's  quality,  it  would  certainly  have  succeeded.  It 
came  near  to  succeeding  because  Arabia  was  now  a  centre  of 
faith  and  will,  and  because  nowhere  else  in  the  world  until 
China  was  reached,  unless  it  was  upon  the  steppes  of  Russia 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM 


583 


or  Turkestan,  was  there  another  community  of  free-spirited 
men  with  any  power  of  belief  in  their  rulers  and  leaders.  The 
head  of,  the  Byzantine  Empire,  Heraclius,  the  conqueror  of 
Chosroes  II,  was  past  his  prime  and  suffering  from  dropsy, 
and  his  empire  was  exhausted  by  the  long  Persian  war.  E"or 


9%  BEGINNINGS  of  ib*  MO51EM  POWER, 


had  he  at  any  time  displayed  such  exceptional  ability  as  the 
new  occasion  demanded.  The  motley  of  people  under  his  rule 
knew  little  of  him  and  cared  less.  Persia  was  at  the  lowest 
depths  of  monarchist  degradation,  the  parricide  Kavadh  II 
had  died  after  a  reign  of  a  few  months,  and  a  series  of  dynas- 
tic intrigues  and  romantic  murders  enlivened  the  palace  but 
weakened  the  country.  The  war  between  Persia  and  the  Byzan- 


584  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tine  Empire  was  only  formally  concluded  about  the  time  of 
the  beginning  of  Abu  Bekr  s  rule.  Both  sides  had  made  great 
use  of  Arab  auxiliaries;  over  Syria  a  number  of  towns  and 
settlements  of  Christianized  Arabs  were  scattered  who  professed 
a  baseless  loyalty  to  Constantinople;  the  Persian  marches  be- 
tween Mesopotamia  and  the  desert  were  under  the  control  of 
an  Arab  tributary  prince,  whose  capital  was  at  Hira.  Arab 
influence  was  strong  in  such  cities  as  Damascus,  where  Christian 
Arab  gentlemen  would  read  and  recite  the  latest  poetry  from  the 
desert  competitors.  There  was  thus  a  great  amount  of  easily 
assimilable  material  ready  at  hand  for  Islam. 

And  the  military  campaigns  that  now  began  were  among  the 
most  brilliant  in  the  world's  history.  Arabia  had  suddenly 
become  a  garden  of  fine  men.  The  name  of 'Khalid  stands  out 
as  the  brightest  star  in  a  constellation  of  able  and  devoted 
Moslem  generals.  Whenever  he  commanded  he  was  victorious, 
and  when  the  jealousy  of  the  second  Caliph,  Omar,  degraded  him 
unjustly  and  inexcusably,1  he  made  no  ado,  but  served  Allah 
cheerfully  and  well  as  a  subordinate  to  those  over  whom  he 
had  ruled.  We  cannot  trace  the  story  of  this  warfare  here; 
the  Arab  armies  struck  simultaneously  at  Byzantine  Syria  and 
the  Persian  frontier  city  of  Hira,  and  everywhere  they  offered 
a  choice  of  three  alternatives:  either  pay  tribute,  or  confess 
the  true  God  and  join  us,  or  die.  They  encountered  armies, 
large  and  disciplined  but  spiritless  armies,  and  defeated  them. 
And  nowhere  was  there  such  a  thing  as  a  popular  resistance. 
The  people  of  the  populous  irrigation  lands  of  Mesopotamia 
cared  not  a  jot  whether  they  paid  taxes  to  Byzantium  or  Persep- 
olis  or  to  Medina ;  and  of  the  two,  Arabs  or  Persian  court,  the 
Arabs,  the  Arabs  of  the  great  years,  were  manifestly  the  cleaner 
people,  more  just  and  more  merciful.  The  Christian  Arabs 
joined  the  invaders  very  readily  and  so  did  many  Jews.  Just 
as  in  the  west,  so  now  in  the  east,  an  invasion  became  a  social 
revolution.  But  here  it  was  also  a  religious  revolution  with  a 
new  and  distinctive  mental  vitality. 

It  was  Khalid  who  fought  the  decisive  battle  (634)  with  the 
army  of  Heraclius  upon  the  banks  of  the  Yarmuk,  a  tributary 
of  the  Jordan.  The  legions,  as  ever,  were  without  proper 

1  But  Schurtz,  in  Helmolt's  History  of  the  World,  says  that  the  private 
life  of  the  gallant  Khalid  was  a  scandal  to  the  faithful.  He  committed 
adultery,  a  serious  offence  in  P.  world  of  polygamy. 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  585 

cavalry ;  for  seven  centuries  the  ghost  of  old  Crassus  had  haunted 
the  east  in  vain;  the  imperial  armies  relied  upon  Christian 
Arab  auxiliaries,  and  these  deserted  to  the  Moslems  as  the 
armies  joined  issue.  A  great  parade  of  priests,  sacred  banners, 
pictures,  and  holy  relics  was  made  by  the  Byzantine  host,  and 
it  was  further  sustained  by  the  chanting  of  monks.  But  there 
was  no  magic  in  the  relics  and  little  conviction  about  the  chant- 
ing. On  the  Arab  side  of  the  emirs  and  sheiks  harangued  the 
troops,  and  after  the  ancient  Arab  fashion  the  shrill  voices  of 
women  in  the  rear  encouraged  their  men.  The  Moslem  ranks 
were  full  of  believers  befo  :e  whom  shone  victory  or  paradise. 
The  battle  was  never  in  doubt  after  the  defection  of  the  irregu- 
lar cavalry.  An  attempt  to  retreat  dissolved  into  a  rout  and 
became  a  massacre.  The  Byzantine  army  had  fought  with  its 
back  to  the  river,  which  was  presently  choked  with  its  dead. 

Thereafter  Heraclius  slowly  relinquished  all  Syria,  which 
he  had  so  lately  won  back  from  the  Persians,  to  his  new  an- 
tagonists. Damascus  soon  fell,  and  a  year  later  the  Moslems 
entered  Antioch.  For  a  time  they  had  to  abandon  it  again  to 
a  last  effort  from  Constantinople,  but  they  re-entered  it  for 
good  under  Khalid. 

Meanwhile  on  the  eastern  front,  after  a  swift  initial  success 
which  gave  them  Hira,  the  Persian  resistance  stiffened.  The 
dynastic  struggle  had  ended  at  last  in  the  coming  of  a  king  of 
kings,  and  a  general  of  ability  had  been  found  in  Rustam. 
He  gave  battle  at  Kadessia  (637).  His  army  was  just  such 
another  composite  host  as  Darius  had  led  into  Thrace  or  Alex- 
ander defeated  at  Issus;  it  was  a  medley  of  levies.  He  had 
thirty-three  war  elephants,  and  he  sat  on  a  golden  throne  upon 
a  raised  platform  behind  the  Persian  ranks,  surveying  the 
battle,  which  throne  will  remind  the  reader  of  Herodotus,  the 
Hellespont,  and  Salamis  more  than  a  thousand  years  before. 
The  battle  lasted  three  days ;  each  day  the  Arabs  attacked  and 
the  Persian  host  held  its  ground  until  nightfall  called  a  truce. 
On  the  third  day  the  Arabs  received  reinforcements,  and  to- 
wards the  evening  the  Persians  attempted  to  bring  the  strug- 
gle to  an  end  by  a  charge  of  elephants.  At  first  the  huge 
beasts  carried  all  before  them;  then  one  was  wounded  pain- 
fully and  became  uncontrollable,  rushing  up  and  down  be- 
tween the  armies.  Its  panic  affected  the  others,  and  for  a 
time  both  armies  remained  dumbfounded  in  the  red  light  of 


586  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

sunset,  watching  the  frantic  efforts  of  these  grey,  squealing 
monsters  to  escape  from  the  tormenting  masses  of  armed  men 
that  hemmed  them  in.  It  was  by  the  merest  chance  that  at 
last  they  broke  through  the  Persian  and  not  through  the  Arab 
array,  and  that  it  was  the  Arabs  who  were  able  to  charge  home 
upon  the  resulting  confusion.  The  twilight  darkened  to  night, 
but  this  time  the  armies  did  not  separate.  All  through  the 
night  the  Arabs  smote  in  the  name  of  Allah,  and  pressed  upon 
the  shattered  and  retreating  Persians.  Dawn  broke  upon  the 
vestiges  of  Rustam's  army  in  flight  far  beyond  the  litter  of  the 
battlefield.  Its  path  was  marked  by  scattered  weapons  and  war 
material,  abandoned  transport,  and  the  dead  and  dying.  The 
platform  and  the  golden  throne  were  broken  down,  and  Rus- 
tam  lay  dead  among  a  heap  of  dead  men.  .  .  . 

Already  in  634  Abu  Bekr  had  died  and  given  place  to  Omar, 
the  Prophet's  brother-in-law,  as  Caliph ;  and  it  was  under  Omar 
(634-643)  that  the  main  conquests  of  the  Moslems  occurred. 
The  Byzantine  Empire  was  pushed  out  of  Syria  altogether.  But 
at  the  Taurus  Mountains  the  Moslem  thrust  was  held.  Ar- 
menia was  overrun,  all  Mesopotamia  was  conquered  and  Persia 
beyond  the  rivers.  Egypt  passed  almost  passively  from  Greek 
to  Arab ;  in  a  few  years  the  Semitic  race,  in  the  name  of  God  and 
His  Prophet,  had  recovered  nearly  all  the  dominions  it  had 
lost  to  the  Aryan  Persians  a  thousand  years  before.  Jerusalem 
fell  early,  making  a  treaty  without  standing  siege,  and  so  the 
True  Cross  which  had  been  carried  off  by  the  Persians  a  dozen 
years  before,  and  elaborately  restored  by  Heraclius,  passed  once 
more  out  of  the  rule  of  Christians.  But  it  was  still  in  Christian 
hands ;  the  Christians  were  to  be  tolerated,  paying  only  a  poll 
tax;  and  all  the  churches  and  all  the  relics  were  left  in  their 
possession. 

Jerusalem  made  a  peculiar  condition  for  its  surrender.  The 
city  would  give  itself  only  to  the  Caliph  Omar  in  person. 
Hitherto  he  had  been  in  Medina  organizing  armies  and  control- 
ling the  general  campaign.  He  came  to  Jerusalem  (638), 
and  the  manner  of  his  coming  shows  how  swiftly  the  vigour 
and  simplicity  of  the  first  Moslem  onset  was  being  sapped  by 
success.  He  came  the  six-hundred-mile  journey  with  only  one 
attendant ;  he  was  mounted  on  a  camel,  and  a  bag  of  barley,  an- 
other of  dates,  a  water-skin,  and  a  wooden  platter  were  his  pro- 
vision for  the  journey.  He  was  met  outside  the  city  by  his  chief 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM 


587 


588  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

captains,  robed  splendidly  in  silks  and  with  richly  capar- 
isoned horses.  At  this  amazing  sight  the  old  man  was  overcome 
with  rage.  He  slipped  down  from  his  saddle,  scrabbled  up 
dirt  and  stones  with  his  hands,  and  pelted  these  fine  gentlemen, 
shouting  abuse.  What  was  this  insult?  What  did  this  finery 
mean  ?  Where  were  his  warriors  ?  Where  were  the  desert 
men  ?  He  would  not  let  these  popinjays  escort  him.  He  went 
on  with  his  attendant,  and  the  smart  Emirs  rode  afar  off- 
well  out  of  range  of  his  stones.  He  met  the  Patriarch  of 
Jerusalem,  who  had  apparently  taken  over  the  city  from  its 
Byzantine  rulers,  alone.  With  the  Patriarch  he  got  on  very 
well.  They  went  round  the  Holy  Places  together,  and  Omar, 
now  a  little  appeased,  made  sly  jokes  at  the  expense  of  his 
too  magnificent  followers. 

Equally  indicative  of  the  tendencies  of  the  time  is  Omar's 
letter  ordering  one  of  his  governors  who  had  built  himself  a 
palace  at  Kufa,  to  demolish  it  again. 

"They  tell  me/'  he  wrote,  "you  would  imitate  the  palace  of 
Chosroes,1  and  that  you  would  even  use  the  gates  that  once  were 
his.  Will  you  also  have  guards  and  porters  at  those  gates,  as 
Chosroes  had  ?  Will  you  keep  the  faithful  afar  off  and  deny 
audience  to  the  poor?  Would  you  depart  from  the  custom  of 
our  Prophet,  and  be  as  magnificent  as  those  Persian  emperors, 
and  descend  to  hell  even  as  they  have  done  ?"  2 

§  6 

Abu  Bekr  and  Omar  I  are  the  two  master  figures  in  the  history 
of  Islam.  It  is  not  within  our  scope  here  to  describe  the  wars 
by  which  in  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  Islam  spread  it- 
self from  the  Indus  to  the  Atlantic  and  Spain,  and  from  Kash- 
gar  on  the  borders  of  China  to  Upper  Egypt.  Two  maps  must 
suffice  to  show  the  limits  to  which  the  vigorous  impulse  of  the 
new  faith  carried  the  Arab  idea  and  the  Arabic  scriptures,  before 
worldliness,  the  old  trading  and  plundering  spirit,  and  the 
glamour  of  the  silk  robe  had  completely  recovered  their  paralyz- 
ing sway  over  the  Arab  intelligence  and  will.  The  reader 
will  note  how  the  great  tide  swept  over  the  footsteps  of  Yuan 
Chwang,  and  how  easily  in  Africa  the  easy  conquests  of  the 

*At  Ctesiphon. 

a  Paraphrased  from  Schurtz  in  Helmolt's  History  of  the  World. 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  589 

Vandals  were  repeated  in  the  reverse  direction.  And  if  the 
reader  entertains  any  delusions  about  a  fine  civilization,  either 
Persian,  Roman,  Hellenic,  or  Egyptian,  being  submerged  by 
this  flood,  the  sooner  he  dismisses  such  ideas  the  better.  Islam 
prevailed  because  it  was  the  best  social  and  political  order  the 
times  could  offer.  It  prevailed  because  everywhere  it  found 
politically  apathetic  peoples,  robbed,  oppressed,  bullied,  uned- 
ucated, and  unorganized,  and  it  found  selfish  and  unsound  gov- 
ernments out  of  touch  with  any  people  at  all.  It  was  thej  broad- 
est, freshest,  and  cleanest  political  idea  that  had  yet  come  into 
actual  activity  in  the  world,  and  it  offered  better  terms  than 
any  other  to  the  mass  of  mankind.  The  capitalistic  and  slave- 
holding  system  of  the  Roman  Empire  and  the  literature  and 
culture  and  social  tradition  of  Europe  had  altogether  decayed 
and  broken  down  before  Islam  arose;  it  was  only  when  man- 
kind lost  faith  in  the  sincerity  of  its  representatives  that  Islam, 
too,  began  to  decay. 

The  larger  part  of  its  energy  spent  itself  in  conquering 
and  assimilating  Persia  and  Turkestan;  its  most  vigorous 
thrusts  were  northwardly  from  Persia  and  westwardly  through 
Egypt.  Had  it  concentrated  its  first  vigour  upon  the  Byzantine 
Empire,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  by  the  eighth  century 
it  would  have  taken  Constantinople  and  come  through  into 
Europe  as  easily  as  it  reached  the  Pamirs.  The  Caliph  Mua- 
wiya,  it  is  true,  besieged  the  capital  for  seven  years  (672  to  678), 
and  Suleiman  in  717  and  718 ;  but  the  pressure  was  not  sus- 
tained, and  for  three  or  four  centuries  longer  the  Byzantine 
Empire  remained  the  crazy  bulwark  of  Europe.  In  the  newly 
Christianized  or  still  pagan  Avars,  Bulgars,  Serbs,  Slavs,  and 
Saxons,  Islam  would  certainly  have  found  as  ready  converts  as 
it  did  in  the  Turks  of  Central  Asia.  And  though,  instead 
of  insisting  upon  Constantinople,  it  first  came  round  into  Eu- 
rope by  the  circuitous  route  of  Africa  and  Spain,  it  was  only 
in  France,  at  the  end  of  a  vast  line  of  communications  from 
Arabia,  that  it  encountered  a  power  sufficiently  vigorous  to 
arrest  its  advance. 

From  the  outset  the  Bedouin  aristocrats  of  Mecca  dominated 
the  new  empire.  Abu  Bekr,  the  first  Caliph,  was  in  an  informal 
shouting  way  elected  at  Medina,  and  so  were  Omar  I  and  Oth- 
man,  the  third  Caliph,  but  all  three  were  Meccans  of  good 
family.  They  were  not  men  of  Medina.  And  though  Abu 


590 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  591 

Bekr  and  Omar  were  men  of  stark  simplicity  and  righteousness 
Othman  was  of  a  baser  quality,  a  man  quite  in  the  vein  of 
those  silk  robes,  to  whom  conquest  was  not  conquest  for  Allah 
but  for  Arabia,  and  especially  for  Mecca  in  Arabia,  and  more 
particularly  for  himself  and  for  the  Meccans  and  for  his  fam- 
ily, the  Omayyads.  He  was  a  worthy  man,  who  stood  out 
for  his  country  and  his  town  and  his  "people.77  He  was  no 
early  convert  as  his  two  predecessors  had  been;  he  had  joined 
the  Prophet  for  reasons  of  policy  in  fair  give  and  take.  With 
his  accession  the  Caliph  ceases  to  be  a  strange  man  of  fire  and 
wonder,  and  becomes  an  Oriental  monarch  like  many  Oriental 
monarchs  before  and  since,  a  fairly  good  monarch  by  Eastern 
standards  as  yet,  but  nothing  more. 

The  rule  and  death  of  Othman  brought  out  the  consequences 
of  Muhammad's  weaknesses  as  clearly  as  the  lives  of  Abu  Bekr 
and  Omar  had  witnessed  to  the  divine  fire  in  his  teaching.  Mu- 
hammad had  been  politic  at  times  when  Abu  Bekr  would  have 
been  firm,  and  the  new  element  of  aristocratic  greediness  that 
came  in  with  Othman  was  one  fruit  of  those  politic  moments. 
And  the  legacy  of  that  cfarelessly  compiled  harem  of  the  Prophet, 
the  family  complications  and  jealousies  which  had  lurked  in 
the  background  of  Moslem  affairs  during  the  rule  of  the  first 
two  Caliphs,  was  now  coming  out  into  the  light  of  day.  Ali, 
who  was  the  nephew,  the  adopted  son,  and  the  son-in-law  of 
the  Prophet — he  was  the  husband  of  the  Prophet's  daughter 
Fatima — he  had  considered  himself  the  rightful  Caliph.  His 
claims  formed  an  undertow  to  the  resentment  of  Medina  and  of 
the  rival  families  of  Mecca  against  the  advancement  of  the 
Omayyads.  But  Ayesha,  the  favourite  wife  of  the  Prophet,  had 
always  been  jealous  of  Fatima  and  hostile  to  Ali.  She  sup- 
ported Othman.  .  .  .  The  splendid  opening  of  the  story  of 
Islam  collapses  suddenly  into  this  squalid  dispute  and  bickering 
of  heirs  and  widows. 

In  656  Othman,  an  old  man  of  eighty,  was  stoned  in  the 
streets  of  Medina  by  a  mob,  chased  to  his  house,  and  murdered ; 
and  Ali  became  at  last  Caliph,  only  to  be  murdered  in  his  turn 
(661).  In  one  of  the  battles  in  this  civil  war,  Ayesha,  now  a 
gallant,  mischievous  old  lady,  distinguished  herself  by  leading 
a  charge,  mounted  on  a  camel.  She  was  taken  prisoner  and 
treated  well. 

While  the  armies  of  Islam  were  advancing  triumphantly  to 


592  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  conquest  of  the  world,  this  sickness  of  civil  war  smote  at  its 
head.  What  was  the  rule  of  Allah  in  the  world  to  Ayesha 
when  she  could  score  off  the  detested  Fatima,  and  what  heed 
were  the  Omayyads  and  the  partisans  of  Ali  likely  to  take  of 
the  unity  of  mankind  when  they  had  a  good  hot  feud  of  this 
sort  to  entertain  them,  with  the  caliphate  as  a  prize  ?  The  world 
of  Islam  was  rent  in  twain  by  the  spites,  greeds,  and  partisan 
silliness  of  a  handful  of  men  and  women  in  Medina.  That 
quarrel  still  lives.  To  this  day  one  main  division  of  the  Mos- 
lems, the  Shiites,  maintain  the  hereditary  right,  of  Ali  to  be 
Caliph  as  an  article  of  faith!  They  prevail  in  Persia  and 
India.  But  an  equally  important  section,  the  Sunnites,  with 
whom  it  is  difficult  for  a  disinterested  observer  not  to  agree, 
deny  this  peculiar  addendum  to  Muhammad's  simple  creed. 
So  far  as  we  can  gather  at  this  length  of  time,  Ali  was  an 
entirely  commonplace  individual. 

To  watch  this  schism  creeping  across  the  brave  beginnings  of 
Islam  is  like  watching  a  case  of  softening  of  the  brain.  To 
the  copious  literature  of  the  subject  we  must  refer  the  reader 
who  wishes  to  learn  how  Hasan,  the  son  of  Ali,  was  poisoned 
by  his  wife,  and  how  Husein,  his  brother,  was  killed.  We  do 
but  name  them  here  because  they  still  afford  a  large  section  of 
mankind  scope  for  sentimental  partisanship  and  mutual  an- 
noyance. They  are  the  two  chief  Shiite  martyrs.  Amidst  the 
coming  and  going  of  their  conflicts  the  old  Kaaba  at  Mecca 
was  burnt  down,  and  naturally  there  began  endless  disputa- 
tion whether  it  should  be  rebuilt  in  exactly  its  ancient  form  or 
on  a  much  larger  scale. 

In  this  and  the  preceding  sections  we  have  seen  once  more 
the  inevitable  struggle  of  this  newest  and  latest  unifying  im- 
pulse in  the  world's  affairs  against  the  everyday  worldliness 
of  mankind,  and  we  have  seen  also  how  from  the  first  the  com- 
plicated household  of  Muhammad  was  like  an  evil  legacy  to 
the  new  faith.  But  as  this  history  now  degenerates  into  the 
normal  crimes  and  intrigues  of  an  Oriental  dynasty,  the  stu- 
dent of  history  will  realize  a  third  fundamental  weakness  in 
the  world  reforms  of  Muhammad.  He  was  an  illiterate  Arab, 
ignorant  of  history,  totally  ignorant  of  all  the  political  experi- 
ences of  Rome  and  Greece,  and  almost  as  ignorant  of  the  real 
history  of  Judea ;  and  he  left  his  followers  with  no  scheme  for 
a  stable  government  embodying  and  concentrating  the  general 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  593 

will  of  the  faithful,  and  no  effective  form  to  express  the  very 
real  spirit  of  democracy  (using  the  world  in  its  modern  sense) 
that  pervades  the  essential  teaching  of  Islam.  His  own  rule 
was  unlimited  autocracy,  and  autocratic  Islam  has  remained. 
Politically  Islam  was  not  an  advance,  but  a  retrogression  from 
the  traditional  freedoms  and  customary  laws  of  the  desert. 
The  breach  of  the  pilgrims'  truce  that  led  to  the  battle  of  Badr 
is  the  blackest  mark  against  early  Islam.  Nominally  Allah 
is  its  chief  ruler — but  practically  its  master  has  always  been 
whatever  man  was  vigorous  and  unscrupulous  enough  to  snatch 
and  hold  the  Caliphate — and,  subject  to  revolts  and  assassina- 
tions, its  final  law  has  been  that  man's  will. 

For  a  time,  after  the  death  of  Ali,  the  Omayyad  family  was 
in  the  ascendant,  and  for  nearly  a  century  they  gave  rulers 
to  Islam. 

The  Arab  historians  are  so  occupied  with  the  dynastic  squab- 
bles and  crimes  of  the  time,  that  it  is  difficult  to  trace  the  ex- 
ternal history  of  the  period.  We  find  Moslem  shipping  upon 
the  seas  defeating  the  Byzantine  fleet  in  a  great  sea  fight  off 
the  coast  of  Lycia  (A.D.  655),  but  how  the  Moslems  acquired 
this  victorious  fleet  thus  early  we  do  not  clearly  know.  It 
was  probably  chiefly  Egyptian.  For  some  years  Islam  cer- 
tainly controlled  the  eastern  Mediterranean,  and  in  662  and 
again  in  672,  during  the  reign  of  Muawiya  (662-680),  the 
first  great  Omayyad  Caliph,  made  two  sea  attacks  upon  Con- 
stantinople. They  had  to  be  sea  attacks  because  Islam,  so  long 
as  it  was  under  Arab  rule,  never  surmounted  the  barrier  of  the 
Taurus  Mountains.  During  the  same  period  the  Moslems  were 
also  pressing  their  conquests  further  and  further  into  Cen- 
tral Asia.  While  Islam  was  already  decaying  at  its  centre, 
it  was  yet  making  great  hosts  of  new  adherents  and  awaken- 
ing a  new  spirit  among  the  hitherto  divided  and  aimless 
Turkish  peoples.  Medina  was  no  longer  a  possible  centre  for 
its  vast  enterprises  in  Asia,  Africa,  and  the  Mediterranean, 
and  so  Damascus  became  the  usual  capital  of  the  Omayyad 
Caliphs. 

Chief  among  these,  as  for  a  time  the  clouds  of  dynastic  in- 
trigue clear,  are  Abdal  Malik  (685-705)  and  Walid  I  (705- 
715),  under  whom  the  Omayyad  line  rose  to  the  climax  of  its 
successes.  The  western  boundary  was  carried  to  the  Pyrenees, 
while  to  the  east  the  domains  of  the  Caliph  marched  with  China. 


594  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  son  of  Walid,  Suleiman  (715),  carried  out  a  second  series 
of  Moslem  attacks  upon  Constantinople  which  his  father  had 
planned  and  proposed.  As  with  the  Caliph  Muawiya  half  a 
century  before,  the  approach  was  by  sea — for  Asia  Minor,  as 
we  have  just  noted,  was  still  unconquered — and  the  shipping 
was  drawn  chiefly  from  Egypt.  The  emperor,  a  usurper,  Leo 
the  Isaurian,  displayed  extraordinary  skill  and  obstinacy  in 
the  defence;  he  burnt  most  of  the  Moslem  shipping  in  a  bril- 
liant sortie,  cut  up  the  troops  they  had  landed  upon  the  Asiatic 
side  of  the  Bosphorus,  and  after  a  campaign  in  Europe  of 
two  years  (717-718),  a  winter  of  unexampled  severity  com- 
pleted their  defeat. 

From  this  point  onward  the  glory  of  the  Omayyad  line  de- 
cays. The  first  tremendous  impulse  of  Islam  was  now  spent. 
There  was  no  further  expansion  and  a  manifest  decline  in 
religious  zeal.  Islam  had  made  millions  of  converts,  and  had 
digested  those  millions  very  imperfectly.  Cities,  nations,  whole 
sects  and  races,  Arab  pagans,  Jews,  Christians,  Manichseans, 
Zoroastrians,  Turanian  pagans  had  been  swallowed  up  into  this 
new  vast  empire  of  Muhammad's  successors.  It  has  hitherto 
been  the  common  characteristic  of  all  the  great  unifying  re- 
ligious initiators  of  the  world,  the  common  oversight,  that 
they  have  accepted  the  moral  and  theological  ideals 
to  which  the  first  appeal  was  made,  as  though  they  were 
universal  ideals.  Muhammad's  appeal,  for  example,  was  to 
the  traditional  chivalry  and  underlying  monotheistic  feelings 
of  the  intelligent  Arabs  of  his  time.  These  things  were  latent 
in  the  mind  and  conscience  of  Mecca  and  Medina ;  he  did  but 
call  them  forth.  Then,  as  the  new  teaching  spread  and  stereo- 
typed itself,  it  had  to  work  on  a  continually  more  uncongenial 
basis,  it  had  to  grow  in  soil  that  distorted  and  perverted  it. 
Its  sole  text-book  was  the  Koran.  To  minds  untuned  to  the 
melodies  of  Arabic,  this  book  seemed  to  be,  as  it  seems  to  many 
European  minds  to-day,  a  mixture  of  fine-spirited  rhetoric 
with — to  put  it  plainly — formless  and  unintelligent  gabble. 
Countless  converts  missed  the  real  thing  in  it  altogether.  To 
that  we  must  ascribe  the  readiness  of  the  Persian  and  Indian 
sections  of  the  faith  to  join  the  Shiite  schism  upon  a  quarrel  that 
they  could  at  least  understand  and  feel.  And  to  the  same  at- 
tempt to  square  the  new  stuff  with  old  prepossessions  was  due 
such  extravagant  theology  as  presently  disputed  whether  the 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  595 

Koran  was  and  always  had  been  co-existent  with  God.1  We 
should  be  stupefied  by  the  preposterousness  of  this  idea  if  we 
did  not  recognize  in  it  at  once  the  well-meaning  attempt  of 
some  learned  Christian  convert  to  Islamize  his  belief  that  "In 
the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and 
the  Word  was  God."  2 

None  of  the  great  unifying  religious  initiators  of  the  world 
hitherto  seems  to  have  been  accompanied  by  any  understanding 
of  the  vast  educational  task,  the  vast  work  of  lucid  and  varied 
exposition  and  intellectual  organization  involved  in  its  propo- 
sitions. They  all  present  the  same  history  of  a  rapid  spread- 
ing, like  a  little  water  poured  over  a  great  area,  and  then  of  a 
superficiality  and  corruption. 

In  a  little  while  we  hear  stories  of  an  Omayyad  Caliph, 
Walid  II  (743-744),  who  mocked  at  the  Koran,  ate  pork,  drank 
wine,  and  did  not  pray.  Those  stories  may  have  been  true  or 
they  may  have  been  circulated  for  political  reasons.  There 
began  a  puritan  reaction  in  Mecca  and  Medina  against  the 
levity  and  luxury  of  Damascus.  Another  great  Arab  family, 
the  Abbas  family,  the  Abbasids,  a  thoroughly  wicked  line,  had 
long  been  scheming  for  power,  and  was  making  capital  out  of 
the  general  discontent.  The  feud  of  the  Omayyads  and  the 
Abbasids  was  older  than  Islam;  it  had  been  going  on  before 
Muhammad  was  born.  These  Abbasids  took  up  the  tradition 
of  the  Shiite  "martyrs,"  Ali  and  his  sons  Hasan  and  Husein, 
and  identified  themselves  with  it.  The  banner  of  the  Omay- 
yads was  white ;  the  Abbasid  adopted  a  black  banner,  black  in 
mourning  for  Hasan  and  Husein,  black  because  black  is  more 
impressive  than  any  colour;  moreover,  the  Abbasids  declared 
that  all  the  Caliphs  after  Ali  were  usurpers.  In  749  they 
accomplished  a  carefully  prepared  revolution,  and  the  last  of 
the  Omayyad  Caliphs  was  hunted  down  and  slain  in  Egypt. 
Abul  Abbas  was  the  first  of  the  Abbasid  Caliphs,  and  he  began 
his  reign  by  collecting  into  one  prison  every  living  male  of 
the  Omayyad  line  upon  whom  he  could  lay  hands  and  causing 
them  all  to  be  massacred.  Their  bodies,  it  is  said,  were  heaped 
together,  a  leathern  carpet  was  spread  over  them,  and  on  this 
gruesome  table  Abul  Abbas  and  his  councillors  feasted.  More- 
over, the  tombs  of  the  Omayyad  Caliphs  were  rifled,  and  their 
bones  burnt  and  scattered  to  the  four  winds  of  heaven.  So  the 
*Mark  Sykes.  aSt.  John's  Gospel,  chap.  i.  1. 


596  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

grievances  of  All  were  avenged  at  last,  and  the  Omayyad  line 
passed  out  of  history. 

There  was,  it  is  interesting  to  note,  a  rising  on  behalf  of  the 
Omayyads  in  Khorasan  which  was  assisted  by  the  Chinese 
Emperor. 

§7 

But  the  descendants  of  Ali  were  not  destined  to  share  in 
this  triumph  for  long.  The  Abassids  were  adventurers  and 
rulers  of  an  older  school  than  Islam.  Now  that  the  tradition 
of  Ali  had  served  its  purpose,  the  next  proceeding  of  the  new 
Caliph  was  to  hunt  down  and  slaughter  the  surviving  members 
of  his  family,  the  descendants  of  Ali  and  Fatima. 

Clearly  the  old  traditions  of  Sassanid  Persia  and  of  Persia 
before  the  Greeks  were  returning  to  the  world.  With  the 
accession  of  the  Abbasids  the  control  of  the  sea  departed  from 
the  Caliph,  and  with  it  went  Spain  and  North  Africa,  in 
which,  under  an  Omayyad  survivor  in  the  former  case,  inde- 
pendent Moslem  states  now  arose.  The  centre  of  gravity  of 
Islam  shifted  across  the  desert  from  Damascus  to  Mesopotamia. 
Mansur,  the  successor  of  Abul  Abbas,  built  himself  a  new  cap- 
ital at  Bagdad  near  the  ruins  of  Ctesiphon,  the  former  Sassanid 
capital.  Turks  and  Persians  as  well  as  Arabs  became  Emirs, 
and  the  army  was  reorganized  upon  Sassanid  lines.  Medina 
and  Mecca  were  now  only  of  importance  as  pilgrimage  cen- 
tres, to  which  the  faithful  turned  to  pray.  But  because  it  was 
a  fine  language,  and  because  it  was  the  language  of  the  Koran, 
Arabic  continued  to  spread  until  presently  it  had  replaced 
Greek  and  become  the  language  of  educated  men  throughout 
the  whole  Moslem  world. 

Of  the  Abbasid  monarchs  after  Abul  Abbas  we  need  tell 
little  here.  A  bickering  war  went  on  year  by  year  in  Asia 
Minor  in  which  neither  Byzantium  nor  Bagdad  made  any  per- 
manent gains,  though  once  or  twice  the  Moslems  raided  as  far 
as  the  Bosphorus.  A  false  prophet  Mokanna,  who  said  he  was 
God,  had  a  brief  but  troublesome  career.  There  were  plots, 
there  were  insurrections ;  they  lie  flat  and  colourless  now  in  the 
histories  like  dead  flowers  in  an  old  book.  One  other  Abbasid 
Caliph  only  need  be  named,  and  that  quite  as  much  for  his 
legendary  as  for  his  real  importance,  Haroun-al-Raschid  (786- 
809).  He  was  not  only  the  Caliph  of  an  outwardly  prosper- 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  597 

ous  empire  in  the  world  of  reality,  but  he  was  also  the  Caliph 
of  an  undying  empire  in  the  deathless  world  of  fiction,  he  was 
the  Haroun-al-Raschid  of  the  Arabian  Nights. 

Sir  Mark  Sykes  l  gives  an  account  of  the  reality  of  his  em- 
pire from  which  we  will  quote  certain  passages.  He  says :  "The 
Imperial  Court  was  polished,  luxurious,  and  unlimitedly 
wealthy;  the  capital,  Bagdad,  a  gigantic  mercantile  city  sur- 
rounding a  huge  administrative  fortress,  wherein  every  de- 
partment of  state  had  a  properly  regulated  and  well-ordered 
public  office ;  where  schools  and  colleges  abounded ;  whither  phi- 
losophers, students,  doctors,  poets,  and  theologians  flocked  from 
all  parts  of  the  civilized  globe.  .  .  .  The  provincial  capitals 
were  embellished  with  vast  public  buildings,  and  linked  to- 
gether by  an  effective  and  rapid  service  of  posts  and  caravans; 
the  frontiers  were  secure  and  well  garrisoned,  the  army  loyal, 
efficient,  and  brave;  the  governors  and  ministers  honest  and 
forbearing.  The  empire  stretched  with  equal  strength  and 
unimpaired  control  from  the  Cilician  gates  to  Aden,  and  from 
Egypt  to  Central  Asia.  Christians,  Pagans,  Jews,  as  well  as 
Moslems,  were  employed  in  the  government  service.  Usurpers, 
rebellious  generals,  and  false  prophets  seemed  to  have  vanished 
from  the  Moslem  dominions.  Traffic  and  wealth  had  taken 
the  place  of  revolution  and  famine.  .  .  .  Pestilence  and  dis- 
ease were  met  by  Imperial  hospitals  and  government  physi- 
cians. ...  In  government  business  the  rough-and-ready  meth- 
ods of  Arabian  administration  had  given  place  to  a  complicated 
system  of  Divans,  initiated  partly  from  the  Roman,  but  chiefly 
taken  from  the  Persian  system  of  government.  Posts,  Finance, 
Privy  Seal,  Crown  Lands,  Justice,  and  Military  affairs  were 
each  administered  by  separate  bureaux  in  the  hands  of  min- 
isters and  officials;  an  army  of  clerks,  scribes,  writers,  and  ac- 
countants swarmed  into  these  offices  and  gradually  swept  the 
whole  power  of  the  government  into  their  own  hands  by  sepa- 
rating the  Commander  of  the  Faithful  from  any  direct  inter- 
course with  his  subjects.  The  Imperial  Palace  and  the  entour- 
age were  equally  based  on  Roman  and  Persian  precedents. 
Eunuchs,  closely  veiled  'harems'  of  women,  guards,  spies,  go- 
betweens,  jesters,  poets,  and  dwarfs  clustered  around  the  person 
of  the  Commander  of  the  Faithful,  each,  in  his  degree,  endeav- 
ouring to  gain  the  royal  favour  and  indirectly  distracting  the 
lThe  Caliph's  Last  Heritage. 


598  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

royal  mind  from  affairs  of  business  and  state.  Meanwhile  the 
mercantile  trade  of  the  East  poured  gold  into  Bagdad,  and  sup- 
plemented the  other  enormous  stream  of  money  derived  from 
the  contributions  of  plunder  and  loot  despatched  to  the  capital 
by  the  commanders  of  the  victorious  raiding  forces  which  har- 
ried Asia  Minor,  India,  and  Turkestan.  The  seemingly  unend- 
ing supply  of  Turkish  slaves  and  Byzantine  specie  added  to  the 
richness  of  the  revenues  of  Irak,  and,  combined  with  the  vast 
commercial  traffic  of  which  Bagdad  was  the  centre,  produced 
a  large  and  powerful  moneyed  class,  composed  of  the  sons  of 
generals,  officials,  landed  proprietors,  royal  favourites,  mer- 
chants, and  the  like,  who  encouraged  the  arts,  literature,  phi- 
losophy, and  poetry  as  the  mood  took  them,  building  palaces 
for  themselves,  vying  with  each  other  in  the  luxury  of  their 
entertainments,  suborning  poets  to  sound  their  praises,  dabbling 
in  philosophy,  supporting  various  schools  of  thought,  endowing 
charities,  and,  in  fact,  behaving  as  the  wealthy  have  always 
behaved  in  all  ages. 

"I  have  said  that  the  Aboasid  Empire  in  the  day_s  of  Haroun- 
al-Raschid  was  weak  and  feeble  to  a  degree,  and  perhaps  the 
reader  will  consider  this  a  foolish  proposition  when  he  takes 
into  consideration  that  I  have  described  the  Empire  as  orderly, 
the  administration  definite  and  settled,  the  army  efficient,  and 
wealth  abundant.  The  reason  I  make  the  suggestion  is  that  the 
Abbasid  Empire  had  lost  touch  with  everything  original  and 
vital  in  Islam,  and  was  constructed  entirely  by  the  reunion  of 
the  fragments  of  the  empires  Islam  had  destroyed.  There  was 
nothing  in  the  empire  which  appealed  to  the  higher  instincts 
of  the  leaders  of  the  people ;  the  holy  war  had  degenerated  into 
a  systematic  acquisition  of  plunder.  The  Caliph  had  become 
a  luxurious  Emperor  or  King  of  Kings;  the  administration 
had  changed  from  a  patriarchal  system  to  a  bureaucracy.  The 
wealthier  classes  were  rapidly  losing  all  faith  in  the  religion 
of  the  state;  speculative  philosophy  and  high  living  were  tak- 
ing the  place  of  Koranic  orthodoxy  and  Arabian  simplicity. 
The  solitary  bond  which  could  have  held  the  empire  together, 
the  sternness  and  plainness  of  the  Moslem  faith,  was  com- 
pletely neglected  by  both  the  Caliph  and  his  advisers.  .  .  . 
Haroun-al-Raschid  himself  was  a  winebibber,  and  his  palace  was 
decorated  with  graven  images  of  birds  and  beasts  and  men.  .  .  . 

"For  a  moment  we  stand  amazed  at  the  greatness  of  the  Ab- 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  599 

basid  dominion;  then  suddenly  we  realize  that  it  is  but  as  a 
fair  husk  enclosing  the  dust  and  ashes  of  dead  civilizations." 

Haroun-ai-Raschid  died  in  809.  At  his  death  his  great  em- 
pire fell  immediately  into  civil  war  and  confusion,  and  the  next 
great  event  of  unusual  importance  in  this  region  of  the  world 
comes  two  hundred  years  later  when  the  Turks,  under  the  chiefs 
of  the  great  family  of  the  Seljuks,  poured  southward  out  of 
Turkestan,  and  not  only  conquered  the  empire  of  Bagdad,  but 
Asia  Minor  also.  Coming  from  the  north-east  as  they  did, 
they  were  able  to  outflank  the  great  barrier  of  the  Taurus 
Mountains,  which  had  hitherto  held  back  the  Moslems.  They 
were  still  much  the  same  people  as  those  of  whom  Yuan  Chwang 
gave  us  a  glimpse  four  hundred  years  earlier,  but  now  they  were 
Moslems,  and  Moslems  of  the  primitive  type,  men  whom  Abu 
Bekr  would  have  welcomed  to  Islam.  They  caused  a  great 
revival  of  vigour  in  Islam,  and  they  turned  the  minds  of  the 
Moslem  world  once  more  in  the  direction  of  a  religious  war 
against  Christendom.  For  there  had  been  a  sort  of  truce  be- 
tween these  two  great  religions  after  the  cessation  of  the  Mos- 
lem advance  and  the  decline  of  the  Omayyads.  Such  war- 
fare as  had  gone  on  between  Christianity  and  Islam  had  been 
rather  border-bickering  than  sustained  war.  It  became  only 
a  bitter  fanatical  struggle  again  in  the  eleventh  century. 

§  8 

But  before  we  go  on  to  tell  of  the  Turks  and  the  Crusaders, 
the  great  wars  that  began  between  Christendom  and  Islam, 
and  which  have  left  a  quite  insane  intolerance  between  these 
great  systems  right  down  to  the  present  time,  it  is  necessary 
to  give  a  little  more  attention  to  the  intellectual  life  of  the 
Arabic-speaking  world  which  was  now  spreading  more  and 
more  widely  over  the  regions  which  Hellenism  had  once  dom- 
inated. For  some  generations  before  Muhammad,  the  Arab 
mind  had  been,  as  it  were,  smouldering,  it  had  been  producing 
poetry  and  much  religious  discussion;  under  the  stimulus  of 
the  national  and  racial  successes  it  presently  blazed  out  with  a 
brilliance  second  only  to  that  of  the  Greeks  during  their  best 
period.  From  a  new  angle  and  with  a  fresh  vigour  it  took  up 
that  systematic  development  of  positive  knowledge  which  the 
Greeks  had  begun  and  relinquished.  It  revived  the  human 


600  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

pursuit  of  science.  If  the  Greek  was  the  father,  then  the  Arab 
was  the  foster-father  of  the  scientific  method  of  dealing  with 
reality,  that  is  to  say,  by  absolute  frankness,  the  utmost  sim- 
plicity of  statement  and  explanation,  exact  record,  and  ex- 
haustive criticism.  Through  the  Arabs  it  was  and  not  by  the 
Latin  route  that  the  modern  world  received  that  gift  of  light 
and  power. 

Their  conquests  brought  the  Arabs  into  contact  with  the 
Greek  literary  tradition,  not  at  first  directly,  but  through  the 
Syrian  translations  of  the  Greek  writers.  The  Nestorian  Chris- 
tians, the  Christians  to  the  east  of  orthodoxy,  seem  to  have 
been  much  more  intelligent  and  active-minded  than  the  court 
theologians  of  Byzantium,  and  at  a  much  higher  level  of  gen- 
eral education  than  the  Latin-speaking  Christians  of  the  west. 
They  had  been  tolerated  during  the  latter  days  of  the  Sassanids, 
and  they  were  tolerated  by  Islam  until  the  ascendancy  of  the 
Turks  in  the  eleventh  century.  They  had  preserved  much  of 
the  Hellenic  medical  science,  and  had  even  added  to  it.  In 
the  Omayyad  times  most  of  the  physicians  in  the  Caliph's 
dominions  were  Nestorians,  and  no  doubt  many  learned  Nesto- 
rians  professed  Islam  without  any  serious  compunction  or  any 
great  change  in  their  work  and  thoughts.  They  had  preserved 
much  of  Aristotle  both  in  Greek  and  in  Syrian  translations. 
They  had  a  considerable  mathematical  literature.  Their  equip- 
ment makes  the  contemporary  resources  of  St.  Benedict  or 
Cassiodorus  seem  very  pitiful.  To  these  Nestorian  teachers 
came  the  fresh  Arab  mind  out  of  the  desert,  keen  and  curious, 
and  learnt  much  and  improved  upon  its  teaching. 

But  the  Nestor ians  were  not  the  only  teachers  available  for 
the  Arabs.  Throughout  all  the  rich  cities  of  the  east  the  kindred 
Jews  were  scattered  with  their  own  distinctive  literature  and 
tradition,  and  the  Arab  and  the  Jewish  mind  reacted  upon  one 
another  to  a  common  benefit.  The  Arab  was  informed  and 
the  Jew  sharpened  to  a  keener  edge.  The  Jews  have  never  been 
pedants  in  the  matter  of  their  language;  we  have  already 
noted  that  a  thousand  years  before  Islam,  they  spoke  Greek 
in  Hellenized  Alexandria,  and  now  all  over  this  new  Moslem 
world  they  were  speaking  and  writing  Arabic.  Some  of  the 
greatest  of  Jewish  literature  was  written  in  Arabic,  the  re- 
ligious writings  of  Maimonides,  for  example.  Indeed,  it  is 
difficult  to  say  in  the  case  of  this  Arabic  culture  where  the  Jew 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  601 

ends  and  the  Arab  begins,  so  important  and  essential  were 
its  Jewish  factors. 

Moreover,  there  was  a  third  source  of  inspiration,  more 
particularly  in  mathematical  science,  to  which  at  present  it  is 
difficult  to  do  justice — India.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  Arab  mind  during  its  best  period  was  in  effective  contact 
with  Sanscrit  literature  and  with  Indian  ideas,  and  that  it 
derived  much  from  this  source. 

The  distinctive  activities  of  the  Arab  mind  were  already 
manifest  under  the  Omayyads,  though  it  was  during  the  Ab- 
basid  time  that  it  made  its  best  display.  History  is  the  be- 
ginning and  core  of  all  sound  philosophy  and  all  great  literature, 
and  the  first  Arab  writers  of  distinction  were  historians,  biogra- 
phers, and  quasi-historical  poets.  Romantic  fiction  and  the 
short  story  followed  as  a  reading  public  developed,  willing  to 
be  amused.  And  as  reading  ceased  to  be  a  special  accomplish- 
ment, and  became  necessary  to  every  man  of  affairs  and  to  every 
youth  of  breeding,  came  the  systematic  growth  of  an  educa- 
tional system  and  an  educational  literature.  By  the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries  there  are  not  only  grammars,  but  great  lexi- 
cons, and  a  mass  of  philological  learning  in  Islam. 

And  a  century  or  so  in  advance  of  the  west,  there  grew  up 
in  the  Moslem  world  at  a  number  of  centres,  at  Basra,  at  Kufa, 
at  Bagdad  and  Cairo,  and  at  Cordoba,  out  of  what  were  at  first 
religious  schools  dependent  upon  mosques,  a  series  of  great 
universities.  The  light  of  these  universities  shone  far  beyond 
the  Moslem  world,  and  drew  students  to  them  from  east  and 
west.  At  Cordoba  in  particular  there  were  great  numbers  of 
Christian  students,  and  the  influence  of  Arab  philosophy  com- 
ing by  way  of  Spain  upon  the  universities  of  Paris,  Oxford,  and 
North  Italy  and  upon  Western  European  thought  generally,  was 
very  considerable  indeed.  The  name  of  Averroes  (Ibn-rushd) 
of  Cordoba  (1126-1198)  stands  out  as  that  of  the  culminating 
influence  of  Arab  philosophy  upon  European  thought.  He 
developed  the  teachings  of  Aristotle  upon  lines  that  made  a 
sharp  division  between  religious  and  scientific  truth,  and  so 
prepared  the  way  for  the  liberation  of  scientific  research  from 
the  theological  dogmatism  that  restrained  it  both  under  Chris- 
tianity and  under  Islam.  Another  great  name  is  that  of  Avi- 
cenna  (Ibnsina),  the  Prince  of  Physicians  (980-1037),  who 
was  born  at  the  other  end  of  the  Arabic  world  at  Bokhara, 


602  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  who  travelled  in  Khorasan.  .  .  .  The  book-copying  indus- 
try flourished  at  Alexandria,  Damascus,  Cairo,  and  Bagdad, 
and  about  the  year  970  there  were  twenty-seven  free  schools 
open  in  Cordoba  for  the  education  of  the  poor. 

"In  mathematics,"  say  Thatcher  and  Schwill,1  "the  Arabs 
built  on  the  foundations  of  the  Greek  mathematicians.  The 
origin  of  the  so-called  Arabic  numerals  is  obscure.  Under 
Theodoric  the  Great,  Boethius  made  use  of  certain  signs  which 
were  in  part  very  like  the  nine  digits  which  we  now  use.  One 
of  the  pupils  of  Gerbert  also  used  signs  which  were  still  more 
like  ours,  but  the  zero  was  unknown  till  the  twelfth  century, 
when  it  was  invented  by  an  Arab  mathematician  named  Mu- 
hammad-Ibn-Musa,  who  also  was  the  first  to  use  the  decimal 
notation,  and  who  gave  the  digits  the  value  of  position.  In 
geometry  the  Arabs  did  not  add  much  to  Euclid,  but  algebra  is 
practically  their  creation ;  also  they  developed  spherical  trigon- 
ometry, inventing  the  sine,  tangent,  and  cotangent.  In  physics 
they  invented  the  pendulum,  and  produced  work  on  optics. 
They  made  progress  in  the  science  of  astronomy.  They  built 
several  observatories,  and  constructed  many  astronomical  in- 
struments which  are  still  in  use.  They  calculated  the  angle 
of  the  ecliptic  and  the  precession  of  the  equinoxes.  Their 
knowledge  of  astronomy  was  undoubtedly  considerable. 

"In  medicine  they  made  great  advances  over  the  work  of 
the  Greeks.  They  studied  physiology  and  hygiene,  and  their 
materia  medico,  was  practically  the  same  as  ours  to-day.  Many 
of  their  methods  of  treatment  are  still  in  use  among  us..  Their 
surgeons  understood  the  use  of  anesthetics,  and  performed 
some  of  the  most  difficult  operations  known.  At  the  time  when 
in  Europe  the  practice  of  medicine  was  forbidden  by  the  Church, 
which  expected  cures  to  be  effected  by  religious  rites  per- 
formed by  the  clergy,  the  Arabs  had  a  real  science  of  medicine. 
In  chemistry  they  made  a  good  beginning.  They  discovered 
many  new  substances,  such  as  alcohol,2  potash,  nitrate  of  silver, 
corrosive  sublimate,  and  nitric  and  sulphuric  acid.  ...  In 
manufactures  they  outdid  the  world  in  variety  and  beauty  of 
design  and  perfection  of  workmanship.  They  worked  in  all  the 

1 A  General  History  of  Europe. 

"Alcohol  as  "spirits  of  wine"  was  known  to  Pliny  (100  A.D.).  The 
student  of  the  history  of  science  should  consult  Campbell  Brown's  History 
of  Chemistry  and  check  these  statements  in  the  text. 


MUHAMMAD  AND  ISLAM  60$ 

metals — gold,  silver,  copper,  bronze,  iron,  and  steel.  In  textile 
fabrics  they  have  never  been  surpassed.  They  made  glass  and 
pottery  of  the  finest  quality.  They  knew  the  secrets  of  dyeing, 
and  they  manufactured  paper.  They  had  many  processes  of 
dressing  leather,  and  their  work  was  famous  throughout  Eu- 
rope. They  made  tinctures,  essences,  and  syrups.  They  made 
sugar  from  the  cane,  and  grew  many  fine  kinds  of  wine.  They 
practised  farming  in  a  scientific  way,  and  had  good  systems  of  ir- 
rigation. They  knew  the  value  of  fertilizers,  and  adapted  their 
crops  to  the  quality  of  the  ground.  They  excelled  in  horti- 
culture, knowing  how  to  graft  and  how  to  produce  new  varieties 
of  fruit  and  flowers.  They  introduced  into  the  west  many 
trees  and  plants  from  the  east,  and  wrote  scientific  treatises  on 
farming." 

One  item  in  this  account  must  be  underlined  here  because  of 
its  importance  in  the  intellectual  life  of  mankind,  the  manufac- 
ture of  paper.  This  the  Arabs  seem  to  have  learnt  from  the 
Chinese  by  way  of  Central  Asia.  The  Europeans  acquired  it 
from  the  Arabs.  Until  that  time  books  had  to  be  written  upon 
parchment  or  papyrus,  and  after  the  Arab  conquest  of  Egypt 
Europe  was  cut  off  from  the  papyrus  supply.  Until  paper 
became  abundant,  the  art  of  printing  was  of  little  use,  and 
newspapers  and  popular  education  by  means  of  books  was  im- 
possible. This  was  probably  a  much  more  important  factor  in 
the  relative  backwardness  of  Europe  during  the  dark  ages 
than  historians  seem  disposed  to  admit.  .  .  . 

And  all  this  mental  life  went  on  in  the  Moslem  world  in 
spite  of  a  very  considerable  amount  of  political  disorder.  From 
first  to  last  the  Arabs  never  grappled  with  the  problem,  the  still 
unsolved  problem,  of  the  stable  progressive  state;  everywhere 
their  form  of  government  was  absolutist  and  subject  to  the  con- 
vulsions, changes,  intrigues,  and  murders  that  have  always 
characterized  the  extremer  forms  of  monarchy.  But  for  some 
centuries,  beneath  the  crimes  and  rivalries  of  courts  and  camps, 
the  spirit  of  Islam  did  preserve  a  certain  general  decency  and 
restraint  in  life;  the  Byzantine  Empire  was  impotent  to  shat- 
ter this  civilization,  and  the  Turkish  danger  in  the  north-east 
gathered  strength  only  very  slowly.  Until  the  Turk  fell  upon 
it,  the  intellectual  life  of  Islam  continued.  Perhaps  it  secretly 
flattered  itself  that  it  would  always  be  able  to  go  on  in  spite 
of  the  thread  of  violence  and  unreason  in  its  political  direction. 


604  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Hitherto  in  all  countries  that  has  been  the  characteristic  atti- 
tude of  science  and  literature.  The  intellectual  man  has  been 
loth  to  come  to  grips  with  the  forcible  man.  He  has  generally 
been  something  of  a  courtier  and  time-server.  Possibly  he  has 
never  yet  been  quite  sure  of  himself.  Hitherto  men  of  reason 
and  knowledge  have  never  had  the  assurance  and  courage  of  the 
religious  fanatic.  But  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  they  have 
accumulated  settled  convictions  and  gathered  confidence  dur- 
ing the  last  few  centuries;  they  have  slowly  found  a  means  to 
power  through  the  development  of  popular  education  and  pop- 
ular literature,  and  to-day  they  are  far  more  disposed  to  say 
things  plainly  and  to  claim  a  dominating  voice  in  the  organiza- 
tion of  human  affairs  than  they  have  ever  been  before  in  the 
world's  history. 


XXXII 
CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 

§  1.  The  Western  World  at  its  Lowest  Ebb.  §  2.  The  Feudal 
System.  §  3.  The  Prankish  Kingdom  of  the  Merovingians. 
§  4.  The  Christianization  of  the  Western  Barbarians.  §  5. 
Charlemagne  becomes  Emperor  of  the  West.  §  6.  The  Per- 
sonality of  Charlemagne.  §  7.  The  French  and  the  Germans 
become  Distinct.  §  8.  The  Normans,  the  Saracens,  the 
Hungarians  and  the  Seljuk  Turks.  §  9.  How  Constanti- 
nople Appealed  to  Rome.  §  10.  The  Crusades.  §  11.  The 
Crusades  a  Test  of  Christianity.  §  12.  The  Emperor  Fred- 
erick II.  §  13.  Defects  and  Limitations  of  the  Papacy. 
§  14.  A  List  of  Leading  Popes. 


LET  us  turn  again  now  from  this  intellectual  renascence 
in  the  cradle  of  the  ancient  civilizations  to  the  affairs 
of  the  Western  world.  We  have  described  the  complete 
economic,  social,  and  political  break-up  of  the  Roman  imperial 
system  in  the  west,  the  confusion  and  darkness  that  followed  in 
the  sixth  and  seventh  centuries,  and  the  struggles  of  such  men 
as  Cassiodorus  to  keep  alight  the  flame  of  human  learning  amidst 
these  windy  confusions.  For  a  time  it  would  be  idle  to  write 
of  states  and  rulers.  Smaller  or  greater  adventurers  seized 
a  castle  or  a  countryside  and  ruled  an  uncertain  area.  The 
British  Islands,  for  instance,  were  split  up  amidst  a  multitude 
of  rulers;  numerous  Keltic  chiefs  in  Ireland  and  Scotland 
and  Wales  and  Cornwall  fought  and  prevailed  over  and  suc- 
cumbed to  each  other;  the  English  invaders  were  also  divided 
into  a  number  of  fluctuating  "kingdoms,"  Kent,  Wessex,  Essex, 
Sussex,  Mercia,  Northumbria,  and  East  Anglia,  which  were 
constantly  at  war  with  one  another.  So  it  was  over  most  of 
the  Western  world.  Here  a  bishop  would  be  the  monarch,  as 
Gregory  the  Great  was  in  Rome ;  here  a  town  or  a  group  of 

605 


606  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

towns  would  be  under  the  rule  of  the  duke  or  prince  of  this  or 
that.  Amidst  the  vast  ruins  of  the  city  of  Rome  half-inde- 
pendent families  of  quasi-noble  adventurers  and  their  retainers 
maintained  themselves.  The  Pope  kept  a  sort  of  general  pre- 
dominance there,  but  he  was  sometimes  more  than  balanced  by  a 
"Duke  of  Rome."  The  great  arena  of  the  Colosseum  had  been 
made  into  a  privately-owned  castle,  and  so,  too,  had  the  vast  cir- 
cular tomb  of  the  Emperor  Hadrian ;  and  the  adventurers  who 
had  possession  of  these  strongholds  and  their  partisans  waylaid 
each  other  and  fought  and  bickered  in  the  ruinous  streets  of 
the  once  imperial  city.  The  tomb  of  Hadrian  was  known  after 
the  days  of  Gregory  the  Great  as  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo, 
the  Castle  of  the  Holy  Angel,  because  when  he  was  crossing 
the  bridge  over  the  Tiber  on  his  way  to  St.  Peter's  to  pray 
against  the  great  pestilence  which  was  devastating  the  city,  he 
had  had  a  vision  of  a  great  angel  standing  over  the  dark  mass  of 
the  mausoleum  and  sheathing  a  sword,  and  he  had  known  then 
that  his  prayers  would  be  answered.  This  Castle  of  St.  Angelo 
played  a  very  important  part  in  Roman  affairs  during  this 
age  of  disorder. 

Spain  was  in  much  the  same  state  of  political  fragmentation 
as  Italy  or  France  or  Britain;  and  in  Spain  the  old  feud  of 
Carthaginian  and  Roman  was  still  continued  in  the  bitter 
hostility  of  their  descendants  and  heirs,  the  Jew  and  the  Chris- 
tian. So  that  when  the  power  of  the  Caliph  had  swept  along 
the  North  African  coast  to  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar,  it  found 
in  the  Spanish  Jews  ready  helpers  in  its  invasion  of  Europe. 
A  Moslem  army  of  Arabs  and  of  Berbers,  the  nomadic  Hamitic 
people  of  the  African  desert  and  mountain  hinterland  who  had 
been  converted  to  Islam,  crossed  and  defeated  the  West  Goths 
in  a  great  battle  in  711.  In  a  few  years  the  whole  country 
was  in  their  possession. 

In  720  Islam  had  reached  the  Pyrenees,  and  had  pushed 
round  their  eastern  end  into  France ;  and  for  a  time  it  seemed 
that  the  faith  was  likely  to  subjugate  Gaul  as  easily  as  it  had 
subjugated  the  Spanish  peninsula.  But  presently  it  struck 
against  something  hard,  a  new  kingdom  of  the  Franks,  which 
had  been  consolidating  itself  for  some  two  centuries  in  the 
Rhineland  and  North  France. 

Of  this  Frankish  kingdom,  the  precursor  of  France  and  Ger- 
many, which  formed  the  western  bulwark  of  Europe  against 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  607 

the  faith  of  Muhammad,  as  the  Byzantine  empire  behind  the 
Taurus  Mountains  formed  the  eastern,  we  shall  now  have 
much  to  tell;  but  first  we  must  give  some  account  of  the  new 
system  of  social  groupings  out  of  which  it  arose. 

§2 

It  is  necessary  that  the  reader  should  have  a  definite  idea 
of  the  social  condition  of  western  Europe  in  the  eighth  cen- 
tury. It  was  not  a  barbarism.  Eastern  Europe  was  still  bar- 
baric and  savage;  things  had  progressed  but  little  beyond  the 
state  of  affairs  described  by  Gibbon  in  his  account  of  the  mission 
of  Priscus  to  Attila  (see  p.  485).  But  western  Europe  was 
a  shattered  civilization,  without  law,  without  administration, 
with  roads  destroyed  and  education  disorganized,  but  still  with 
great  numbers  of  people  with  civilized  ideas  and  habits  and 
traditions.  It  was  a  time  of  confusion,  of  brigandage,  of 
crimes  unpunished  and  universal  insecurity.  It  is  very  inter- 
esting to  trace  how,  out  of  the  universal  melee,  the  beginnings 
of  a  new  order  appeared.  In  a  modern  breakdown  there  would 
probably  be  the  formation  of  local  vigilance  societies,  which 
would  combine  and  restore  a  police  administration  and  a  roughly 
democratic  rule.  But  in  the  broken-down  western  empire  of 
the  sixth,  seventh,  and  eighth  centuries,  men's  ideas  turned 
rather  to  leaders  than  to  committees,  and  the  centres  about 
which  affairs  crystallized  were  here  barbaric  chiefs,  here  a 
vigorous  bishop  or  some  surviving  claimant  to  a  Roman  official 
position,  here  a  long-recognized  landowner  or  man  of  ancient 
family,  and  here  again  some  vigorous  usurper  of  power.  No 
solitary  man  was  safe.  So  men  were  forced  to  link  themselves 
with  others,  preferably  people  stronger  than  themselves.  The 
lonely  man  chose  the  most  powerful  and  active  person  in  his 
district  and  became  his  man.  The  freeman  or  the  weak  lordling 
of  a  petty  territory  linked  himself  to  some  more  powerful  lord. 
The  protection  of  that  lord  (or  the  danger  of  his  hostility)  be- 
came more  considerable  with  every  such  accession.  So  very 
rapidly  there  went  on  a  process  of  political  crystallization  in 
the  confused  and  lawless  sea  into  which  the  Western  Empire 
had  liquefied.  These  natural  associations  and  alliances  of 
protector  and  subordinates  grew  very  rapidly  into  a  system, 
the  feudal  system,  traces  of  which  are  still  to  be  found  in 


608  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  social  structure  of  every  European  community  west  of 
Hussia. 

This  process  speedily  took  on  technical  forms  and  laws  of  its 
own.  In  such  a  country  as  Gaul  it  was  already  well  in  progress 
in  the  days  of  insecurity  before  the  barbarian  tribes  broke  into 
the  empire  as  conquerors.  The  Franks  when  they  came  into 
Gaul  brought  with  them  an  institution,  which  we  have  already 
noted  in  the  case  of  the  Macedonians,  and  which  was  probably 
of  very  wide  distribution  among  the  Nordic  people,  the  gather- 
ing about  the  chief  or  war  king  of  a  body  of  young  men  of 
good  family,  the  companions  or  comitatus,  his  counts  or  cap- 
tains. It  was  natural  in  the  case  of  invading  peoples  that  the 
relations  of  a  weak  lord  to  a  strong  lord  should  take  on  the 
relations  of  a  count  to  his  king,  and  that  a  conquering  chief 
should  divide  seized  and  confiscated  estates  among  his  com- 
panions. From  the  side  of  the  decaying  empire  there  came  to 
feudalism  the  idea  of  the  grouping  for  mutual  protection  of  men 
and  estates ;  from  the  Teutonic  side  came  the  notions  of  knightly 
association,  devotion,  and  personal  service.  The  former  was 
the  economic  side  of  the  institution,  the  latter  the  chivalrous. 

The  analogy  of  the  aggregation  of  feudal  groupings  with  crys- 
tallization is  a  very  close  one.  As  the  historian  watches  the 
whirling  and  eddying  confusion  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  cen- 
turies in  Western  Europe,  he  begins  to  perceive  the  appearance 
of  these  pyramidal  growths  of  heads  and  subordinates  and 
sub-subordinates,  which  jostle  against  one  another,  branch, 
dissolve  again,  or  coalesce.  "We  use  the  term  'feudal  system' 
for  convenience  sake,  but  with  a  degree  of  impropriety  if  it 
conveys  the  meaning  'systematic.'  Feudalism  in  its  most  flour- 
ishing age  was  anything  but  systematic.  It  was  confusion 
roughly  organized.  Great  diversity  prevailed  everywhere,  and 
we  should  not  be  surprised  to  find  some  different  fact  or  custom 
in  every  lordship.  Anglo-Norman  feudalism  attained  in  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  a  logical  completeness  and  a 
uniformity  of  practice  which,  in  the  feudal  age  proper,  can 
hardly  be  found  elsewhere  through  so  large  a  territory.  .  .  . 

"The  foundation  of  the  feudal  relationship  proper  was  the  fief, 
which  was  usually  land,  but  might  be  any  desirable  thing,  as 
an  office,  a  revenue  in  money  or  kind,  the  right  to  collect  a 
toll,  or  operate  a  mill.  In  return  for  the  fief,  the  man  became 
the  vassal  of  his  lord ;  he  knelt  before  him,  and,  with  his  hands 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 


609 


between  his  lord's  hands,  promised  him  fealty  and  service.  .  .  . 
The  faithful  performance  of  all  the  duties  he  had  assumed  in 
homage  constituted  the  vassal's  right  and  title  to  his  fief.  So 
long  as  they  were  fulfilled,  he,  and  his  heir  after  him,  held  the 
fief  as  his  property,  practically  and  in  relation  to  all  under- 
tenants as  if  he  were  the  owner.  In  the  ceremony  of  homage 


-A   «     Htfxpof  EUROPE  about-  500 AD. 


and  investiture,  which  is  the  creative  contract  of  feudalism, 
the  obligations  assumed  by  the  two  parties  were,  as  a  rule,  not 
specified  in  exact  terms.  They  were  determined  by  local  cus- 
tom. ...  In  many  points  of  detail  the  vassal's  services  dif- 
fered widely  in  different  parts  of  the  feudal  world.  We  may 
say,  however,  that  they  fall  into  two  classes,  general  and  specific. 
The  general  included  all  that  might  come  under  the  idea  of 
loyalty,  seeking  the  lord's  interests,  keeping  his  secrets,  be- 
traying the  plans  of  his  enemies,  protecting  his  family,  etc. 
The  specific  services  are  capable  of  more  definite  statement, 


610  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  they  usually  received  exact  definition  in  custom  and  some- 
times in  written  documents.  The  most  characteristic  of  these 
was  the  military  service,  which  included  appearance  in  the 
field  on  summons  with  a  certain  force,  often  armed  in  a  speci- 
fied way,  and  remaining  a  specified  length  of  time.  It  often 
included  also  the  duty  of  guarding  the  lord's  castle,  and  of 
holding  one's  own  castle  subject  to  the  plans  of  the  lord  for  the 
defence  of  his  fief.  .  .  . 

theoretically  regarded,  feudalism  covered  Europe  with  a 
network  of  these  fiefs,  rising  in  graded  ranks  one  above  the 
other  from  the  smallest,  the  knight's  fee,  at  the  bottom,  to  the 
king  at  the  top,  who  was  the  supreme  landowner,  or  who  held 
the  kingdom  from  God.  .  .  ."  l 

But  this  was  the  theory  that  was  superimposed  upon  the 
established  facts.  The  reality  of  feudalism  was  its  voluntary 
co-operation. 

"The  feudal  state  was  one  in  which,  it  has  been  said,  private 
law  had  usurped  the  place  of  public  law."  But  rather  is  it 
truer  that  public  law  had  failed  and  vanished  and  private  law 
had  come  in  to  fill  the  vacuum.  Public  duty  had  become 
private  obligation. 

§  3 

We  have  already  mentioned  various  kingdoms  of  the  bar- 
barian tribes  who  set  up  a  more  or  less  flimsy  dominion  over 
this  or  that  area  amidst  the  debris  of  the  empire,  the  kingdoms 
of  the  Suevi  and  West  Goths  in  Spain,  the  East-Gothic  kingdom 
in  Italy,  and  the  Italian  Lombard  kingdom  which  succeeded  the 
Goths  after  Justinian  had  expelled  the  latter  and  after  the 
great  pestilence  had  devastated  Italy.  The  Frankish  kingdom 
was  another  such  barbarian  power  which  arose  first  in  what 
is  now  Belgium,  and  which  spread  southward  to  the  Loire, 
but  it  developed  far.  more  strength  and  solidarity  than  any  of 
the  others.  It  was  the  first  real  state  to  emerge  from  the  uni- 
versal wreckage.  It  became  at  last  a  wide  and  vigorous  po- 
litical reality,  and  from  it  are  derived  two  great  powers  of 
modern  Europe,  France  and  the  German  Empire.  Its  founder 
was  Clovis  (481-511)  who  began  as  a  small  king  in  Belgium 
and  ended  with  his  southern  frontiers  nearly  at  the  Pyrenees. 
He  divided  his  kingdom  among  his  four  sons,  but  the  Franks 
1  Encyclopaedia,  Britannica,  article  "Feudalism,"  by  Professor  G.  B.  Adams. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 


611 


retained  a  tradition  of  unity  in  spite  of  this  division,  and  for 
a  time  fraternal  wars  for  a  single  control  united  rather  than 
divided  them.  A  more  serious  split  arose,  however,  through 
the  Latinization  of  the  Western  Franks,  who  occupied  Roman- 
ized Gaul  and  who  learnt  to  speak  the  corrupt  Latin  of  the  sub- 
ject population,  while  the  Franks  of  the  Rhineland  retained 


3krea<  -move  cv  l&y  vtxi&ev  TR2flMKI5H  cEomtnunr  ixi 


their  Low  German  speech.  At  a  low  level  of  civilization,  dif- 
ferences in  language  cause  very  powerful  political  strains.  For 
a  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  Frankish  world  was  split  in  two, 
Ueustria,  the  nucleus  of  France,  speaking  a  Latinish  speech, 
which  became  at  last  the  French  language  we  know,  and  Aus- 
trasia,  the  Rhineland,  which  remained  German.1 

1The  Franks  differed  from  the  Swabians  and  South  Germans,  and  came 
much  nearer  the  Anglo-Saxons  in  that  they  spoke  a  "Low  German"  and 
not  a  "High  German"  dialect.  Their  language  resembled  plattdeutsch 
and  Anglo-Saxon,  and  was  the  direct  parent  of  Dutch  and  Flemish.  In 
fact,  the  Franks  where  they  were  not  Latinized  became  Flemings  and 


612  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

We  will  not  tell  here  of  the  decay  of  the  dynasty,  the  Mero- 
vingian dynasty,  founded  by  Clovis;  nor  how  in  Austrasia  a 
certain  court  official,  the  Mayor  of  the  Palace,  gradually  be- 
came the  king  de  facto  and  used  the  real  king  as  a  puppet. 
The  position  of  Mayor  of  the  Palace  also  became  hereditary 
in  the  seventh  century,  and  in  687  a  certain  Pepin  of  Heris- 
thal,  the  Austrasian  Mayor  of  the  Palace,  had  conquered  Neus- 
tria  and  reunited  all  the  Franks.  He  was  followed  in  714  by 
his  son,  Charles  Martel,  who  also  bore  no  higher  title  than 
Mayor  of  the  Palace.  (His  poor  little  Merovingian  kings  do 
not  matter  in  the  slightest  degree  to  us  here.)  It  was  this 
Charles  Martel  who  stopped  the  Moslems.  They  had  pushed 
as  far  as  Tours  when  he  met  them,  and  in  a  great  battle  be- 
tween that  place  and  Poitiers  (732)  utterly  defeated  them  and 
broke  their  spirit.  Thereafter  the  Pyrenees  remained  their  ut- 
most boundary;  they  came  no  further  into  Western  Europe. 

Charles  Martel  divided  his  power  between  two  sons,  but  one 
resigned  and  went  into  a  monastery,  leaving  his  brother  Pepin 
sole  ruler.  This  Pepin  it  was  who  finally  extinguished  the 
descendants  of  Clovis.  He  sent  to  the  Pope  to  ask  who  was 
the  true  king  of  the  Franks,  the  man  who  held  the  power  or 
the  man  who  wore  the  crown ;  and  the  Pope,  who  was  in  need 
of  a  supporter,  decided  in  favour  of  the  Mayor  of  the  Palace. 
So  Pepin  was  chosen  king  at  a  gathering  of  the  Frankish 
nobles  in  the  Merovingian  capital  Soissons,  and  anointed  and 
crowned.  That  was  in  751.  The  Franco-Germany  he  united 
was  consolidated  by  his  son  Charlemagne.  It  held  together 
until  the  death  of  his  grandson  Louis  (840),  and  then  France 
and  Germany  broke  away  again — to  the  great  injury  of  man- 
kind. It  was  not  a  difference  of  race  or  temperament,  it  was 
a  difference  of  language  and  tradition  that  split  these  Frankish 
peoples  asunder. 

That  old  separation  of  Neustria  and  Austrasia  still  works 
out  in  bitter  consequences.  In  1916  the  ancient  conflict  of 
Neustria  and  Austrasia  had  broken  out  into  war  once  more. 
In  the  August  of  that  year  the  present  writer  visited  Soissons, 
and  crossed  the  temporary  wooden  bridge  that  had  been  built  by 

"Dutchmen"  of  South  Holland  (North  Holland  is  still  Friesisch — i.e. 
Anglo-Saxon).  The  "French"  which  the  Latinized  Franks  and  Burgundians 
spoke  in  the  seventh  to  the  tenth  centuries  was  remarkably  like  the 
Rumansch  language  of  Switzerland,  judging  from  the  vestiges  that  re- 
main in  old  documents. — H.  H.  J. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  613 

the  English  after  the  Battle  of  the  Aisne  from  the  main  part 
of  the  town  to  the  suburb  of  St.  Medard.  Canvas  screens 
protected  passengers  upon  the  bridge  from  the  observation  of  the 
German  sharpshooters  who  were  sniping  from  their  trenches 
down  the  curve  of  the  river.  He  went  with  his  guides  across 
a  field  and  along  by  the  wall  of  an  orchard  in  which  a  German 
shell  exploded  as  he  passed.  So  he  reached  the  battered  build- 
ings that  stand  upon  the  site  of  the  ancient  abbey  of  St.  Medard, 
in  which  the  last  Merovingian  was  deposed  and  Pepin  the  Short 
was  crowned  in  his  stead.  Beneath  these  ancient  buildings 
there  were  great  crypts,  very  useful  as  dug-outs  —  for  the  Ger- 
man advanced  lines  were  not  more  than  a  couple  of  hundred 
yards  away.  The  sturdy  French  soldier  lads  were  cooking 
and  resting  in  these  shelters,  and  lying  down  to  sleep  among 
the  stone  coffins  that  had  held  the  bones  of  their  Merovingian 
kings. 


The  populations  over  which  Charles  Martel  and  King  Pepin 
ruled  were  at  very  different  levels  of  civilization  in  different 
districts.  To  the  west  and  south  the  bulk  of  the  people  con- 
sisted of  Latinized  and  Christian  Kelts;  in  the  central  regions 
these  rulers  had  to  deal  with  such  more  or  less  Christianized 
Germans  as  the  Franks  and  Burgundians  and  Alemanni;  to 
the  north-east  were  still  pagan  Frisians  and  Saxons;  to  the 
east  were  the  Bavarians,  recently  Christianized  through  the 
activities  of  St.  Boniface;  and  to  the  east  of  them  again  pagan 
Slavs  and  Avars.  The  "Paganism"  of  the  Germans  and  Slavs 
was  very  similar  to  the  primitive  religion  of  the  Greeks; 
it  was  a  manly  religion  in  which  temple,  priest,  and  sacrifices 
played  a  small  part,  and  its  gods  were  like  men,  a  kind  of 
"school  prefects"  of  more  powerful  beings  who  interfered  im- 
pulsively and  irregularly  in  human  affairs.  The  Germans  had 
a  Jupiter  in  Odin,  a  Mars  in  Thor,  a  Venus  in  Freya,  and 
so  on.  Throughout  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries  a  steady 
process  of  conversion  to  Christianity  went  on  amidst  these  Ger- 
man and  Slavonic  tribes. 

It  will  be  interesting  to  English-speaking  readers  to  note 
that  the  most  zealous  and  successful  missionaries  among  the 
Saxons  and  Frisians  came  from  England.  Christianity  was 
twice  planted  in  the  British  Isles.  It  was  already  there  while 


614.  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Britain  was  a  part  of  the  Roman  Empire ;  a  martyr,  St.  Alban, 
gave  his  name  to  the  town  of  St.  Albans,  and  nearly  every  visitor 
to  Canterbury  has  also  visited  little  old  St.  Martin's  church, 
which  was  used  during  the  Roman  times.  From  Britain,  as 
we  have  already  said,  Christianity  spread  beyond  the  imperial 
boundaries  into  Ireland — the  chief  missionary  was  St.  Patrick — 
and  there  was  a  vigorous  monastic  movement  with  which  are 
connected  the  names  of  St.  Columba  and  the  religious  settle- 
ments of  lona.  Then  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  came  the 
fierce  and  pagan  English,  and  they  cut  off  the  early  Church 
of  Ireland  from  the  main  body  of  Christianity.  In  the  sev- 
enth century  Christian  missionaries  were  converting  the  Eng- 
lish, both  in  the  north  from  Ireland  and  in  the  south  from 
Rome.  The  Rome  mission  was  sent  by  Pope  Gregory  the  Great 
just  at  the  close  of  the  sixth  century.  The  story  goes  that  he 
saw  English  boys  for  sale  in  the  Roman  slave  market,  though 
it  is  a  little  difficult  to  understand  how  they  got  there.  They 
were  very  fair  and  good-looking.  In  answer  to  his  inquiries, 
he  was  told  that  they  were  Angles.  "Not  Angles,  but  Angels," 
said  he,  "had  they  but  the  gospel." 

The  mission  worked  through  the  seventh  century.  Before 
that  century  was  over,  most  of  the  English  were  Christians; 
though  Mercia,  the  central  English  kingdom,  held  out  stoutly 
against  the  priests  and  for  the  ancient  faith  and  ways.  And 
there  was  a  swift  progress  in  learning  upon  the  part  of  these 
new  converts.  The  monasteries  of  the  kingdom  of  Northum- 
bria  in  the  north  of  England  became  a  centre  of  light  and 
learning.  Theodore  of  Tarsus  was  one  of  the  earliest  arch- 
bishops of  Canterbury  (669-690).  "While  Greek  was  utterly 
unknown  in  the  west  of  Europe,  it  was  mastered  by  some  of 
the  pupils  of  Theodore.  The  monasteries  contained  many  monks 
who  were  excellent  scholars.  Most  famous  of  all  was  Bede, 
known  as  the  ^7renerable  Bede  (673-735),  a  monk  of  Jarrow 
(on  Tyne).  He  had  for  his  pupils  the  six  hundred  monks  of 
that  monastery,  besides  the  many  strangers  who  came  to  hear 
him.  He  gradually  mastered  all  the  learning  of  his  day,  and 
left  at  his  death  forty-five  volumes  of  his  writings,  the  most 
important  of  which  are  'The  Ecclesiastical  History  of  the  Eng- 
lish' and  his  translation  of  the  Gospel  of  John  into  English. 
His  writings  were  widely  known  and  used  throughout  Europe. 
He  reckoned  all  dates  from  the  birth  of  Christ,  and  through 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 


615 


his  works  the  use  of  Christian  chronology  hecame  common  in 
Europe.     Owing  to  the  large  number  of  monasteries  and  monks 


ENGLAND 

in 

64O2WI 


in  Northumbria,   that  part  of  England  was  for  a  time  far 
in  advance  of  the  south  in  civilization."  l 

In  the  seventh  and  eighth  centuries  we  find  the  English 
missionaries  active  upon  the  eastern  frontiers  of  the  Frankish 

1 A  General  History  of  Europe,  Thatcher  and  Schwill. 


616  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

kingdom.  Chief  among  these  was  St.  Boniface  (680-755), 
who  was  born  at  Crediton,  in  Devonshire,  who  converted  the 
Frisians,  Thuringians,  and  Hessians,  and  who  was  martyred  in 
Holland. 

Both  in  England  and  on  the  Continent  the  ascendant  rulers 
seized  upon  Christianity  as  a  unifying  force  to  cement  their 
conquests.  Christianity  became  a  banner  for  aggressive  chiefs 
— as  it  did  in  Uganda  in  Africa  in  the  bloody  days  before  tha,t 
country  was  annexed  to  the  British  Empire.  After  Pepin, 
who  died  in  768,  came  two  sdns,  Charles  and  another,  who 
divided  his  kingdom;  but  the  brother  of  Charles  died  in  771, 
and  Charles  then  became  sole  king  (771-814)  of  the  growing 
realm  of  the  Franks.  This  Charles  is  known  in  history  as 
Charles  the  Great,  or  Charlemagne.  As  in  the  case  of  Alexan- 
der the  Great  and  Julius  Csesar,  posterity  has  enormously  ex- 
aggerated his  memory.  He  made  his  wars  of  aggression  defi- 
nitely religious  wars.  All  the  world  of  north-western  Europe, 
which  is  now  Great  Britain,  France,  Germany,  Denmark, 
and  Norway  and  Sweden,  was  in  the  ninth  century  an  arena 
of  bitter  conflict  between  the  old  faith  and  the  new.  Whole 
nations  were  converted  to  Christianity  by  the  sword  just  as 
Islam  in  Arabia,  Central  Asia,  and  Africa  had  converted 
whole  nations  a  century  or  so  before. 

With  fire  and  sword  Charlemagne  preached  the  Gospel  of 
the  Cross  to  the  Saxons,  Bohemians,  and  as  far  as  the  Danube 
into  what  is  now  Hungary ;  he  carried  the  same  teaching  down 
the  Adriatic  Coast  through  what  is  now  Dalmatia,  and  drove 
the  Moslems  back  from  the  Pyrenees  as  far  as  Barcelona. 

Moreover,  he  it  was  who  sheltered  Egbert,  an  exile  from 
Wessex,  in  England,  and  assisted  him  presently  to  establish 
himself  as  King  in  Wessex  (802).  Egbert  subdued  the  Brit- 
ons in  Cornwall,  as  Charlemagne  conquered  the  Britons  of 
Brittany,  and,  by  a  series  of  wars,  which  he  continued  after 
the  death  of  his  Frankish  patron,  made  himself  at  last  the  first 
K.ng  of  all  England  (828). 

But  the  attacks  of  Charlemagne  upon  the  last  strongholds  of 
paganism  provoked  a  vigorous  reaction  on  the  part  of  the  un- 
converted. The  Christianized  English  had  retained  very  little 
of  the  seamanship  that  had  brought  them  from  the  mainland, 
and  the  Franks  had  not  yet  become  seamen.  As  the  Christian 
propaganda  of  Charlemagne  swept  towards  the  shores  of  the 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 


617 


North  and  Baltic  Seas,  the  pagans  were  driven  to  the  sea.  They 
retaliated  for  the  Christian  persecutions  with  plundering  raids 
and  expeditions  against  the  northern  coasts  of  France  and 


J.TSH. 


ENGLATMD 

atr-the 
Treaty 

676 

Alfreds  kingdom.. 


against  Christian  England.  These  pagan  Saxons  and  English 
of  the  mainland  and  their  kindred  from  Denmark  and  Nor- 
way are  the  Danes  and  Northmen  of  our  national  histories. 
They  were  also  called  Vikings,1  which  means  "inlet-men,"  be- 
1  N.B.— Vik-ings,  not  Vi-kings,  Vik  =  a  fiord  or  inlet. 


618  THE  OUTLINE  Ol    HISTORY 

cause  they  came  from  the  deep  inlets  of  the  Scandinavian  coast. 
They  came  in  long  black  galleys,  making  little  use  of  sails. 
Most  of  our  information  about  these  wars  and  invasions  of  the 
Pagan  Vikings  is  derived  from  Christian  sources,  and  so 
we  have  abundant  information  of  the  massacres  and  atrocities 
of  their  raids  and  very  little  about  the  cruelties  inflicted  upon 
their  pagan  brethren,  the  Saxons,  at  the  hands  of  Charlemagne, 
Their  animus  against  the  cross  and  against  monks  and  nuns 
was  extreme.  They  delighted  in  the  burning  of  monasteries 
and  nunneries  and  the  slaughter  of  their  inmates. 

Throughout  the  period  between  the  fifth  and  the  ninth  cen- 
turies these  Vikings  or  Northmen  wyere  learning  seamanship, 
becoming  bolder,  and  ranging  further.  They  braved  the  north- 
ern seas  until  the  icy  shores  of  Greenland  were  a  familiar 
haunt,  and  by  the  ninth  century  they  had  settlements  (of  which 
Europe  in  general  knew  nothing)  in  America.  In  the  tenth 
and  eleventh  centuries  many  of  their  sagas  began  to  be  written 
down  in  Iceland.  They  saw  the  world  in  terms  of  valiant  ad- 
venture. They  assailed  the  walrus,  the  bear,  and  the  whale.  In 
their  imaginations,  a  great  and  rich  city  to  the  south,  a  sort  of 
confusion  of  Rome  and  Byzantium,  loomed  large.  They  called 
it  "Miklagard"  (Michael's  court)  or  Micklegarth.  The  mag- 
netism of  Micklegarth  was  to  draw  the  descendants  of  these 
Northmen  down  into  the  Mediterranean  by  two  routes,  by  the 
west  and  also  across  Russia  from  the  Baltic,  as  we  shall  tell 
later.  By  the  Russian  route  went  also  the  kindred  Swedes. 

So  long  as  Charlemagne  and  Egbert  lived,  the  Vikings  were 
no  more  than  raiders;  but  as  the  ninth  century  wore  on,  these 
raids  developed  into  organized  invasions.  In  several  districts 
of  England  the  hold  of  Christianity  was  by  no  means  firm  as 
yet.  In  Mercia  in  particular  the  pagan  Northmen  found  sym- 
pathy and  help.  By  886  the  Danes  had  conquered  a  fair  part 
of  England,  and  the  English  king,  Alfred  the  Great,  had  rec- 
ognized their  rule  over  their  conquests,  the  Dane-law,  in  the 
pact  he  made  with  Guthrum  their  leader.  A  little  later,  in  912, 
another  expedition  under  Rolf  the  Ganger  established  itself 
upon  the  coast  of  France  in  the  region  that  was  known  hence- 
forth as  Normandy  (=  Northman-dy).  But  of  how  there  was 
presently  a  fresh  conquest  of  England  by  the  Danes,  and  how 
finally  the  Duke  of  Normandy  became  King  of  England,  we 
cannot  tell  at  any  length.  There  were  very  small  racial  and 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  619 

social  differences  between  Angle,  Saxon,  Jute,  Dane,  or  Nor- 
man ;  and  though  these  changes  loom  large  in  the  imaginations 
of  the  English,  they  are  seen  to  be  very  slight  rufflings  indeed 
of  the  stream  of  history  when  we  measure  them  by  the  stand- 
ards of  a  greater  world.  The  issue  between  Christianity  and 
paganism  vanished  presently  from  the  struggle.  By  the  Treaty 
of  Wedmore  the  Danes  agreed  to  be  baptized  if  they  were  as- 
sured of  their  conquests ;  and  the  descendants  of  Rolf  in  Nor- 
mandy were  not  merely  Christianized,  but  they  learnt  to  speak 
French  from  the  more  civilized  people  about  them,  forgetting 
their  own  Norse  tongue.  Of  much  greater  significance  in  the 
history  of  mankind  are  the  relations  of  Charlemagne  with  his 
neighbours  to  the  south  and  east,  and  to  the  imperial  tradition. 

§  5 

Through  Charlemagne  the  tradition  of  the  Roman  Ca3sar  was 
revived  in  Europe.  The  Roman  Empire  was  dead  and  de- 
caying; the  Byzantine  Empire  was  far  gone  in  decline;  but 
the  education  and  mentality  of  Europe  had  sunken  to  a  level  at 
which  new  creative  political  ideas  were  probably  impossible.  In 
all  Europe  there  survived  not  a  tithe  of  the  speculative  vigour 
that  we  find  in  the  Athenian  literature  of  the  fifth  century  B.C. 
There  was  no  power  to  postulate  a  new  occasion  or  to  conceive 
and  organize  a  novel  political  method.  Official  Christianity 
had  long  overlaid  and  accustomed  itself  to  ignore  those  strange 
teachings  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  from  which  it  had  arisen.  The 
Roman  Church,  clinging  tenaciously  to  its  possession  of  the 
title  of  pontifex  maximus,  had  long  since  abandoned  its  ap- 
pointed task  of  achieving  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven.  It  was 
preoccupied  with  the  revival  of  Roman  ascendancy  on  earth, 
which  it  conceived  of  as  its  inheritance.  It  had  become  a 
political  body,  using  the  faith  and  needs  of  simple  men  to 
forward  its  schemes.  Europe  drifted  towards  a  dreary  imita- 
tion and  revival  of  the  misconceived  failures  of  the  past.  For 
eleven  centuries  from  Charlemagne  onwards,  "Emperors"  and 
"Caesars"  of  this  line  and  that  come  and  go  in  the  history  of 
Europe  like  fancies  in  a  disordered  mind.  We  shall  have  to 
tell  of  a  great  process  of  mental  growth  in  Europe,  of  enlarged 
horizons  and  accumulating  power,  but  it  was  a  process  that 
went  on  independently  of,  and  in  spite  of,  the  political  forms 


620 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  621 

of  the  time,  until  at  last  it  shattered  those  forms  altogether. 
Europe  during  those  eleven  centuries  of  the  imitation  Caesars 
which  began  with  Charlemagne,  and  which  closed  only  in  the 
monstrous  bloodshed  of  1914-1918,  has  been  like  a  busy  factory 
owned  by  a  somnambulist,  who  is  sometimes  quite  unimpor- 
tant and  sometimes  disastrously  in  the  way.  Or  rather  than 
a  somnambulist,  let  us  say  by  a  corpse  that  magically  simulates 
a  kind  of  life.  The  Roman  Empire  staggers,  sprawls,  is  thrust 
off  the  stage,  and  reappears,  and — if  we  may  carry  the  image 
one  step  further — it  is  the  Church  of  Rome  which  plays  the 
part  of  the  magician  and  keeps  this  corpse  alive. 

And  throughout  the  whole  period  there  is  always  a  struggle 
going  on  for  the  control  of  the  corpse  between  the  spiritual  and 
various  temporal  powers.  We  have  already  noted  the  spirit  of 
St.  Augustine's  City  of  God.  It  was  a  book  which  we  know 
Charlemagne  read,  or  had  read  to  him — for  his  literary  accom- 
plishments are  rather  questionable.  He  conceived  of  this  Chris- 
tian Empire  as  being  ruled  and  maintained  in  its  orthodoxy  by 
some  such  great  Caesar  as  himself.  He  was  to  rule  even  the 
Pope.  But  at  Rome  the  view  taken  of  the  revived  empire  dif- 
fered a  little  from  that.  There  the  view  taken  was  that  the 
Christian  Caesar  must  be  anointed  and  guided  by  the  Pope— 
who  would  even  have  the  power  to  excommunicate  and  depose 
him.  Even  in  the  time  of  Charlemagne  this  divergence  of  view 
was  apparent.  In  the  following  centuries  it  became  acute. 

The  idea  of  the  revived  Empire  dawned  only  very  gradually 
upon  the  mind  of  Charlemagne.  At  first  he  was  simply  the 
ruler  of  his  father's  kingdom  of  the  Franks,  and  his  powers 
were  fully  occupied  in  struggles  with  the  Saxons  and  Bavarians, 
and  with  the  Slavs  to  the  east  of  them,  with  the  Moslem  in 
Spain,  and  with  various  insurrections  in  his  own  dominions. 
And  as  the  result  of  a  quarrel  with  the  King  of  Lombardy, 
his  father-in-law,  he  conquered  Lombardy  and  North  Italy. 
We  have  noted  the  establishment  of  the  Lombards  in  North 
Italy  about  570  after  the  great  pestilence,  and  after  the  over- 
throw of  the  East  Gothic  kings  by  Justinian.  These  Lombards 
had  always  been  a  danger  and  a  fear  to  the  Popes,  and  there 
had  been  an  alliance  between  Pope  and  Prankish  King  against 
them  in  the  time  of  Pepin.  Now  Charlemagne  completely  sub- 
jugated Lombardy  (774),  sent  his  father-in-law  to  a  monastery, 
and  carried  his  conquests  beyond  the  present  north-eastern 


622  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

boundaries  of  Italy  into  Dalmatia  in  776.  In  781  he  caused 
one  of  his  sons,  Pepin,  who  did  not  outlive  him,  to  be  crowned 
King  of  Italy  in  Rome. 

There  was  a  new  Pope,  Leo  III,  in  795,  who  seems  from  the 
first  to  have  resolved  to  make  Charlemagne  emperor.  Hith- 
erto the  court  at  Byzantium  had  possessed  a  certain  indefinite 
authority  over  the  Pope.  Strong  emperors  like  Justinian  had 
bullied  the  Popes  and  obliged  them  to  come  to  Constantinople; 
weak  emperors  had  annoyed  them  ineffectively.  The  idea  of  a 
breach,  both  secular  and  religious,  with  Constantinople  had 
long  been  entertained  at  the  Lateran,1  and  in  the  Frankish 
power  there  seemed  to  be  just  the  support  that  was  necessary  if 
Constantinople  was  to  be  defied.  So  at  his  accession  Leo  III 
sent  the  keys  of  the  tomb  of  St.  Peter  and  a  banner  to  Charle- 
magne as  the  symbols  of  his  sovereignty  in  Rome  as  King 
of  Italy.  Very  soon  the  Pope  had  to  appeal  to  the  protection  he 
had  chosen.  He  was  unpopular  in  Rome ;  he  was  attacked  and 
ill-treated  in  the  streets  during  a  procession,  and  obliged  to 
fly  to  Germany  (799).  Eginhard  says  his  eyes  were  gouged 
out  and  his  tongue  cut  off ;  he  seems,  however,  to  have  had  both 
eyes  and  tongue  again  a  year  later.  Charlemagne  brought  him 
back  and  reinstated  him  (800). 

Then  occurred  a  very  important  scene.  On  Christmas  Day, 
in  the  year  800,  as  Charles  was  rising  from  prayer  in  the 
Church  of  St.  Peter,  the  Pope,  who  had  everything  in  readi- 
ness, clapped  a  crown  upon  his  head  and  hailed  him  Caesar 
and  Augustus.  There  was  great  popular  applause.  But  Egin- 
hard, the  friend  and  biographer  of  Charlemagne,  says  that  the 
new  emperor  was  by  no  means  pleased  by  this  coup  of  Pope 
Leo's.  If  he  had  known  this  was  to  happen,  he  said,  "he 
would  not  have  entered  the  church,  great  festival  though  it 
was."  No  doubt  he  had  been  thinking  and  talking  of  making 
himself  emperor,  but  he  had  evidently  not  intended  that  the 
Pope  should  make  him  emperor.  He  had  some  idea  of  marry- 
ing the  Empress  Irene,  who  at  that  time  reigned  in  Constanti- 
nople, and  so  becoming  monarch  of  both  Eastern  and  Western 
Empires.  He  was  now  obliged  to  accept  the  title  in  the  manner 
that  Leo  III  had  adopted  as  a  gift  from  the  Pope,  and  in  a 
way  that  estranged  Constantinople  and  secured  the  separation 
of  Rome  from  the  Byzantine  Church. 

1  The  Lateran  was  the  earlier  palace  of  the  Popes  in  Rome.     Later  they 
occupied  the  Vatican. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  623 

At  first  Byzantium  was  unwilling  to  recognize  the  imperial 
title  of  Charlemagne.  But  in  810  a  great  disaster  fell  upon 
the  Byzantine  Empire.  The  pagan  Bulgarians,  under  their 
Prince  Krum  (802-814),  defeated  and  destroyed  the  armies 
of  the  Emperor  Nicephorus,  whose  skull  became  a  drinking- 
cup  for  Krum.  The  greater  part  of  the  Balkan  peninsula  was 
conquered  by  these  people.  (The  Bulgarian  and  the  English 
nations  thus  became  established  as  political  unities  almost 
simultaneously.)  After  this  misfortune  Byzantium  was  in  no 
position  to  dispute  this  revival  of  the  empire  in  the  West,  and 
in  812  Charlemagne  was  formally  recognized  by  Byzantine 
envoys  as  Emperor  and  Augustus. 

So  the  Empire  of  Rome,  which  had  died  at  the  hands  of 
Odoacer  in  476,  rose  again  in  800  as  the  "Holy  Roman  Em- 
pire." While  its  physical  strength  lay  north  of  the  Alps,  the 
centre  of  its  idea  was  Rome.  It  was  therefore  from  the  begin- 
ning a  divided  thing  of  uncertain  power,  a  claim  and  an  argu- 
ment rather  than  a  necessary  reality.  The  German  sword  was 
always  clattering  over  the  Alps  into  Italy,  and  missions  and 
legates  toiling  over  in  the  reverse  direction.  But  the  Germans 
could  never  hold  Italy  permanently,  because  they  could  not 
stand  the  malaria  that  the  ruined,  neglected,  undrained  country 
fostered.  And  in  Rome,  as  well  as  in  several  other  of  the  cities 
of  Italy,  there  smouldered  a  more  ancient  tradition,  the  tradi- 
tion of  the  aristocratic  republic,  hostile  to  both  Emperor  and 
Pope. 

§  6 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  have  a  life  of  him  written  by  his 
contemporary,  Eginhard,1  the  character  and  personality  of 
Charlemagne  are  difficult  to  visualize.  Eginhard  lacks  vivid- 
ness; he  tells  many  particulars,  but  not  the  particulars  that 
make  a  man  live  again  in  the  record.  Charlemagne,  he  says, 
was  a  tall  man,  with  a  rather  feeble  voice;  and  he  had  bright, 
eyes  and  a  long  nose.  "The  top  of  his  head  was  round,"  what- 
ever that  may  mean,  and  his  hair  was  "white."  He  had  a  thick, 
rather  short  neck,  and  "his  belly  too  prominent."  He  wore  a 
tunic  with  a  silver  border,  and  gartered  hose.  He  had  a  blue 
cloak,  and  was  always  girt  with  his  sword,  hilt  and  belt  being 

1Eginhard's  Life  of  Karl  the  Great.  (Glaister.) 


624  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  gold  and  silver.  He  was  evidently  a  man  of  great  activity, 
one  imagines  him  moving  quickly,  and  his  numerous  love  affairs 
did  not  interfere  at  all  with  his  incessant  military  and  political 
labours.  He  had  numerous  wives  and  mistresses.  He  took  much 
exercise,  was  fond  of  pomp  and  religious  ceremonies,  and  gave 
generously.  He  was  a  man  of  very  miscellaneous  activity  and 
great  intellectual  enterprise,  and  with  a  self-confidence  that  is 
rather  suggestive  of  William  II,  the  ex-German  Emperor,  the 
last,  perhaps  for  ever,  of  this  series  of  imitation  Caesars  in 
Europe  which  Charlemagne  began. 

The  mental  life  that  Eginhard  records  of  him  is  interesting, 
because  it  not  only  gives  glimpses  of  a  curious  character,  but 
serves  as  a  sample  of  the  intellectuality  of  the  time.  He  could 
read  probably ;  at  meals  he  "listened  to  music  or  reading,"  but 
we  are  told  that  he  had  not  acquired  the  art  of  writing ;  "he  used 
to  keep  his  writing-book  and  tablets  under  his  pillow,  that  when 
he  had  leisure  he  might  practise  his  hand  in  forming  letters, 
but  he  made  little  progress  in  an  art  begun  too  late  in  life.7' 
He  had,  however,  a  real  respect  for  learning  and  a  real  desire 
for  knowledge,  and  he  did  his  utmost  to  attract  men  of  learning 
to  his  court.  Among  others  who  came  was  Alcuin,  a  learned 
Englishman.  All  those  learned  men  were,  of  course,  clergymen, 
there  being  no  other  learned  men,  and  naturally  they  gave  a 
strongly  clerical  tinge  to  the  information  they  imparted  to  their 
master.  At  his  court,  which  was  usually  at  Aix-la-Chapelle  or 
Mayence,  he  maintained  in  the  winter  months  a  curious  institu- 
tion called  his  "school,"  in  which  he  and  his  erudite  associates 
affected  to  lay  aside  all  thoughts  of  worldly  position,  assumed 
names  taken  from  the  classical  writers  or  from  Holy  Writ,  and 
discoursed  upon  theology  and  literature.  Charlemagne  himself 
was  "David."  He  developed  a  considerable  knowledge  of  the- 
ology, and  it  is  to  him  that  we  must  ascribe,  the  addition  of  the 
words  filio  que  to  the  Nicene  Creed,  an  addition  that  finally 
split  the  Latin  and  Greek  churches  asunder.  But  it  is  more 
than  doubtful  if  he  had  any  such  separation  in  mind.  He 
wanted  to  add  a  word  or  so  to  the  creed,  just  as  the  Emperor 
William  II  wanted  to  write  operas  and  paint  pictures,1  and  he 
took  up  what  was  originally  a  Spanish  innovation. 

*The  addition  was  discreetly  opposed  by  Leo  III  "In  the  correspondence 
between  them  the  Pope  assumes  the  liberality  of  a  statesman  and  the 
prince  descends  to  the  prejudice  and  passions  of  a  priest." — Gibbon, 
chap.  Ix. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  625 

Of  his  organization  of  his  empire  there  is  little  to  be  said 
here.  He  was  far  too  restless  and  busy  to  consider  the  quality 
of  his  successor  or  the  condition  of  political  stability,  and  the 
most  noteworthy  thing  in  this  relationship  is  that  he  particu- 
larly schooled  his  son  and  successor,  Louis  the  Pious  (814-840), 
to  take  the  crown  from  the  altar  and  crown  himself.  But  Louis 
the  Pious  was  too  pious  to  adhere  to  those  instructions  when 
the  Pope  made  an  objection. 

The  legislation  of  Charlemagne  was  greatly  coloured  by  Bible 
reading ;  he  knew  his  Bible  well,  as  the  times  went ;  and  it  is 
characteristic  of  him  that  after  he  had  been  crowned  emperor 
he  required  every  male  subject  above  the  age  of  twelve  to  renew 
his  oath  of  allegiance,  and  to  undertake  to  be  not  simply  a  good 
subject,  but  a  good  Christian.  To  refuse  baptism  and  to  re- 
tract after  baptism  were  crimes  punishable  by  death.  He  did 
much  to  encourage  architecture,  and  imported  many  Italian 
architects,  chiefly  from  Ravenna,  to  whom  we  owe  many  of 
the  pleasant  Byzantine  buildings  that  still  at  Worms  and 
Cologne  and  elsewhere  delight  the  tourist  in  the  Rhineland. 
He  founded  a  number  of  cathedrals  and  monastic  schools,  did 
much  to  encourage  the  study  of  classical  Latin,  and  was  a  dis- 
tinguished amateur  of  church  music.  The  possibility  of  his 
talking  Latin  and  understanding  Greek  is  open  to  discussion; 
probably  he  talked  French-Latin.  Frankish,  however,  was  his 
habitual  tongue.  He  made  a  collection  of  old  German  songs 
and  tales,  but  these  were  destroyed  by  his  successor  Louis  the 
Pious  on  account  of  their  paganism. 

He  corresponded  with  Haroun-al-Raschid,  the  Abbasid  Caliph 
at  Bagdad,  who  was  not  perhaps  the  less  friendly  to  him  on 
account  of  his  vigorous  handling  of  the  Omayyad  Arabs  in 
Spain.  Gibbon  supposes  that  this  "public  correspondence  was 
founded  on  vanity,"  and  that  "their  remote  situation  left  no 
room  for  a  competition  of  interest."  But  with  the  Byzantine 
Empire  between  them  in  the  East,  and  the  independent  cal- 
iphate of  Spain  in  the  West,  and  a  common  danger  in  the  Turks 
of  the  great  plains,  they  had  three  very  excellent  reasons  for 
cordiality.  Haroun-aKRaschid,  says  Gibbon,  sent  Charlemagne 
by  his  ambassadors  a  splendid  tent,  a  water  clock,  an  elephant, 
and  the  keys  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  The  last  item  suggests 
that  Charlemagne  was  to  some  extent  regarded  by  the  Saracen 
monarch  as  the  protector  of  the  Christians  and  Christian  prop- 


626  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

erties  in  his  dominions.     Some  historians  declare  explicitly 
that  there  was  a  treaty  to  that  effect. 

§  7 

The  Empire  of  Charlemagne  did  not  outlive  his  son  and  sue 
cessor,  Louis  the  Pious.  It  fell  apart  into  its  main  constituents. 
The  Latinized  Keltic  and  Frankish  population  of  Gaul  begins 
now  to  be  recognizable  as  France,  though  this  France  was  broken 
up  into  a  number  of  dukedoms  and  principalities,  often  with 
no  more  than  a  nominal  unity;  the  German-speaking  peoples 
between  the  Ehine  and  the  Slavs  to  the  east  similarly  begin  to 
develop  an  even  more  fragmentary  intimation  of  Germany. 
When  at  length  a  real  emperor  reappears  in  Western  Europe 
(962),  he  is  not  a  Frank,  but  a  Saxon;  the  conquered  in  Ger- 
many have  become  the  masters. 

It  is  impossible  here  to  trace  the  events  of  the  ninth  and  tenth 
centuries  in  any  detail,  the  alliances,  the  treacheries,  the  claims 
and  acquisitions.  Everywhere  there  was  lawlessness,  war,  and 
a  struggle  for  power.  In  987  the  nominal  kingdom  of  France 
passed  from  the  hands  of  the  Carlovingians,  the  last  descendants 
of  Charlemagne,  into  the  hands  of  Hugh  Capet,  who  founded 
a  new  dynasty.  Most  of  his  alleged  subordinates  were  in  fact 
independent,  and  willing  to  make  war  on  the  king  at  the  slightest 
provocation.  The  dominions  of  the  Duke  of  Normandy,  for 
example,  were  more  extensive  and  more  powerful  than  the 
patrimony  of  Hugh  Capet.  Almost  the  only  unity  of  this 
France  over  which  the  king  exercised  a  nominal  authority  lay 
in  the  common  resolution  of  its  great  provinces  to  resist  in- 
corporation in  any  empire  dominated  either  by  a  German  ruler 
or  by  the  Pope.  Apart  from  the  simple  organization  dictated 
by  that  common  will,  France  was  a  mosaic  of  practically  in- 
dependent nobles.  It  was  an  era  of  castle-building  and  fortifi- 
cation, and  what  was  called  "private  war"  throughout  all 
Europe. 

The  state  of  Rome  in  the  tenth  century  is  almost  indescri- 
bable. The  decay  of  the  Empire  of  Charlemagne  left  the  Pope 
without  a  protector,  threatened  by  Byzantium  and  the  Saracens 
(who  had  taken  Sicily),  and  face  to  face  with  the  unruly  nobles 
of  Rome.  Among  the  most  powerful  of  these  were  two  women, 
Theodora  and  Marozia.  mother  and  daughter1  who  in  succes- 
1  Gibbon  mentions  a  second  Theodora,  the  sister  of  Marozia 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  627 

sion  held  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo  (§  1),  which  Theophylact, 
the  patrician  husband  of  Theodora,  had  seized  with  most  of  the 
temporal  power  of  the  Pope;  these  two  women  were  as  bold, 
unscrupulous,  and  dissolute  as  any  maje  prince  of  the  time 
could  have  been,  and  they  are  abused  by  historians  as  though 
they  were  ten  times  worse.  Marozia  seized  and  imprisoned 
Pope  John  X  (928),  who  speedily  died  under  her  care.  She 
subsequently  made  her  illegitimate  son  pope,  under  the  title  of 
John  XL  After  him  her  grandson,  John  XII,  filled  the  chair 
of  St.  Peter.  Gibbon's  account  of  the  manners  and  morals  of 
John  XII  takes  refuge  at  last  beneath  a  veil  of  Latin  footnotes. 
This  Pope,  John  XII,  was  finally  degraded  by  the  new  German 
Emperor  Otto,  who  came  over  the  Alps  and  down  into  Italy  to 
be  crowned  in  962.1 

This  new  line  of  Saxon  emperors,  which  thus  comes  into 
prominence,  sprang  from  a  certain  Henry  the  Fowler,  who  was 
elected  King  of  Germany  by  an  assembly  of  German  nobles, 
princes,  and  prelates  in  919.  In  936  he  was  succeeded  as  King 
by  his  son,  Otto  I,  surnamed  the  Great,  who  was  also  elected 
to  be  his  successor  at  Aix-la-Chapelle,  and  who  finally  descended 
upon  Rome  at  the  invitation  of  John  XII,  to  be  crowned 
emperor  in  962.  His  subsequent  degradation  of  John  was 
forced  upon  him  by  that  pope's  treachery.  With  his  assumption 
of  the  imperial  dignity,  Otto  I  did  not  so  much  overcome  Rome 
as  restore  the  ancient  tussle  of  Pope  and  Emperor  for  ascend- 
ancy to  something  like  decency  and  dignity  again.  Otto  I  was 
followed  by  Otto  II  (973-983),  and  he  again  by  a  third  Otto 
(983-1002).2 

The  struggle  between  the  Emperor  and  the  Pope  for  ascend- 
ancy over  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  plays  a  large  part  in  the 

1This  period  Is  a  tangled  one.  The  authority  is  Gregorovius,  History 
of  the  City  of  Rome  in  the  Middle  Ages.  John  X  owed  the  tiara  to  his 
mistress,  the  elder  Theodora,  but  he  was  "the  foremost  statesman  of  his 
age."  He  fell  in  928  owing  to  Marozia.  John  XI  became  Pope  in  931 
(after  two  Popes  had  intervened  in  the  period  928-931)  ;  he  was  Marozia's 
son,  possibly  by  Pope  Sergius  III.  John  XII  did  not  come  at  once  after 
John  XI,  who  died  in  936;  there  were  several  Popes  in  between;  and 
he  became  Pope  in  955. — E.  B. 

2  There  were  three  dynasties  of  emperors  in  the  early  middle  ages: 

Saxon:   Otto  I    (962)    to  Henry  II,  ending  1024. 

Salian:   Conrad  II  to  Henry  V,  ending  about   1125. 

Hohenstaufen :  Conrad  III  to  Frederic  II,  ending  in  1250. 

The  Hohenstaufens  were  Swabian  in  origin.  Then  came  the  Hababurgs 
with  Rudolph  I  in  J273,  who  lasted  until  1918. 


628  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

history  of  the  early  Middle  Ages,  and  we  shall  have  presently 
to  sketch  its  chief  phases.  Though  the  church  never  sank  quite 
to  the  level  of  John  XII  again,  nevertheless  the  story  fluctuates 
through  phases  of  great  violence,  confusion,  and  intrigue.  Yet 
the  outer  history  of  Christendom  is  not  the  whole  history  of 
Christendom.  That  the  Lateran  was  as  cunning,  foolish,  and 
criminal  as  most  other  contemporary  courts  has  to  be  recorded ; 
but,  if  we  are  to  keep  due  proportions  in  this  history,  it  must 
not  be  unduly  emphasized.  We  must  remember  that  through 
all  those  ages,  leaving  profound  consequences,  but  leaving  no 
conspicuous  records  upon  the  historian's  page,  countless  men 
and  women  were  touched  by  that  Spirit  of  Jesus  which  still 
lived  and  lives  still  at  the  core  of  Christianity,  that  they  led 
lives  that  were  on  the  whole  gracious  and  helpful,  and  that  they 
did  unselfish  and  devoted  deeds.  Through  those  ages  such  lives 
cleared  the  air  and  made  a  better  world  possible.  Just  as  in 
the  Moslem  world  the  Spirit  of  Islam  generation  by  generation 
produced  its  crop  of  courage,  integrity,  and  kindliness. 


§8 

While  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  the  kingdoms  of  France 
and  England  were  thus  appearing  amidst  the  extreme  political 
fragmentation  of  the  civilization  of  Western  Europe,  both  that 
civilization  and  the  Byzantine  Empire  were  being  subjected  to 
a  threefold  attack:  from  the  Saracen  powers,  from  the  North- 
men, and,  more  slowly  developed  and  most  formidable  of  all, 
from  a  new  westward  thrust  of  the  Turkish  peoples  through 
South  Russia,  and  also  by  way  of  Armenia  and  the  Empire 
of  Bagdad  from  Central  Asia. 

After  the  overthrow  of  the  Omayyads  by  the  Abbasid  dynasty, 
the  strength  of  the  Saracenic  impulse  against  Europe  dimin- 
ished. Islam  was  no  longer  united.  Spain  was  under  a  sepa- 
rate Omayyad  Caliph,  North  Africa,  though  nominally  sub- 
ject to  the  Abbasids,  was  really  independent,  and  presently 
(969)  Egypt  became  a  separate  power  with  a  Shiite  Caliph  of 
its  own,  a  pretender  claiming  descent  from  Ali  and  Fatima 
(the  Fatimite  Caliphate).  These  Egyptian  Fatimites,  the 
green  flag  Moslems,  were  fanatics  in  comparison  with  the 
Abbasids,  and  did  much  to  embitter  the  genial  relations  of 
Islam  and  Christianity.  They  took  Jerusalem,  and  interfered 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 


629 


FRA1XLCE  a*t*u?  doge  ef^ie. 


eJ.FlM. 


630  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

with  the  Christian  access  to  the  Holy  Sepulchre.  On  the  other 
side  of  the  shrunken  Abbasid  domain  there  was  also  a  Shiite 
kingdom  in  Persia.  The  chief  Saracen  conquest  in  the  ninth 
century  was  Sicily;  but  this  was  not  overrun  in  the  grand  old 
style  in  a  year  or  so,  but  subjugated  tediously  through  a  long 
century,  and  with  many  set-backs.  The  Spanish  Saracens  dis- 
puted in  Sicily  with  the  Saracens  from  Africa.  In  Spain  the 
Saracens  were  giving  ground  before  a  renascent  Christian  effort. 
Nevertheless,  the  Byzantine  Empire  and  Western  Christendom 
were  still  so  weak  upon  the  Mediterranean  Sea  that  the  Saracen 
raiders  and  pirates  from  North  Africa  were  able  to  raid  almost 
unchallenged  in  South  Italy  and  the  Greek  Islands. 

But  now  a  new  force  was  appearing  in  the  Mediterranean. 
We  have  already  remarked  that  the  Roman  Empire  never  ex- 
tended itself  to  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  Sea,  nor  had  ever  the 
vigour  to  push  itself  into  Denmark.  The  Nordic  Aryan  peoples 
of  these  neglected  regions  learnt  much  from  the  empire  that 
was  unable  to  subdue  them ;  as  we  have  already  noted,  they 
developed  the  art  of  shipbuilding  and  became  bold  seamen; 
they  spread  across  the  North  Sea  to  the  west,  and  across  the 
Baltic  and  up  the  Russian  rivers  into  the  very  heart  of  what 
is  now  Russia.  One  of  their  earliest  settlements  in  Russia  was 
Novgorod  the  Great.  There  is  the  same  trouble  and  con- 
fusion for  the  student  of  history  with  these  northern 
tribes  as  there  is  with  the  Scythians  of  classical  times, 
and  with  the  Hunnish  Turkish  peoples  of  Eastern  and  Central 
Asia.  They  appear  under  a  great  variety  of  names,  they 
change  and  intermingle.  In  the  case  of  Britain,  for  example, 
the  Angles,  the  Saxons,  and  Jutes  conquered  most  of  what  is 
now  England  in  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries;  the  Danes,  a 
second  wave  of  practically  the  same  people,  followed  in  the 
eighth  and  ninth;  and  in  1016  a  Danish  King,  Canute  the 
Great,  reigned  in  England,  and  not  only  over  England,  but  over 
Denmark  and  Norway.  His  subjects  sailed  to  Iceland,  Green- 
land, and  perhaps  to  the  American  continent.  For  a  time, 
under  Canute  and  his  sons,  it  seemed  possible  that  a  great  con- 
federation of  the  Northmen  might  have  established  itself.  Then 
in  1066  a  third  wave  of  the  same  people  flowed  over  England 
from  the  "Norman"  state  in  France,  where  the  Northmen  had 
been  settled  since  the  days  of  Rolf  the  Ganger  (912),  and 
where  they  had  learnt  to  speak  French.  William,  Duke  of 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  631 

Normandy,  became  the  William  the  Conqueror  (1066)  of  Eng- 
lish history.  Practically,  from  the  standpoint  of  universal  his- 
tory, all  these  peoples  were  the  same  people,  waves 
of  one  Nordic  stock.  These  waves  were  not  only  flowing 
westward,  but  eastward.  Already  we  have  mentioned  a 
very  interesting  earlier  movement  of  the  same  peoples  under 
the  name  of  Goths  from  the  Baltic  to  the  Black  Sea.  We  have 
traced  the  splitting  of  these  Goths  into  the  Ostrogoths  and  the 
Visigoths,  and  the  adventurous  wanderings  that  ended  at  last 
in  the  Ostrogoth  kingdom  in  Italy  and  the  Visigoth  states  in 
Spain.  In  the  ninth  century  a  second  movement  of  the  North- 
men across  Russia  was  going  on  at  the  same  time  that  their 
establishments  in  England  and  their  dukedom  of  Normandy 
Wf3re  coming  into  existence.  The  population  of  South  Scotland, 
England,  East  Ireland,  Flanders,  Normandy,  and  the  Russias 
have  more  elements  in  common  than  we  are  accustomed  to  recog- 
nize. All  are  fundamentally  Gothic  and  Nordic  peoples.  Even 
in  their  weights  and  measures  the  kinship  of  Russian  and 
English  is  to  be  noted ;  both  have  the  Norse  inch  and  foot,  and 
many  early  Norman  churches  in  England  are  built  on  a  scale 
that  shows  the  use  of  the  sajene  (7  ft.)  and  quarter  sajene,  a 
Norse  measure  still  used  in  Russia.  These  "Russian"  Norse- 
men travelled  in  the  summer-time,  using  the  river  routes  that 
abounded  in  Russia ;  they  carried  their  ships  by  portages  from 
the  northward-running  rivers  to  those  flowing-  southward.  They 
appeared  as  pirates,  raiders,  and  traders  both  upon  the  Caspian 
and  the  Black  Sea.  The  Arabic  chroniclers  note  their  appari- 
tion upon  the  Caspian,  and  learnt  to  call  them  Russians.  They 
raided  Persia,  and  threatened  Constantinople  with  a  great  fleet 
of  small  craft  (in  865,  904,  941,  and  1043). l  One  of  these 
Northmen,  Rurik  (circa  850),  established  himself  as  the  ruler 
of  Novgorod  and  his  successor,  the  duke  Oleg,  took  Kief,  and 
laid  the  foundations  of  modern  Russia.  The  fighting  qualities 
of  the  Russian  Vikings  were  speedily  appreciated  at  Constan- 
tinople; the  Greeks  called  them  Varangians,  and  an  Imperial 
Varangian  bodyguard  was  formed.  After  the  conquest  of 
England  by  the' Normans  (1066),  a  number  of  Danes  and 
English  were  driven  into  exile  and  joined  these  Russian  Varan- 
gians, apparently  finding  few  obstacles  to  intercourse  in  their 
speech  and  habits. 

1  These  dates  are  from  Gibbon.     Beazley  gives  865,  904-7,  935,  944,  971-2. 
(History  of  Russia,  Clarendon  Press.) 


632  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Meanwhile  the  Normans  from  Normandy  were  also  finding 
their  way  into  the  Mediterranean  from  the  West.  They  came 
first  as  mercenaries,  and  later  as  independent  invaders;  and 
they  came  mainly,  not,  it  is  to  be  noted,  by  sea,  but  in  scattered 
bands  by  land.  They  came  through  the  Rhineland  and  Italy 
partly  in  the  search  for  warlike  employment  and  loot,  partly  as 
pilgrims.  For  the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  saw  a  great  de- 
velopment of  pilgrimage.  These  Normans,  as  they  grew  power- 
ful, discovered  themselves  such  rapacious  and  vigorous  robbers 
that  they  forced  the  Eastern  Emperor  and  the  Pope  into  a  feeble 
and  ineffective  alliance  against  them  (1053).  They  defeated 
and  captured  and  were  pardoned  by  the  Pope ;  they  established 
themselves  in  Calabria  and  South  Italy,  conquered  Sicily  from 
the  Saracens  (1060-1090),  and  under  Robert  Guiscard,  who 
had  entered  Italy  as  a  pilgrim  adventurer  and  began  his  career 
as  a  brigand  in  Calabria,  threatened  the  Byzantine  Empire 
itself  (1081).  His  army,  which  contained  a  contingent  of 
Sicilian  Moslems,  crossed  from  Brindisi  to  Epirus  in  the  re- 
verse direction  to  that  in  which  Pyrrhus  had  crossed  to  attack 
the  Roman  Republic,  thirteen  centuries  before  (275  B.C.).  He 
laid  siege  to  the  Byzantine  stronghold  of  Durazzo. 

Robert  captured  Durazzo  (1082),  but  the  pressure  of  affairs 
in  Italy  recalled  him,  and  ultimately  put  an  end  to  this  first 
Norman  attack  upon  the  Empire  of  Byzantium,  leaving  the  way 
open  for  the  rule  of  a  comparatively  vigorous  Comnenian 
dynasty  (1081-1204).  In  Italy,  amidst  conflicts  too  complex 
for  us  to  tell  here,  it  fell  to  Robert  Guiscard  to  besiege  and 
sack  Rome  (1084)  ;  and  Gibbon  notes  with  quiet  satisfaction 
the  presence  of  that  contingent  of  Sicilian  Moslems  amongst 
the  looters.  There  were  in  the  twelfth  century  three  other 
Norman  attacks  upon  the  Eastern  power,  one  by  the  son  of 
Robert  Guiscard,  and  the  two  others  directly  from  Sicily  by 
sea.  .  .  . 

But  neither  the  Saracens  nor  the  Normans  pounded  quite  so 
heavily  against  the  old  empire  at  Byzantium  or  against  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  the  vamped-up  Roman  Empire  of  the 
West,  as  did  the  double  thrust  from  the  Turanian  centres  in 
Central  Asia,  of  which  we  must  now  tell.  We  have  already 
noted  the  westward  movement  of  the  Avars,  and  the  Turkish 
Magyars  who  followed  in  their  track.  From  the  days  of  Pepin 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 


633 


OTTO 

the  GREAT 


634 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


I  onward,  the  Frankish  power  and  its  successors  in  Germany 
were  in  conflict  with  these  Eastern  raiders  along  all  the  Eastern 
borderlands.  Charlemagne  held  and  punished  them,  and  estab- 
lished some  sort  of  overlordship  as  far  east  as  the  Carpathians ; 
but  amidst  the  enfeeblement  that  followed  his  death,  these  peo- 
ples, more  or  less  blended  now  in  the  accounts  under  the  name 


Other  Moslem, 
(ShuJbz)  kingdoms 


of  Hungarians,  led  by  the  Magyars,  re-established  their  com- 
plete freedom  again,  and  raided  yearly,  often  as  far  as  the 
Rhine.  They  destroyed,  Gibbon  notes,  the  monastery  of  St. 
Gall  in  Switzerland,  and  the  town  of  Bremen.  Their  great 
raiding  period  was  between  900  and  950.  Their  biggest  effort, 
through  Germany  right  into  France,  thence  over  the  Alps  and 
home  again  by  North  Italy,  was  in  938-9. 

Thrust  southward  by  these  disturbances,  and  by  others  to 
be  presently  noted,  the  Bulgarians  established  themselves  under 
Krum,  between  the  Danube  and  Constantinople.  Originally  a 
Turkish  people,  the  Bulgarians,  since  their  first  appearance  in 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  635 

the  east  of  Russia,  had  become  by  repeated  admixture  almost 
entirely  Slavonic  in  race  and  language.  For  some  time  after 
their  establishment  in  Bulgaria  they  remained  pagan.  Their 
king,  Boris  (852-884),  entertained  Moslem  envoys,  and  seems 
to  have  contemplated  an  adhesion  to  Islam,  but  finally  he  mar- 
ried a  Byzantine  princess,  and  handed  himself  and  his  people 
over  to  the  Christian  faith. 

The  Hungarians  were  drubbed  into  a  certain  respect  for 
civilization  by  Henry  the  Fowler,  the  elected  King  of  Ger- 
many, and  Otto  the  First,  the  first  Saxon  emperor,  in  the  tenth 
century.  But  they  did  not  decide  to  adopt  Christianity  until 
about  A.D.  1000.  Though  they  were  Christianized,  they  re- 
tained their  own  Turko-Finnic  language  (Magyar),  and  they 
retain  it  to  this  day. 

Bulgarians  and  Hungarians  do  not,  however,  exhaust  the 
catalogue  of  the  peoples  whose  westward  movements  embodied 
the  Turkish  thrust  across  South  Russia.  Behind  the  Hungarians 
and  Bulgarians  thrust  the  Khazars,  a  Turkish  people,  with 
whom  were  mingled  a  very  considerable  proportion  of  Jews 
who  had  been  expelled  from  Constantinople,  and  who  had  mixed 
with  them  and  made  many  proselytes.  To  these  Jewish  Khazars 
are  to  be  ascribed  the  great  settlements  of  Jews  in  Poland  and 
Russia.1  Behind  the  Khazars  again,  and  overrunning  them, 
were  the  Petschenegs  (or  Patzinaks),  a  savage  Turkish  people 
who  are  first  heard  of  in  the  ninth  century,  and  who  were  des- 
tined to  dissolve  and  vanish  as  the  kindred  Huns  did  five  cen- 
turies before.  And  while  the  trend  of  all  these  peoples  was  west- 
ward, we  have,  when  we  are  thinking  of  the  present  population  of 
these  South  Russian  regions,  to  remember  also  the  coming  and 
going  of  the  Northmen  between  the  Baltic  and  the  Black  Sea, 
who  interwove  with  the  Turkish  migrants  like  warp  and  woof, 
and  bear  in  mind  also  that  there  was  a  considerable  Slavonic 
population,  the  heirs  and  descendants  of  Scythians,  Sarmatians, 
and  the  like,  already  established  in  these  restless,  lawless,  but 
fertile  areas.  All  these  races  mixed  with  and  reacted  upon  one 
another.  The  universal  prevalence  of  Slavonic  languages,  except 
in  Hungary,  shows  that  the  population  remained  predomi- 
nantly Slav.  And  in  what  is  now  Roumania,  for  all  the  passage 

*"A  Turkish  people  whose  leaders  had  adopted  Judaism,"  says  Harold 
Williams. 


6S6  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  peoples,  and  in  spite  of  conquest  after  conquest,  the  tradition 
and  inheritance  of  the  Roman  provinces  of  Dacia  and  Mcesia 
Inferior  still  kept  a  Latin  speech  and  memory  alive. 

But  this  direct  thrust  of  the  Turkish  peoples  against  Chris- 
tendom to  the  north  of  the  Black  Sea  was,  in  the  end,  not  nearly 
so  important  as  their  indirect  thrust  south  of  it  through  the 
empire  of  the  Caliph.  We  cannot  deal  here  with  the  tribes  and 
dissensions  of  the  Turkish  peoples  of  Turkestan,  nor  with  the 
particular  causes  that  brought  to  the  fore  the  tribes  under  the 
rule  of  the  Seljuk  clan.  In  the  eleventh  century  these  Seljuk 
Turks  broke  with  irresistible  force  not  in  one  army,  but  in  a 
group  of  armies,  and  under  two  brothers,  into  the  decaying  frag- 
ments of  the  Moslem  Empire.  For  Islam  had  long  ceased  to 
be  one  empire.  The  orthodox  Sunnite  Abbasid  rule  had 
shrunken  to  what  was  once  Babylonia ;  and  even  in  Bagdad  the 
Caliph  was  the  mere  creature  of  his  Turkish  palace  guards.  A 
sort  of  mayor  of  the  palace,  a  Turk,  was  the  real  ruler.  East 
of  the  Caliph,  in  Persia,  and  west  of  him  in  Palestine,  Syria, 
and  Egypt,  were  Shiite  heretics.  The  Seljuk  Turks  were 
orthodox  Sunnites;  they  now  swept  down  upon  and  conquered 
the  Shiite  rulers  and  upstarts,  and  established  themselves  as 
the  protectors  of  the  Bagdad  Caliph,  taking  over  the  temporal 
powers  of  the  mayor  of  the  palace.  Very  early  they  conquered 
Armenia  from  the  Greeks,  and  then,  breaking  the  bounds  that 
had  restrained  the  power  of  Islam  for  four  centuries,  they  swept 
on  to  the  conquest  of  Asia  Minor,  almost  to  the  gates  of  Con- 
stantinople. The  mountain  barrier  of  Cilicia  that,  had  held  the 
Moslem  so  long  had  been  turned  by  the  conquest  of  Armenia 
from  the  north-east.  Under  Alp  Arslan,  who  had  united  all  the 
Seljuk  power  in  his  own  hands,  the  Turks  utterly  smashed  the 
Byzantine  army  at  the  battle  of  Manzikert,  or  Melasgird 
(i.071).  The  effect  of  this  battle  upon  people's  imaginations 
was  very  great  Islam,  which  had  appeared  far  gone  in  decay, 
which  had  been  divided  religiously  and  politically,  was  sud- 
denly discovered  to  have  risen  again,  and  it  was  the  secure  old 
Byzantine  Empire  that  seemed  on  the  brink  of  dissolution.  The 
loss  of  Asia  Minor  was  very  swift.  The  Seljuks  established 
themselves  at  Iconium  (Konia),  in  what  is  now  Anatolia.  In 
a  little  while  they  were  in  possession  of  the  fortress  of 
over  against  the  capital. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES          637 

§9 

We  have  already  told  of  the  attack  of  the  Normans  upon  the 
Byzantine  Empire  from  the  west,  and  of  the  battle  of  L)urazzo 
(1081) ;  and  we  have  noted  that  Constantinople  had  still  vivid 
memories  of  the  Eussia  sea  raids  (1043).  Bulgaria,  it  is  true, 
had  been  tamed,  but  there  was  heavy  and  uncertain  warfare 
going -on  with  the  Petschenegs.  North  and  west,  the  emperor's 
hands  were  full.  This  swift  advance  of  the  Turks  into  country 
that  had  been  so  long  securely  Byzantine  must  have  seemed  like 
the  approach  of  final  disaster.  The  Eastern  Emperor,  Michael 
VII,  under  the  pressure  of  these  convergent  dangers,  took  a 
step  that  probably  seemed  both  to  himself  and  to  Eome  of  the 
utmost  political  significance.  He  appealed  to  the  Pope,  Gregory 
VII,  for  assistance.  His  appeal  was  repeated  still  more  urgently 
by  his  successor,  Alexius  Comnenus,  to  Pope  Urban  II. 

To  the  counsellors  of  Rome  this  must  have  presented  itself 
as  a  supreme  opportunity  for  the  assertion  of  the  headship  of 
the  Pope  over  the  entire  Christian  world. 

In  this  history  we  have  traced  the  growth  of  this  idea  of  a 
religious  government  of  Christendom — and  through  Christen- 
dom of  mankind — and  we  have  shown  how  naturally  and  how 
necessarily,  because  of  the  tradition  of  world  empire,  it  found 
a  centre  at  Rome.  The  Pope  of  Rome  was  the  only  Western 
patriarch ;  he  was  the  religious  head  of  a  vast  region  in  which 
the  ruling  tongue  was  Latin ;  the  other  patriarchs  of  the  Ortho- 
dox Church  spoke  Greek,  and  so  were  inaudible  throughout  his 
domains;  and  the  two  words  filio  que,  which  had  been  added 
to  the  Latin  creed,  had  split  off  the  Byzantine  Christians  by 
one  of  those  impalpable  and  elusive  doctrinal  points  upon  which 
there  is  no  reconciliation.  (The  final  rupture  was  in  1054.) 
The  life  of  the  Lateran  changed  in  its  quality  with  every  occu- 
pant of  the  chair  of  St.  Peter:  sometimes  papal  Rome  was  a 
den  of  corruption  and  uncleanness,  as  it  had  been  in  the  days 
of  John  XII;  sometimes  it  was  pervaded  by  the  influence  of 
widely  thinking  and  nobly  thinking  men.  But  behind  the  Pope 
was  the  assembly  of  the  cardinals,  priests,  and  a  great  number 
of  highly  educated  officials,  who  never,  even  in  the  darkest  and 
wildest  days,  lost  sight  altogether  of  the  very  grand  idea  of  a 
divine  world  dominion,  of  a  peace  of  Christ  throughout  the 
earth  that  St.  Augustine  had  expressed.  Through  all  the 


638  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Middle  Ages  that  idea  was  the  guiding  influence  in  Rome.  For 
a  time,  perhaps,  mean  minds  would  prevail  there,  and  in  the 
affairs  of  the  world  Rome  would  play  the  part  of  a  greedy, 
treacherous,  and  insanely  cunning  old  woman ;  followed  a  phase 
of  masculine  and  quite  worldly  astuteness  perhaps,  or  a  phase 
of  exaltation.  Came  an  interlude  of  fanaticism  or  pedantry, 
when  all  the  pressure  was  upon  exact  doctrine.  Or  there  was  a 
moral  collapse,  and  the  Lateran  became  the  throne  of  some 
sensuous  or  aesthetic  autocrat,  ready  to  sell  every  hope  or  honour 
the  church  could  give  for  money  to  spend  upon  pleasure  or 
display.  Yet,  on  the  whole,  the  papal  ship  kept  its  course,  and 
came  presently  into  the  wind  again. 

In  this  period  to  which  we  have  now  come,  the  period  of  the 
eleventh  century,  we  discover  a  Rome  dominated  by  the  per- 
sonality of  an  exceptionally  great  statesman,  Hildebrand,  who 
occupied  various  official  positions  under  a  succession  of  Popes, 
and  finally  became  Pope  himself  under  the  name  of  Gregory 
VII  (1073-1085).  We  find  that  under  his  influence,  vice, 
sloth,  and  corruption  have  been  swept  out  of  the  church,  that 
the  method  of  electing  the  Popes  has  been  reformed,  and  that  a 
great  struggle  has  been  waged  with  the  Emperor  upon  the  mani- 
festly vital  question  of  "investitures,"  the  question  whether 
Pope  or  temporal  monarch  should  have  the  decisive  voice  in 
the  appointment  of  the  bishops  in  their  domains.  Vital  that 
question  was  not  only  to  the  church,  but  to  the  monarchs,  for 
in  many  countries  more  than  a  quarter  of  the  land  was  clerical 
property.  Hitherto  the  Roman  clergy  had  been  able  to  marry ; 
but  now,  to  detach  them  effectually  from  the  world  and  to  make 
them  more  completely  the  instruments  of  the  church,  celibacy 
was  imposed  upon  all  priests.  .  .  . 

Gregory  VII  had  been  prevented  by  his  struggle  over  the  in- 
vestitures from  any  effectual  answer  to  the  first  appeal  from 
Byzantium;  but  he  had  left  a  worthy  successor  in  Urban  II 
(i.087-1099)  ;  and  when  the  letter  of  Alexius  came  to  hand, 
Urban  seized  at  once  upon  the  opportunity  it  afforded  for 
drawing  together  all  the  thoughts  and  forces  of  Western  Europe 
into  one  passion  and  purpose.  Thereby  he  might  hope  to  end 
the  private  warfare  that  prevailed,  and  find  a  proper  outlet  for 
the  immense  energy  of  the  Normans.  He  saw,  too,  an  oppor- 
tunity of  thrusting  the  Byzantine  power  and  Church  aside,  and 
extending  the  influence  of  the  Latin  Church  over  Syria,  Pale%» 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  639 

tine,  and  Egypt.  The  envoys  of  Alexius  were  heard  at  a  church 
council,  hastily  summoned  at  Piazenza  (=  Placentia),  and  next 
year  (1095)  at  Clermont,  Urban  held  a  second  great  council, 
in  which  all  the  slowly  gathered  strength  of  the  Church  was 
organized  for  a  universal  war  propaganda  against  the  Moslems. 
Private  war,  all  war  among  Christians,  was  to  cease  until  the 
infidel  had  been  swept  back  and  the  site  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre 
was  again  in  Christian  hands. 

The  fervour  of  the  response  enables  us  to  understand  the 
great  work  of  creative  organization  that  had  been  done  in  West- 
ern Europe  in  the  previous  five  centuries.  In  the  beginning 
of  the  seventh  century  we  saw  Western  Europe  as  a  chaos  of 
social  and  political  fragments,  with  no  common  idea  nor  hope, 
a  system  shattered  almost  to  a  dust  of  self-seeking  individuals. 
Now  in  the  dawn  of  the  eleventh  century  there  is  everywhere 
a  common  belief,  a  linking  idea,  to  which  men  may  devote  them- 
selves, and  by  which  they  can  co-operate  together  in  a  universal 
enterprise.  We  realize  that,  in  spite  of  much  weakness  and 
intellectual  and  moral  unsoundness,  to  this  extent  the  Christian 
Church  has  worked.  We  are  able  to  measure  the  evil  phases  of 
tenth-century  Rome,  the  scandals,  the  filthiness,  the  murders 
and  violence,  at  their  proper  value  by  the  scale  of  this  fact.  No 
doubt  also  all  over  Christendom  there  had  been  many  lazy, 
evil,  and  foolish  priests;  but  it  is  manifest  that  this  task  of 
teaching  and  co-ordination  that  had  been  accomplished  could 
have  been  accomplished  only  through  a  great  multitude  of  right- 
living  priests  and  monks  and  nuns.  A  new  and  greater 
amphictyony,  the  amphictyony  of  Christendom,  had  come  into 
the  world,  and  it  had  been  built  by  thousands  of  anonymous, 
faithful  lives. 

And  this  response  to  the  appeal  of  Urban  the  Second  was 
not  confined  only  to  what  we  should  call  educated  people.  It 
was  not  simply  knights  and  princes  who  were  willing  to  go 
upon  this  crusade.  Side  by  side  with  the  figure  of  Urban  we 
must  put  the  figure  of  Peter  the  Hermit,  a  type  novel  to  Europe, 
albeit  a  little  reminiscent  of  the  Hebrew  prophets.  This  man 
appeared  preaching  the  crusade  to  the  common  people.  He 
told  a  story — whether  truthful  or  untruthful  hardly  matters  in 
this  connection — of  his  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem,  of  the  wanton 
destruction  at  the  Holy  Sepulchre  by  the  Seljuk  Turks,  who 
took  it  in  1073,  and  of  the  exactions,  brutalities,  and  deliberate 


640  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

cruelties  practised  upon  the  Christian  pilgrims  to  the  Holy 
Places.  Barefooted,  clad  in  a  coarse  garment,  riding  on  an  ass, 
and  bearing  a  huge  cross,  this  man  travelled  about  France  and 
Germany,  and  everywhere  harangued  vast  crowds  in  church  or 
street  or  market-place. 

Here  for  the  first  time  we  discover  Europe  with  an  idea  and 
a  soul !  Here  is  a  universal  response  of  indignation  at  the  story 
of  a  remote  wrong,  a  swift  understanding  of  a  common  cause 
for  rich  and  poor  alike.  You  cannot  imagine  this  thing  hap- 
pening in  the  Empire  of  Augustus  Caesar,  or  indeed  in  any 
previous  state  in  the  world's  history.  Something  of  the  kind 
might  perhaps  have  been  possible  in  the  far  smaller  world  of 
Hellas,  or  in  Arabia  before  Islam.  But  this  movement  affected 
nations,  kingdoms,  tongues,  and  peoples.  It  is  clear  that  we 
are  dealing  with  something  new  that  has  come  into  the  world, 
a  new  clear  connection  of  the  common  interest  with  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  common  man. 

§  10 

From  the  very  first  this  flaming  enthusiasm  was  mixed  with 
baser  elements.  There  was  the  cold  and  calculated  scheme  of 
the  free  and  ambitious  Latin  Church  to  subdue  and  replace  the 
emperor-ruled  Byzantine  Church ;  there  was  the  freebooting  in- 
stinct of  the  Normans,  who  were  tearing  Italy  to  pieces,  which 
turned  readily  enough  to  a  new  and  richer  world  of  plunder; 
and  there  was  something  in  the  multitude  who  now  turned  their 
faces  east,  something  deeper  than  love  in  the  human  composi- 
tion, namely,  fear-born  hate,  that  the  impassioned  appeals  of 
the  propagandists  and  the  exaggeration  of  the  horrors  and  cruel- 
ties of  the  infidel  had  fanned  into  flame.  And  there  was  still 
other  forces ;  the  intolerant  Seljuks  and  the  intolerant  Fatimites 
lay  now  an  impassable  barrier  across  the  eastward  trade  of 
Genoa  and  Venice  that  had  hitherto  flowed  through  Bagdad 
and  Aleppo,  or  through  Egypt.  They  must  force  open  these 
closed  channels,  unless  Constantinople  and  the  Black  Sea  route 
were  to  monopolize  Eastern  trade  altogether.  Moreover,  in 
1094  and  1095  there  had  been  a  pestilence  and  famine  from 
the  Scheldt  to  Bohemia,  and  there  was  great  social  disorganiza- 
tion. "K"o  wonder,"  says  Mr.  Earnest  Barker,  "that  a  stream  of 
emigration  set  towards  the  East,  such  as  would  in  modern  times 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES 


641 


flow  towards  a  newly  discovered  goldfield — a  stream  carrying 
in  its  turbid  waters  much  refuse,  tramps  and  bankrupts,  camp- 
followers  and  hucksters,  fugitive  monks  and  escaped  villeins, 
and  marked  by  the  same  motley  grouping,  the  same  fever  of 


Illustrate  the  FIRST  CRU5ADE- 


life,  the  same  alternations  of  affluence  and  beggary,  which  mark 
the  rush  for  a  goldfield  to-day." 

But  these  were  secondary  contributory  causes.  The  fact  of 
predominant  interest  to  the  historian  of  mankind  is  this  will 
to  crusade  suddenly  revealed  as  a  new  mass  possibility  in  human 
affairs. 

The  story  of  the  crusades  abounds  in  such  romantic  and 
picturesque  detail  that  the  writer  of  an  Outline  of  History  must 
ride  his  pen  upon  the  curb  through  this  alluring  field.  The 
first  forces  to  move  eastward  were  great  crowds  of  undisciplined 
people  rather  than  armies,  and  they  sought  to  make  their  way 
by  the  valley  of  the  Danube,  and  thence  southward  to  Con- 


642  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

stantinople.  This  was  the  "people's  crusade."  Never  before  in 
the  whole  history  of  the  world  had  there  heen  such  a  spectacle 
as  these  masses  of  practically  leaderless  people  moved  by  an 
idea.  It  was  a  very  crude  idea.  When  they  got  among  for- 
eigners, they  do  not  seem  to  have  realized  that  they  were  not 
already  among  the  infidel.  Two  great  mobs,  the  advance  guard 
of  the  expedition,  committed  such  excesses  in  Hungary,  where 
the  language  must  have  been  incomprehensible  to  them,  as  to 
provoke  the  Hungarians  to  destroy  them.  They  were  massa- 
cred. A  third  host  began  with  a  great  pogrom  of  the  Jews  in 
the  Rhineland — for  the  Christian  blood  was  up — and  this  multi- 
tude was  also  dispersed  in  Hungary.  Two  other  hosts  under 
Peter  got  through  and  reached  Constantinople,  to  the  astonish- 
ment and  dismay  of  the  Emperor  Alexius.  They  looted  and 
committed  outrages  as  they  came,  and  at  last  he  shipped  them 
across  the  Bosphorus,  to  be  massacred  rather  than  defeated  by 
the  Seljuks  (1096). 

This  first  unhappy  appearance  of  the  "people"  as  people  in 
modern  European  history  was  followed  in  1097  by  the  organ- 
ized forces  of  the  First  Crusade.  They  came  by  diverse  routes 
from  France,  Normandy,  Flanders,  England,  Southern  Italy 
and  Sicily,  and  the  will  and  power  of  them  were  the  Normans. 
They  crossed  the  Bosphorus  and  captured  Nicsea,  which 
Alexius  snatched  away  from  them  before  they  could  loot  it. 
They  then  went  by  much  the  same  route  as  Alexander  the  Great, 
through  the  Cilician  Gates,  leaving  the  Turks  in  Konia  uncon- 
quered,  past  the  battlefield  of  the  Issus,  and  so  to  Antioch, 
which  they  took  after  nearly  a  year's  siege.  Then  they  defeated 
a  great  relieving  army  from  Mosul.  A  large  part  of  the  Cru- 
saders remained  in  Antioch,  a  smaller  force  under  Godfrey 
of  Bouillon  (in  Belgium)  went  on  to  Jerusalem.  "After  a  lit- 
tle more  than  a  month's  siege,  the  city  was  finally  captured 
(Ji^ly  15).  The  slaughter  was  terrible;  the  blood  of  the  con- 
quered ran  down  the  streets,  until  men  splashed  in  blood  as 
they  rode.  At  nightfall,  'sobbing  for  excess  of  joy,'  the  cru- 
saders came  to  the  Sepulchre  from  their  treading  of  the  wine- 
press, and  put  their  blood-stained  hands  together  in  prayer. 
So,  on  that  day  of  July,  the  First  Crusade  came  to  an  end."  l 

The  authority  of  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem  was  at  once 
seized  upon  by  the  Latin  clergy  with  the  expedition,  and  the 
1 E.  Barker,  art.     "Crusades,"  Encyclopedia  Britannica. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES          643 

Orthodox  Christians  found  themselves  in  rather  a  worse  case 
under  Latin  rule  than  under  the  Turk.  There  were  already 
Latin  principalities  established  at  Antioch  and  Edessa,  and 
there  began  a  struggle  for  ascendancy  between  these  various 
courts  and  kings,  and  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to  make  Jerusa- 
lem a  property  of  the  Pope.  These  are  complications  beyond 
our  present  scope. 

Let  us  quote,  however,  a  characteristic  passage  from 
Gibbon : — 

"In  a  style  less  grave  than  that  of  history,  I  should  perhaps 
compare  the  Emperor  Alexius  to  the  jackal,  who  is  said  to  fol- 
low the  steps  and  to  devour  the  leavings  of  the  lion.  Whatever 
had  been  his  fears  and  toils  in  the  passage  of  the  First  .Cru- 
sade, they  were  amply  recompensed  by  the  subsequent  benefits 
which  he  derived  from  the  exploits  of  the  Franks.  His  dex- 
terity and  vigilance  secured  their  first  conquest  of  Nicsea,  and 
from  this  threatening  station  the  Turks  were  compelled  to 
evacuate  the  neighbourhood  of  Constantinople.  While  the  Cru- 
saders, with  blind  valour,  advanced  into  the  midland  countries 
of  Asia,  the  crafty  Greek  improved  the  favourable  occasion 
when  the  emirs  of  the  sea  coast  were  recalled  to  the  standard 
of  the  Sultan.  The  Turks  were  driven  from  the  isles  of 
Rhodes  and  Chios;  the  cities  of  Ephesus  and  Smyrna,  of 
Sardes,  Philadelphia,  and  Laodicea  were  restored  to  the  em- 
pire, which  Alexius  enlarged  from  the  Hellespont  to  the  banks 
of  the  Mseander  and  the  rocky  shores  of  Pamphylia.  The 
churches  resumed  their  splendour;  the  towns  were  rebuilt  and 
fortified;  and  the  desert  country  was  peopled  with  colonies  of 
Christians,  who  were  gently  removed  from  the  more  distant 
and  dangerous  frontier.  In  these  paternal  cares  we  may  for- 
give Alexius,  if  we  forget  the  deliverance  of  the  holy  sepulchre ; 
but,  by  the  Latins,  he  was  stigmatized  with  the  foul  reproach 
of  treason  and  desertion.  They  had  sworn  fidelity  and  obedi- 
ence to  his  throne;  but  lie  had  promised  to  assist  their  enter- 
prise in  person,  or  at  least,  with  his  troops  and  treasures;  his 
base  retreat  dissolved  their  obligations;  and  the  sword,  which 
had  been  the  instrument  of  their  victory,  was  the  pledge  and 
title  of  their  just  independence.  It  does  not  appear  that  the 
emperor  attempted  to  revive  his  obsolete  claims  over  the  king- 
dom of  Jerusalem,  but  the  borders  of  Cilicia  and  Syria  were 
more  recent  in  his  possession  and  more  accessible  to  his  arms. 


644  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  great  army  of  the  Crusaders  was  annihilated  or  dispersed ; 
the  principality  of  Antioch  was  left  without  a  head,  by  the  sur- 
prise and  captivity  of  Bohemond;  his  ransom  had  oppressed 
him  with  a  heavy  debt ;  and  his  Norman  followers  were  insuffi- 
cient to  repel  the  hostilities  of  the  Greeks  and  Turks.  In  this 
distress,  Bohemond  embraced  a  magnanimous  resolution,  of 
leaving  the  defence  of  Antioch  to  his  kinsman,  the  faithful 
Tancred;  of  arming  the  West  against  the  Byzantine  Empire, 
and  of  executing  the  design  which  he  inherited  from  the  lessons 
and  example  of  his  father  Guiscard.  His  embarkation  was 
clandestine ;  and  if  we  may  credit  a  tale  of  the  Princess  Anna, 
he  passed  the  hostile  sea  closely  secreted  in  a  coffin.  (Anna 
Comnena  adds,  that  to  complete  the  imitation,  he  was  shut  up 
with  a  dead  cock;  and  condescends  to  wonder  how  the  bar- 
barian could  endure  the  confinement  and  putrefaction.  This 
absurd  tale  is  unknown  to  the  Latins.)  But  his  reception  in 
France  was  dignified  by  the  public  applause  and  his  marriage 
with  the  king's  daughter;  his  return  was  glorious,  since  the 
bravest  spirits  of  the  age  enlisted  under  his  veteran  command ; 
and  he  repassed  the  Adriatic  at  the  head  of  five  thousand  horse 
and  forty  thousand  foot,  assembled  from  the  most  remote  cli- 
mates of  Europe.  The  strength  of  Durazzo  and  prudence  of 
Alexius,  the  progress  of  famine  and  approach  of  winter,  eluded 
his  ambitious  hopes;  and  the  venal  confederates  were  seduced 
from  his  standard.  A  treaty  of  peace  suspended  the  fears  of 
the  Greeks." 

We  have  dealt  thus  lengthily  with  the  First  Crusade,  because 
it  displays  completely  the  quality  of  all  these  expeditions. 
The  reality  of  the  struggle  between  the  Latin  and  the  Byzantine 
system  became  more  and  more  nakedly  apparent.  In  1101 
came  reinforcements,  in  which  the  fleet  of  the  mercantile  re- 
publics of  Venice  and  Genoa  played  a  prominent  part,  and  the 
power  of  the  kingdom  of  Jerusalem  was  extended.  The  year 
1147  saw  a  Second  Crusade,  in  which  both  the  Emperor  Conrad 
III  and  King  Louis  of  France  participated.  It  was  a  much 
more  stately  and  far  less  successful  and  enthusiastic  expedition 
than  its  predecessor.  It  had  been  provoked  by  the  fall  of 
Edessa  to  the  Moslems  in  1144.  One  large  division  of  Ger- 
mans, instead  of  going  to  the  Holy  Land,  attacked  and  subju- 
gated the  still  pagan  Wends  east  of  the  Elbe.  This,  the  Pope 
agreed,  counted  as  crusading,  and  so  did  the  capture  of  Lisbon, 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES          645 

and  the  foundation  of  the  Christian  kingdom  of  Portugal  by 
the  Flemish  and  English  contingents. 

In  1169  a  Kurdish  adventurer,  named  Saladin,  became  ruler 
of  EgypV  in  which  country  the  Shiite  heresy  had  now  fallen 
before  a  Sunnite  revival.  This  Saladin  reunited  the  efforts  of 
Egypt  and  Bagdad,  and  preached  a  Jehad,  a  Holy  War,  a 
counter-crusade,  of  all  the  Moslems  against  the  Christians. 
This  Jehad  excited  almost  as  much  feeling  in  Islam  as  the 
First  Crusade  had  done  in  Christendom.  It  was  now  a  case 
of  crusader  against  crusader;  and  in  1187  Jerusalem  was  re- 
taken. This  provoked  the  Third  Crusade  (1189).  This  also 
was  a  grand  affair,  planned  jointly  by  the  Emperor  Frederick  I 
(known  better  as  Frederick  Barbarossa),  the  King  of  France, 
and  the  King  of  England  (who  at  that  time  owned  many  of 
the  fairest  French  provinces).  The  papacy  played  a  secondary 
part  in  this  expedition ;  it  was  in  one  of  its  phases  of  enfeeble- 
ment;  and  the  crusade  was  the  most  courtly,  chivalrous,  and 
romantic  of  all.  Religious  bitterness  was  mitigated  by  the  idea 
of  knightly  gallantry,  which  obsessed  both  Saladin  and  Richard 
I  (1189-1199)  of  England  (Cceur-de-Lion),  and  the  lover  of 
romance  may  very  well  turn  to  the  romances  about  this  period 
for  its  flavour.  The  crusade  saved  the  principality  of  Antioch 
for  a  time,  but  failed  to  retake  Jerusalem.  The  Christians, 
however,  remained  in  possession  of  the  sea-coast  of  Palestine. 

By  the  time  of  the  Third  Crusade,  the  magic  and  wonder 
had  gone  out  of  these  movements  altogether.  The  common  peo- 
ple had  found  them  out.  Men  went,  but  only  kings  and  nobles 
straggled  back;  and  that  often  only  after  heavy  taxation  for 
a  ransom.  The  idea  of  the  crusades  was  cheapened  by  their 
too  frequent  and  trivial  use.  Whenever  the  Pope  quarrelled 
with  anyone  now,  he  called  for  a  crusade,  until  the  word  ceased 
to  mean  anything  but  an  attempt  to  give  flavour  to  an  un- 
palatable civil  war.  There  was  a  crusade  against  the  heretics 
in  the  south  of  France,  one  against  John  (King  of  England), 
one  against  the  Emperor  Frederick  II.  The  Popes  did  not 
understand  the  necessity  of  dignity  to  the  papacy.  They  had 
achieved  a  moral  ascendancy  in  Christendom.  Forthwith  they 
began  to  fritter  it  away.  They  not  only  cheapened  the  idea  of 
the  crusades,  but  they  made  their  tremendous  power  of  ex- 
communication, of  putting  people  outside  all  the  sacraments, 
hopes,  and  comforts  of  religion,  ridiculous  by  using  it  in  mere 


646  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

disputes  of  policy.  Frederick  II  was  not  only  crusaded  against, 
but  excommunicated — without  visible  injury.  He  was  excom- 
municated again  in  1239,  and  this  sentence  was  renewed  by 
Innocent  IV  in  1245. 

The  bulk  of  the  Fourth  Crusade  never  reached  the  Holy 
Land  at  all.  It  started  from  Venice  (1202),  captured  Zara, 
encamped  at  Constantinople  (1203),  and  finally,  in  1204, 
stormed  the  city.  It  was  frankly  a  combined  attack  on  the 
Byzantine  Empire.  Venice  took  much  of  the  coasts  and  islands 
of  the  empire,  and  a  Latin,  Baldwin  of  Flanders,  was  set  up 
as  emperor  in  Constantinople.  The  Latin  and  Greek  Churches 
were  declared  to  be  reunited,  and  Latin  emperors  ruled  as  con- 
querors in  Constantinople  from  1204  to  1261. 

In  1212  occurred  a  dreadful  thing,  a  children's  crusade.  An 
excitement  that  could  no  longer  affect  sane  adults  was  spread 
among  the  children  in  the  south  of  France  and  in  the  Rhone 
valley.  A  crowd  of  many  thousands  of  French  boys  marched 
to  Marseilles;  they  were  then  lured  on  board  ship  by  slave 
traders,  who  sold  them  into  slavery  in  Egypt.  The  Rhineland 
children  tramped  into  Italy,  many  perishing  by  the  way,  and 
there  dispersed.  Pope  Innocent  III  made  great  capital  out 
of  this  strange  business.  aThe  very  children  put  us  to  shame/' 
he  said;  and  sought  to  whip  up  enthusiasm  for  a  Fifth  Cru- 
sade. This  crusade  aimed  at  the  conquest  of  Egypt,  because 
Jerualem  was  now  held  by  the  Egyptian  Sultan ;  its  remnants 
returned  in  1221,  after  an  inglorious  evacuation  of  its  one 
capture,  Damietta,  with  the  Jerusalem  vestiges  of  the  True 
Cross  as  a  sort  of  consolation  concession  on  the  part  of  the 
victor.  We  have  already  noted  the  earlier  adventures  of  this 
venerable  relic  before  the  days  of  Muhammad  when  it  was 
carried  off  by  Chosroes  II  to  Ctesiphon,  and  recovered  by  the 
Emperor  Heraclius.  Fragments  of  the  True  Cross,  however, 
had  always  been  in  Rome  at  the  church  of  S.  Croce-in-Gerusa- 
lemme,  since  the  days  of  the  Empress  Helena  (the  mother  of 
Constantine  the  Great)  to  whom,  says  the  legend,  its  hiding- 
place  had  been  revealed  in  a  vision  during  her  pilgrimage  to 
the  Holy  Land.1 

1  "The  custody  of  the  True  Cross,  which  on  Easter  Sunday  was  solemnly 
exposed  to  the  people,  was  entrusted  to  the  Bishop  of  Jerusalem;  and  he 
alone  might  gratify  the  curious  devotion  of  the  pilgrims,  by  the  gift  of 
small  pieces,  which  they  encased  in  gold  or  gems,  and  carried  away  in 
triumph  to  their  respective  countries.  But,  as  this  gainful  branch  of  com- 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  647 

The  Sixth  Crusade  (1229)  was  a  crusade  bordering  upon 
absurdity.  The  Emperor  Frederick  II  had  promised  to  go 
upon  a  crusade,  and  evaded  his  vow.  He  had  made  a  false 
start  and  returned.  He  was  probably  bored  by  the  mere  idea 
of  a  crusade.  But  the  vow  had  been  part  of  the  bargain  by 
which  he  secured  the  support  of  Pope  Innocent  III  in  his  elec- 
tion as  emperor.  He  busied  himself  in  reorganizing  the  gov- 
ernment of  his  Sicilian  kingdom,  though  he  had  given  the  Pope 
to  understand  that  he  would  relinquish  those  possessions  if  he 
became  emperor ;  and  the  Pope  was  anxious  to  stop  this  process 
of  consolidation  by  sending  him  to  the  Holy  Land.  The  Pope 
did  not  want  Frederick  II,  or  any  German  emperor  at  all  in 
Italy,  because  he  himself  wished  to  rule  Italy.  As  Frederick 
II  remained  evasive,  Gregory  IX  excommunicated  him,  pro- 
claimed a  crusade  against  him,  and  invaded  his  dominions  in 
Italy  (1228).  Whereupon  the  Emperor  sailed  with  an  army 
to  the  Holy  Land.  There  he  had  a  meeting  with  the  Sultan 
of  Egypt  (the  Emperor  spoke  six  languages  freely,  including 
Arabic)  ;  and  it  would  seem  these  two  gentlemen,  both  of 
sceptical  opinions,  exchanged  views  of  a  congenial  sort,  dis- 
cussed the  Pope  in  a  worldly  spirit,  debated  the  Mongolian  rush 
westward,  which  threatened  them  both  alike,  and  agreed  finally 
to  a  commercial  convention,  and  the  surrender  of  a  part  of 
the  kingdom  of  Jerusalem  to  Frederick.  This  indeed  was  a 
new  sort  of  crusade,  a  crusade  by  private  treaty.  As  this 
astonishing  crusader  had  been  excommunicated,  he  had  to  in- 
dulge in  a  purely  secular  coronation  in  Jerusalem,  taking  the 
crown  from  the  altar  with  his  own  hand,  in  a  church  from 
which  all  the  clergy  had  gone.  Probably  there  was  no  one  to 
show  him  the  Holy  Places;  indeed  these  were  presently  all 
put  under  an  interdict  by  the  Patriarch  of  Jerusalem  and 
locked  up;  manifestly  the  affair  differed  altogether  in  spirit 
from  the  red  onslaught  of  the  First  Crusade.  It  had  not  even 
the  kindly  sociability  of  the  Caliph  Omar's  visit  six  hundred 
years  before.  Frederick  II  rode  out  of  Jerusalem  almost  alone, 
returned  from  this  unromantic  success  to  Italy,  put  his  affairs 
there  in  order  very  rapidly,  chased  the  papal  armies  out  of  his 
possessions,  and  obliged  the  Pope  to  give  him  absolution  from 

merce  must  soon  have  been  annihilated,  it  was  found  convenient  to  sup- 
pose that  the  marvellous  wood  possessed  a  secret  power  of  vegetation,  and 
that  its  substance,  though  continually  diminished,  still  remained  entire 
and  unimpaired." — Gibbon. 


648  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

his  excommunication  (1230).  This  Sixth  Crusade  was  indeed 
not  only  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  crusades,  but  of  papal 
excommunications.  Of  this  Frederick  II  we  shall  tell  more  in 
a  later  section,  because  he  was  very  typical  of  certain  new 
forces  that  were  coming  into  European  affairs. 

The  Christians  lost  Jerusalem  again  in  1244;  it  was  taken 
from  them  very  easily  by  the  Sultan  of  Egypt  when  they  at- 
tempted an  intrigue  against  him.  This  provoked  the  Seventh 
Crusade,  the  Crusade  of  St.  Louis,  King  of  France  (Louis 
IX),  who  was  taken  prisoner  in  Egypt  and  ransomed  in  1250. 
Not  until  1918,  when  it  fell  to  a  mixed  force  of  French,  British, 
and  Indian  troops,  did  Jerusalem  slip  once  more  from  the 
Moslem  grasp.  .  .  . 

One  more  crusade  remains  to  be  noted,  an  expedition  tc 
Tunis  by  this  same  Louis  IX,  who  died  of  fever  there. 


§  11 

The  essential  interest  of  the  crusades  for  the  historian  of 
mankind  lies  in  the  wave  of  emotion,  of  unifying  feeling,  that 
animated  the  first.  Thereafter  these  expeditions  became  more 
and  more  an  established  process,  and  less  and  less  vital  events. 
The  First  Crusade  was  an  occurrence  like  the  discovery  of 
America ;  the  later  ones  were  more  and  more  like  a  trip  across 
the  Atlantic.  In  the  eleventh  century,  the  idea  of  the  crusade 
must  have  been  like  a  strange  and  wonderful  light  in  the  sky ; 
in  the  thirteenth  one  can  imagine  honest  burghers  saying  in 
tones  of  protest,  "What!  another  crusade!"  The  experience  of 
St.  Louis  in  Egypt  is  not  like  a  fresh  experience  for  mankind ; 
it  is  much  more  like  a  round  of  golf  over  some  well-known 
links,  a  round  that  was  dogged  by  misfortune.  It  is  an  in- 
significant series  of  events.  The  interest  of  life  had  shifted 
to  other  directions. 

The  beginning  of  the  crusades  displays  all  Europe  saturated 
by  a  naive  Christianity,  and  ready  to  follow  the  leading  of  the 
Pope  trustfully  and  simply.  The  scandals  of  the  Lateran 
during  its  evil  days,  with  which  we  are  all  so  familiar  now, 
were  practically  unknown  outside  Rome.  And  Gregory  VII 
and  Urban  II  had  redeemed  all  that.  But  intellectually  and 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  649 

morally  their  successors  at  the  Lateran  and  the  Vatican  l  were 
not  equal  to  their  opportunities.  The  strength  of  the  papacy 
lay  in  the  faith  men  had  in  it,  and  it  used  that  faith  so  care- 
lessly as  to  enfeeble  it.  Rome  has  always  had  too  much  of  the 
shrewdness  of  the  priest  and  too  little  of  the  power  of  the 
prophet.  So  that  while  the  eleventh  century  was  a  century  of 
ignorant  and  confiding  men,  the  thirteenth  was  an  age  of  know- 
ing and  disillusioned  men.  It  was  a  far  more  civilized  and 
profoundly  sceptical  world. 

The  bishops,  priests,  and  the  monastic  institutions  of  Latin 
Christendom  before  the  days  of  Gregory  VII  had  been  perhaps 
rather  loosely  linked  together  and  very  variable  in  quality ;  but 
it  is  clear  that  they  were,  as  a  rule,  intensely  intimate  with  the 
people  among  whom  they  found  themselves,  and  with  much  of 
the  spirit  of  Jesus  still  alive  in  them;  they  were  trusted,  and 
they  had  enormous  power  within  the  conscience  of  their  fol- 
lowers. The  church,  in  comparison  with  its  later  state,  was 
more  in  the  hands  of  local  laymen  and  the  local  ruler ;  it  lacked 
its  later  universality.  The  energetic  bracing  up  of  the  church 
organization  by  Gregory  VII,  which  was  designed  to  increase 
the  central  power  of  Rome,  broke  many  subtle  filaments  be- 
tween priest  and  monastery  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  country- 
side about  them  on  the  other.  Men  of  faith  and  wisdom  be- 
lieve in  growth  and  their  fellow  men;  but  priests,  even  such 
priests  as  Gregory  VII,  believe  in  the  false  "efficiency"  of  an 
imposed  discipline.  The  squabble  over  investitures  made  every 
prince  in  Christendom  suspicious  of  the  bishops  as  agents  of  a 
foreign  power;  this  suspicion  filtered  down  to  the  parishes. 
The  political  enterprises  of  the  papacy  necessitated  an  increas- 
ing demand  for  money.  Already  in  the  thirteenth  century  it 
was  being  said  everywhere  that  the  priests  were  not  good  men, 
that  they  were  always  hunting  for  money. 

In  the  days  of  ignorance  there  had  been  an  extraordinary 
willingness  to  believe  the  Catholic  priesthood  good  and  wise. 
Relatively  it  was  better  and  wiser  in  those  days.  Great  powers 
beyond  her  spiritual  functions  had  been  entrusted  to  the  church, 

irlhe  Popes  inhabited  the  palace  of  the  Lateran  until  1305,  when  a 
French  Pope  set  up  the  papal  court  at  Avignon.  When  the  Pope  returned 
to  Rome  in  1377  the  Lateran  was  almost  in  ruins,  and  the  palace  of  the 
Vatican  became  the  seat  of  the  papal  court.  It  was,  among  other  ad- 
vantages, much  nearer  to  the  papal  stronghold,  the  Castle  of  St.  Angelo. 


650  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  very  extraordinary  freedoms.  Of  this  confidence  the  fullest 
advantage  had  been  taken.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the  church 
had  become  a  state  within  the  state.  It  had  its  own  law  courts. 
Cases  involving  not  merely  priests,  but  monks,  students,  cru- 
saders, widows,  orphans,  and  the  helpless,  were  reserved  for 
the  clerical  courts;  and  whenever  the  rites  or  rules  of  the 
church  were  involved,  there  the  church  claimed  jurisdiction 
over  such  matters  as  wills,  marriage,  oaths,  and  of  course  over 
heresy,  sorcery,  and  blasphemy.  There  were  numerous  clerical 
prisons  in  which  offenders  might  pine  all  their  lives.  The 
Pope  was  the  supreme  law-giver  of  Christendom,  and  his  court 
at  Rome  the  final  and  decisive  court  of  appeal.  And  the  church 
levied  taxes ;  it  had  not  only  vast  properties  and  a  great  income 
from  fees,  but  it  imposed  a  tax  of  a  tenth,  the  tithe,  upon  its 
subjects.  It  did  not  call  for  this  as  a  pious  benefaction;  it 
demanded  it  as  a  right.  The  clergy,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
now  claiming  exemption  from  lay  taxation. 

This  attempt  to  trade  upon  their  peculiar  prestige  and  evade 
their  share  in  fiscal  burdens  was  certainly  one  very  considerable 
factor  in  the  growing  dissatisfaction  with  the  clergy.  Apart 
from  any  question  of  justice,  it  was  impolitic.  It  made  taxes 
seem  ten  times  more  burthensome  to  those  who  had  to  pay.  It 
made  everyone  feel  the  immunities  of  the  church.  And  a  still 
more  extravagant  and  unwise  claim  made  by  the  church  was 
the  claim  to  the  power  of  dispensation.  The  Pope  might  in 
many  instances  set  aside  the  laws  of  the  church  in  individual 
cases ;  he  might  allow  cousins  to  marry,  permit  a  man  to  have 
two  wives,  or  release  anyone  from  a  vow.  But  to  do  such  things 
is  to  admit  that  the  laws  affected  are  not  based  upon  necessity 
and  an  inherent  righteousness ;  that  they  are  in  fact  restrictive 
and  vexatious.  The  law-giver,  of  all  beings,  most  owes  the  law 
allegiance.  He  of  all  men  should  behave  as  though  the  law 
compelled  him.  But  it  is  the  universal  weakness  of  mankind 
that  what,  we  are  given  to  administer  we  presently  imagine  we 
own. 

§  12 

The  Emperor  Frederick  II  is  a  very  convenient  example  of 
the  sort  of  doubter  and  rebel  the  thirteenth  century  could  pro- 
duce. It  may  be  interesting  to  tell  a  little  of  this  intelligent 
and  cynical  man.  He  was  the  son  of  the  German  Emperor, 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  651 

Henry  VI,  and  grandson  of  Frederick  Barbarossa,  and  his 
mother  was  the  daughter  of  Roger  I,  the  Norman  King  of 
Sicily.  He  inherited  this  kingdom  in  1198,  when  he  was  four 
years  old;  his  mother  was  his  guardian  for  six  months,  and 
when  she  died,  Pope  Innocent  III  (1198  to  1216)  became 
regent  and  guardian.  He  seems  to  have  had  an  exceptionally 
good  and  remarkably  mixed  education,  and  his  accomplishments 
earned  him  the  flattering  title  of  Stupor  mundi,  the  amazement 
of  the  world.  The  result  of  getting  an  Arabic  view  of  Chris- 
tianity, and  a  Christian  view  of  Islam,  was  to  make  him  believe 
that  all  religions  were  impostures,  a  view  held  perhaps  by  many 
a  stifled  observer  in  the  Age  of  Faith.  But  he  talked  about 
his  views ;  his  blasphemies  and  heresies  are  on  record.  Growing 
up  under  the  arrogant  rule  of  Innocent  III,  who  never  seems  to 
have  realized  that  his  ward  had  come  of  age,  he  developed  a 
slightly  humorous  evasiveness.  It  was  the  papal  policy  to  pre- 
vent any  fresh  coalescence  of  the  power  of  Germany  and  Italy, 
and  it  was  equally  Frederick's  determination  to  get  whatever 
he  could.  When  presently  opportunity  offered  him  the  im- 
perial crown  of  Germany,  he  secured  the  Pope's  support  by 
agreeing,  if  he  were  elected,  to  relinquish  his  possessions  in 
Sicily  and  South  Italy,  and  to  put  down  heresy  in  Germany. 
For  Innocent  III  was  one  of  the  great  persecuting  Popes,  an 
able,  grasping,  and  aggressive  man.  (For  a  Pope,  he  was  ex- 
ceptionally young.  He  became  Pope  at  thirty-seven.)  It  was 
Innocent  who  had  preached  a  cruel  crusade  against  the  heretics 
in  the  south  of  France,  a  crusade  that  presently  became  a  loot- 
ing expedition  beyond  his  control.  So  soon  as  Frederick  was 
elected  emperor  (121 1),1  Innocent  pressed  for  the  performance 
of  the  vows  and  promises  he  had  wrung  from  his  dutiful  ward. 
The  clergy  were  to  be  free  from  lay  jurisdiction  and  from  taxa- 
tion, and  exemplary  cruelties  were  to  be  practised  upon  the 
heretics.  None  of  which  things  Frederick  did.  As  we  have 
already  told,  he  would  not  even  relinquish  Sicily.  He  liked 
Sicily  as  a  place  of  residence  better  than  he  liked  Germany. 

Innocent  III  died  baffled  in  1216,  and  his  successor,  Honorius 
III,  effected  nothing.  Honorius  was  succeeded  by  Gregory  IX 
(1227),  who  evidently  came  to  the  papal  throne  with  a  nervous 
resolution  to  master  this  perplexing  young  man.  He  excom- 

*He  was  crowned  emperor   in   1220  by  Honorius  III,   the  successor   of 
Innocent. 


652  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

municated  him  at  once  for  failing  to  start  upon  his  crusade, 
which  was  now  twelve  years  overdue;  and  he  denounced  his 
vices,  heresies,  and  general  offences  in  a  public  letter  (1227). 
To  this  Frederick  replied  in  a  far  abler  document  addressed 
to  all  the  princes  of  Europe,  a  document  of  extreme  importance 
in  history,  because  it  is  the  first  clear  statement  of  the  issue 
between  the  pretensions  of  the  Pope  to  be  absolute  ruler  of  all 
Christendom,  and  the  claims  of  the  secular  rulers.1  This  con- 
flict had  always  been  smouldering;  it  had  broken  out  here  in 
one  form,  and  there  in  another;  but  now  Frederick  put  it  in 
clear  general  terms  upon  which  men  could  combine  together. 

Having  delivered  this  blow,  he  departed  upon  the  pacific 
crusade  of  which  we  have  already  told.  In  1239,  Gregory  IX 
was  excommunicating  him  for  a  second  time,  and  renewing  that 
warfare  of  public  abuse  in  which  the  papacy  had  already 
suffered  severely.  The  controversy  was  revived  after  Gregory 
IX  was  dead,  when  Innocent  IV  was  Pope ;  and  again  a  devas- 
tating letter,  which  men  were  bound  to  remember,  was  written 
by  Frederick  against  the  church.  He  denounced  the  pride  and 
irreligion  of  the  clergy,  and  ascribed  all  the  corruptions  of  the 
time  to  their  pride  and  wealth.  He  proposed  to  his  fellow 
princes  a  general  confiscation  of  church  property — for  the  good 
of  the  church.  It  was  a  suggestion  that  never  afterwards  left 
the  imagination  of  the  European  princes. 

We  will  not  go  on  to  tell  of  his  last  years  or  of  the  disaster 
at  Parma,  due  to  his  carelessness,  which  cast  a  shadow  of  failure 
over  his  end.  The  particular  events  of  his  life  are  far  less 
significant  than  its  general  atmosphere.  It  is  possible  to  piece 
together  something  of  his  court  life  in  Sicily.  He  is  described 
towards  the  end  of  his  life  as  "red,  bald,  and  short-sighted" ; 
but  his  features  were  good  and  pleasing.  He  was  luxurious  in 
his  way  of  living,  and  fond  of  beautiful  thing.  He  is  described 
as  licentious.  But  it  is  clear  that  his  mind  was  not  satisfied 
by  religious  scepticism,  and  that  he  was  a  man  of  very  effectual 
curiosity  and  inquiry.  He  gathered  Jewish  and  Moslem  as 
well  as  Christian  philosophers  at  his  court,  and  he  did  much  to 
irrigate  the  Italian  mind  with  Saracenic  influences.  Through 
him  Arabic  numerals  and  alsrebra  were  introduced  to  Christian 
students,  and  among  other  philosophers  at  his  court  was  Michael 

1  Some  authorities  deny  his  authorship  of  this  letter. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES          653 

Scott,  who  translated  portions  of  Aristotle  and  the  commen- 
taries thereon  of  the  great  Arab  philosopher  Averroes  (of  Cor- 
doba). In  1224  Frederick  founded  the  University  of  Naples, 
and  he  enlarged  and  enriched  the  great  medical  school  at  Salerno 
University,  the  most  ancient  of  universities.  He  also  founded 
a  zoological  garden.  '  He  left  a  book  on  hawking,  which  shows 
him  to  have  been  an  acute  observer  of  the  habits  of  birds,  and 
he  was  one  of  the  first  Italians  to  write  Italian  verse.  Italian 
poetry  was  indeed  born  at  his  court.  He  has  been  called  by  an 
able  writer,  "the  first  of  the  moderns,"  and  the  phrase  expresses 
aptly  the  unprejudiced  detachment  of  his  intellectual  side.  His 
was  an  all-round  originality.  During  a  gold  shortage  he  intro- 
duced and  made  a  success  of  a  coinage  of  stamped  leather, 
bearing  his  promise  to  pay  in  gold,  a  sort  of  leather  bank-note 
issue.1 

In  spite  of  the  torrent  of  abuse  and  calumny  in  which  Fred- 
erick was  drenched,  he  left  a  profound  impression  upon  the 
popular  imagination.  He  is  still  remembered  in  South  Italy 
almost  as  vividly  as  is  Napoleon  I  by  the  peasants  of  France; 
he  is  the  "Gran  Federigo."  And  German  scholars  declare  that, 
in  spite  of  Frederick's  manifest  dislike  for  Germany,  it  is  he, 
and  not  Frederick  I,  Frederick  Barbarossa,  to  whom  that  Ger- 
man legend  originally  attached — that  legend  which  represents 
a  great  monarch  slumbering  in  a  deep  cavern,  his  beard  grown 
round  a  stone  table,  against  a  day  of  awakening  when  the  world 
will  be  restored  by  him  from  an  extremity  of  disorder  to  peace. 
Afterwards,  it  seems,  the  story  was  transferred  to  the  Crusader 
Barbarossa,  the  grandfather  of  Frederick  II. 

A  difficult  child  was  Frederick  II  for  Mother  Church,  and 
he  was  only  the  precursor  of  many  such  difficult  children.  The 
princes  and  educated  gentlemen  throughout  Europe  read  his 
letters  and  discussed  them.  The  more  enterprising  university 
students  found,  marked,  and  digested  the  Arabic  Aristotle  he 
had  made  accessible  to  them  in  Latin.  Salerno  cast  a  baleful 
light  upon  Rome.  All  sorts  of  men  must  have  been  impressed 
by  the  futility  of  the  excommunications  and  interdicts  that  were 
levelled  at  Frederick. 

1  Perhaps  parchment  rather  than  leather.  Such  promises  on  parchment 
were  also  used  by  the  Carthaginians.  Was  Frederick's  money  an  in- 
heritance from  an  old  tradition  living  on  in  Sicily  since  Carthaginian 
times?— E.  B. 


654  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

§  13 

We  have  said  that  Innocent  III  never  seemed  to  realize  that 
his  ward,  Frederick  II,  was  growing  up.  It  is  equally  true  that 
the  papacy  never  seemed  to  realize  that  Europe  was  growing  up. 
It  is  impossible  for  an  intelligent  modern  student  of  history 
not  to  sympathize  with  the  underlying  idea  of  the  papal  court, 
with  the  idea  of  one  universal  rule  of  righteousness  keeping 
the  peace  of  the  earth,  and  not  to  recognize  the  many  elements 
of  nobility  that  entered  into  the  Lateran  policy.  Sooner  or 
later  mankind  must  come  to  one  universal  peace,  unless  our 
race  is  to  be  destroyed  by  the  increasing  power  of  its  own  de- 
structive inventions ;  and  that  universal  peace  must  needs  take 
the  form  of  a  government,  that  is  to  say  a  law-sustaining  organi- 
zation, in  the  best  sense  of  the  word  religious;  a  government 
ruling  men  through  the  educated  co-ordination  of  their  minds 
in  a  common  conception  of  human  history  and  human  destiny. 

The  papacy  we  must  now  recognize  as  the  first  clearly  con- 
scious attempt  to  provide  such  a  government  in  the  world.  We 
cannot  too  earnestly  examine  its  deficiencies  and  inadequacies, 
for  every  lesson  we  can  draw  from  them  is  necessarily  of  the 
greatest  value  to  us  in  forming  our  ideas  of  our  own  interna- 
tional relationships.  We  have  tried  to  suggest  the  main  factors 
in  the  breakdown  of  the  Roman  Republic,  and  it  now  behoves 
us  to  attempt  a  diagnosis  of  the  failure  of  the  Roman  Church 
to  secure  and  organize  the  good  will  of  mankind. 

The  first  thing  that  will  strike  the  student  is  the  intermittence 
of  the  efforts  of  the  church  to  establish  the  world  City  of  God. 
The  policy  of  the  church  was  not  whole-heartedly  and  continu- 
ously set  upon  that  end.  It  was  only  now  and  then  that  some 
fine  personality  or  some  group  of  fine  personalities  dominated  it 
in  that  direction.  The  kingdom  of  God  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
had  preached  was  overlaid,  as  we  have  explained,  almost  from 
the  beginning  by  the  doctrines  and  ceremonial  traditions  of  an 
earlier  age,  and  of  an  intellectually  inferior  type.  Christianity 
almost  from  its  commencement  ceased  to  be  purely  prophetic 
and  creative.  It  entangled  itself  with  archaic  traditions  of 
human  sacrifice,  with  Mithraic  blood-cleansing,  with  priestcraft 
as  ancient  as  human  society,  and  with  elaborate  doctrines  about 
the  structure  of  the  divinity.  The  gory  forefinger  of  the 
Etruscan  pontifex  maximus  emphasized  the  teachings  of  Jesus 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES          655 

of  Nazareth ;  the  mental  complexity  of  the  Alexandrian  Greek 
entangled  them.  In  the  inevitable  jangle  of  these  incompatibles 
the  church  had  become  dogmatic.  In  despair  of  other  solutions 
to  its  intellectual  discords  it  had  resorted  to  arbitrary  authority. 
Its  priests  and  bishops  were  more  and  more  men  moulded  to 
creeds  and  dogmas  and  set  procedures ;  by  the  time  they  became 
cardinals  or  popes  they  were  usually  oldish  men,  habituated 
to  a  politic  struggle  for  immediate  ends  and  no  longer  capable 
of  world-wide  views.  They  no  longer  wanted  to  see  the  King- 
dom of  God  established  in  the  hearts  of  men — they  had  for- 
gotten about  that ;  they  wanted  to  see  the  power  of  the  church, 
which  was  their  own  power,  dominating  men.  They  were  pre- 
pared to  bargain  even  with  the  hates  and  fears  and  lusts  in 
men's  hearts  to  ensure  that  power.  And  it  was  just  because 
many  of  them  probably  doubted  secretly  of  the  entire  sound- 
ness of  their  vast  and  elaborate  doctrinal  fabric,  that  they 
would  brook  no  discussion  of  it.  They  were  intolerant  of  ques- 
tions or  dissent,  not  because  they  were  sure  of  their  faith,  but 
because  they  were  not.  They  wanted  conformity  for  reasons 
of  policy.  By  the  thirteenth  century  the  church  was  evidently 
already  morbidly  anxious  about  the  gnawing  doubts  that  might 
presently  lay  the  whole  structure  of  its  pretensions  in  ruins. 
It  had  no  serenity  of  soul.  It  was  hunting  everywhere  for 
heretics  as  timid  old  ladies  are  said  to  look  under  beds  and  in 
cupboards  for  burglars  before  retiring  for  the  night. 

We  have  already  mentioned  the  Persian  Mani,  who  WAS 
crucified  and  flayed  in  the  year  277.  His  way  of  representing 
the  struggle  between  good  and  evil  was  as  a  struggle  between  a 
power  of  light  which  was,  as  it  were,  in  rebellion  against  a 
power  of  darkness  inherent  in  the  universe.  All  these  profound 
mysteries  are  necessarily  represented  by  symbols  and  poetic 
expressions,  and  the  ideas  of  Mani  still  find  a  response  in  many 
intellectual  temperaments  to-day.  One  may  hear  Manichsean 
doctrines  from  many  Christian  pulpits.  But  the  orthodox 
Catholic  symbol  was  a  different  one.  These  Manichsean  ideas 
had  spread  very  widely  in  Europe,  and  particularly  in  Bul- 
garia and  the  south  of  France  In  the  south  of  France  the 
people  who  held  them  were  called  the  Cathars  or  Albigenses. 
Their  ideas  jarred  so  little  with  the  essentials  of  Christianity, 
that  they  believed  themselves  to  be  devout  Christians.  As  a 
body  they  lived  lives  of  conspicuous  virtue  and  purity  in  a 


656  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

violent,  undisciplined,  and  vicious  age.  But  they  questioned 
the  doctrinal  soundness  of  Rome  and  the  orthodox  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Bible.  They  thought  Jesus  was  a  rebel  against  the 
cruelty  of  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  not  his  harmoni- 
ous son.  Closely  associated  with  the  Albigenses  were  the 
Waldenses,  the  followers  of  a  man  called  Waldo,  who  seems  to 
have  been  quite  soundly  Catholic  in  his  theology,  but  equally 
offensive  to  the  church  because  he  denounced  the  riches  and 
luxury  of  the  clergy.  This  was  enough  for  the  Lateran,  and 
so  we  have  the  spectacle  of  Innocent  III  preaching  a  crusade 
against  these  unfortunate  sectaries,  and  permitting  the  enlist- 
ment of  every  wandering  scoundrel  at  loose  ends  to  carry  fire 
and  sword  and  rape  and  every  conceivable  outrage  among  the 
most  peaceful  subjects  of  the  King  of  France.  The  accounts 
of  the  cruelties  and  abominations  of  this  crusade  are  far  more 
terrible  to  read  than  any  account  of  Christian  martyrdoms  by 
the  pagans,  and  they  have  the  added  horror  of  being  indis 
putably  true. 

This  black  and  pitiless  intolerance  was  an  evil  spirit  to  be 
mixed  into  the  project  of  a  rule  of  God  on  earth.  This  was 
a  spirit  entirely  counter  to  that  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  We 
do  not  hear  of  his  smacking  the  faces  or  wringing  the  wrists 
of  recalcitrant  or  unresponsive  disciples.  But  the  Popes  during 
their  centuries  of  power  were  always  raging  against  the  slightest 
reflection  upon  the  intellectual  sufficiency  of  the  church. 

And  the  intolerance  of  the  church  was  not  confined  to  re- 
ligious matters.  The  shrewd,  pompous,  irascible,  and  rather 
malignant  old  men  who  manifestly  constituted  a  dominant  ma- 
jority in  the  councils  of  the  church  resented  any  knowledge 
but  their  own  knowledge,  and  distrusted  any  thought  at  all  that 
they  did  not  correct  and  control.  They  set  themselves  to  re- 
strain science,  of  which  they  were  evidently  jealous.  Any 
mental  activity  but  their  own  struck  them  as  being  insolent. 
Later  on  they  were  to  have  a  great  struggle  upon  the  question 
of  the  earth's  position  in  space,  and  whether  it  moved  round 
the  sun  or  not.  This  was  really  not  the  business  of  the  church 
at  all.  She  might  very  well  have  left,  to  reason  the  things  that 
are  reason's,  but  she  seems  to  have  been  impelled  by  an  inner 
necessity  to  estrange  the  intellectual  conscience  in  men. 

Had  this  intolerance  sprung  from  a  real  intensity  of  convic- 
tion it  would  have  been  bad  enough,  but  it  was  accompanied 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  657 

by  a  scarcely  disguised  contempt  for  the  intelligence  and  mental 
dignity  of  the  common  man  that  makes  it  far  less  acceptable 
to  our  modern  judgments,  and  which  no  doubt  made  it  far 
less  acceptable  to  the  free  spirits  of  the  time.  We  have  told 
quite  dispassionately  the  policy  of  the  Roman  church  towards 
her  troubled  sister  in  the  East,  Many  of  the  tools  and  ex- 
pedients she  used  were  abominable.  In  her  treatment  of  her 
own  people  a  streak  of  real  cynicism  is  visible.  She  destroyed 
her  prestige  by  disregarding  her  own  teaching  of  righteousness. 
Of  dispensations  we  have  already  spoken  (§  11).  Her  crown- 
ing folly  in  the  sixteenth  century  was  the  sale  of  indulgences, 
whereby  the  sufferings  of  the  soul  in  purgatory  could  be  com 
muted  for  a  money  payment.  But  the  spirit  that  led  at  last 
to  this  shameless  and,  as  it  proved,  disastrous  proceeding,  was 
already  very  evident  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries. 

Long  before  the  seed  of  criticism  that  Frederick  II  had  sown 
had  germinated  in  men's  minds  and  produced  its  inevitable 
crop  of  rebellion,  there  was  apparent  a  strong  feeling  in  Chris- 
tendom that  all  was  not  well  with  the  spiritual  atmosphere. 
There  began  movements,  movements  that  nowadays  we  should 
call  "revivalist,"  within  the  church,  that  implied  rather  than 
uttered  a  criticism  of  the  sufficiency  of  her  existing  methods 
and  organization.  Men  sought  fresh  forms  of  righteous  living 
outside  the  monasteries  and  priesthood.  One  notable  figure  is 
that  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  (1181-1226).  We  cannot  tell  here 
in  any  detail  of  how  this  pleasant  young  gentleman  gave  up  all 
the  amenities  and  ease  of  his  life  and  went  forth  to  seek  God ; 
the  opening  of  the  story  is  not  unlike  the  early  experiences 
of  Gautama  Buddha.  He  had  a  sudden  conversion  in  the  midst 
of  a  life  of  pleasure,  and,  taking  a  vow  of  extreme  poverty,  he 
gave  himself  up  to  an  imitation  of  the  life  of  Christ,  and  to 
the  service  of  the  sick  and  wretched,  and  more  particularly  to 
the  service  of  the  lepers,  who  then  abounded  in  Italy.  He  was 
joined  by  great  multitudes  of  disciples,  and  so  the  first  Friars 
of  the  Franciscan  Order  came  into  existence.  An  order  of 
women  devotees  was  set.  up  beside  the  original  confraternity, 
and  in  addition  great  numbers  of  men  and  women  were  brought 
into  less  formal  association.  He  preached,  unmolested  by  the 
Moslems,  be  it  noted,  in  Egypt  and  Palestine,  though  the  Fifth 
Crusade  was  then  in  progress.  His  relations  with  the  church 
are  still  a  matter  for  discussion.  His  work  had  been  sanctioned 


658  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

by  Pope  Innocent  III,  but  while  he  was  in  the  East  there  was 
a  reconstitution  of  his  order,  intensifying  its  discipline  and 
substituting  authority  for  responsive  impulse,  and  as  a  conse- 
quence of  these  changes  he  resigned  its  headship.  To  the  end 
he  clung  passionately  to  the  ideal  of  poverty,  but  he  was  hardly 
dead  before  the  order  was  holding  property  through  trustees 
and  building  a  great  church  and  monastery  to  his  memory  at 
Assisi.  The  disciplines  of  the  order  that  were  applied  after 
his  death  to  his  immediate  associates  are  scarcely  to  be  distin- 
guished from  a  persecution ;  several  of  the  more  conspicuous 
zealots  for  simplicity  were  scourged,  others  were  imprisoned, 
one  was  killed  while  attempting  to  escape,  and  Brother  Bernard, 
the  "first  disciple,"  passed  a  year  in  the  woods  and  hills,  hunted 
like  a  wild  beast. 

This  struggle  within  the  Franciscan  Order  is  a  very  interest- 
ing one,  because  it  foreshadows  the  great  troubles  that  were 
coming  to  Christendom.  All  through  the  thirteenth  century  a 
section  of  the  Franciscans  were  straining  at  the  rule  of  the 
church,  and  in  1318  four  of  them  were  burnt  alive  at  Marseilles 
as  incorrigible  heretics.  There  seems  to  have  been  little  differ- 
ence between  the  teaching  and  spirit  of  St.  Francis  and  that  of 
Waldo  in  the  twelfth  century,  the  founder  of  the  murdered 
sect  of  Waldenses.  Both  were  passionately  enthusiastic  for  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  But  while  Waldo  rebelled  against 
the  church,  St.  Francis  did  his  best  to  be  a  good  child  of  the 
church,  and  his  comment  on  the  spirit  of  official  Christianity 
was  only  implicit.  But  both  were  instances  of  an  outbreak  of 
conscience  against  authority  and  the  ordinary  procedure  of  the 
church.  And  it  is  plain  that  in  the  second  instance,  as  in  the 
first,  the  church  scented  rebellion. 

A  very  different  character  to  St.  Francis  was  the  Spaniard 
St.  Dominic  (1170-1221),  who  was,  of  all  things,  orthodox. 
He  had  a  passion  for  the  argumentative  conversion  of  heretics, 
and  he  was  commissioned  by  Pope  Innocent  III  to  go  and 
preach  to  the  Albigenses.  His  work  went  on  side  by  side  with 
the  fighting  and  massacres  of  the  crusade ;  whom  Dominic  could 
not  convert,  Innocent's  crusaders  slew ;  yet  his  very  activities 
and  the  recognition  and  encouragement  of  his  order  by  the  Pope 
witness  to  the  rising  tide  of  discussion,  and  to  the  persuasion 
even  of  the  papacy  that  force  was  no  remedy.  In  several  re- 
spects the  development  of  the  Black  Friars  or  Dominicans — 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  659 

the  Franciscans  were  the  Grey  Friars — shows  the  Koman 
church  at  the  parting  of  the  ways,  committing  itself  more  and 
more  deeply  to  organized  dogma,  and  so  to  a  hopeless  conflict 
with  the  quickening  intelligence  and  courage  of  mankind.  She 
whose  one  duty  was  to  lead,  chose  to  compel.  The  last  discourse 
of  St.  Dominic  to  the  heretics  he  had  sought  to  convert  is  pre- 
served to  us.  It  is  a  signpost  in  history.  It  betrays  the  fatal 
exasperation  of  a  man  who  has  lost  his  faith  in  the  power  of 
truth  because  his  truth  has  not  prevailed.  "For  many  years," 
he  said,  "I  have  exhorted  you  in  vain,  with  gentleness,  preach- 
ing, praying,  and  weeping.  But  according  to  the  proverb  of 
my  country,  'where  blessing  can  accomplish  nothing,  blows 
may  avail.'  We  shall  rouse  against  you  princess  and  prelates, 
who,  alas !  will  arm  nations  and  kingdoms  against  this  land  .  .  . 
and  thus  blows  will  avail  where  blessings  and  gentleness  have 
been  powerless."  1 

The  thirteenth  century  saw  the  development  of  a  new  institu- 
tion in  the  church,  the  papal  Inquisition.  Before  this  time  it 
had  been  customary  for  the  Pope  to  make  occasional  inquests 
or  inquiries  into  heresy  in  this  region  or  that,  but  now  Innocent 
III  saw  in  the  new  order  of  the  Dominicans  a  powerful  instru- 
ment of  suppression.  The  Inquisition  was  organized  as  a 
standing  inquiry  under  their  direction,  and  with  fire  and  tor- 
ment the  church  set  itself,  through  this  instrument,  to  assail 
and  weaken  the  human  conscience  in  which  its  sole  hope  of 
world  dominion  resided.  Before  the  thirteenth  century  the 
penalty  of  death  had  been  inflicted  but  rarely  upon  heretics  and 
unbelievers.  Now  in  a  hundred  market-places  in  Europe  the 
dignitaries  of  the  church  watched  the  blackened  bodies  of  its 
antagonists,  for  the  most  part  poor  and  insignificant  people, 
burn  and  sink  pitifully,  and  their  own  great  mission  to  man- 
kind burn  and  sink  with  them  into  dust  and  ashes. 

The  beginnings  of  the  Franciscans  and  the  Dominicans  were 
but  two  among  many  of  the  new  forces  that  were  arising  in 
Christendom,  either  to  help  or  shatter  the  church,  as  its  own 
wisdom  might  decide.  Those  two  orders  the  church  did  assimi- 
late and  use,  though  with  a  little  violence  in  the  case  of  the 
former.  But  other  forces  were  more  frankly  disobedient  and 
critical.  A  century  and  a  half  later  came  Wycliffe  (1320- 
1384).  He  was  a  learned  doctor  at  Oxford;  for  a  time  he  was 
*  Encyclopedia,  Britannica,  art.  "Dominic." 


660  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Master  of  Balliol;  and  he  held  various  livings  in  the  church. 
Quite  late  in  his  life  he  began  a  series  of  outspoken  criticisms 
of  the  corruption  of  the  clergy  and  the  unwisdom  of  the  church. 
He  organized  a  number  of  poor  priests,  the  Wycliffites,  to 
spread  his  ideas  throughout  England  ;  and  in  order  that  people 
should  judge  between  the  church  and  himself,  he  translated 
the  Bible  into  English.  He  was  a  more  learned  and  far  abler 
man  than  either  St.  Francis  or  St.  Dominic.  He  had  sup- 
porters in  high  places  and  a  great  following  among  the  people  ; 
and  though  Rome  raged  against  him,  and  ordered  his  imprison- 
ment, he  died  a  free  man,  still  administering  the  Sacraments 
as  parish  priest  of  Lutterworth.  But  the  black  and  ancient 
spirit  that  was  leading  the  Catholic  church  to  its  destruction 
would  not  let  his  bones  rest  in  his  grave.  By  a  decree  of  the 
Council  of  Constance  in  1415,  his  remains  were  ordered  to  be 
dug  up  and  burnt,  an  order  which  was  carried  out  at  the  com- 
mand of  Pope  Martin  V  by  Bishop  Fleming  in  1428.  This 
desecration  was  not  the  act  of  some  isolated  fanatic;  it  was 
the  official  act  of  the  church. 


The  history  of  the  papacy  is  confusing  to  the  general  reader 
because  of  the  multitude  and  abundance  of  the  Popes.  They 
mostly  began  to  reign  as  old  men,  and  their  reigns  were  short, 
averaging  less  than  two  years  each.  But  certain  of  the  Popes 
stand  out  and  supply  convenient  handles  for  the  student  to 
grasp.  Such  were  Gregory  I  (590-604)  the  Great,  the  first 
monkish  Pope,  the  friend  of  Benedict,  the  sender  of  the  English 
mission.  Other  noteworthy  Popes  are  Leo  III  (795-816),  who 
crowned  Charlemagne,  the  scandalous  Popes  John  XI  (931- 
936)  and  John  XII  (955-963),  which  latter  was  deposed  by 
the  Emperor  Otto  I,  and  the  great  Hildebrand,  who  ended  his 
days  as  Pope  Gregory  VII  (1073-1085),  and  who  did  so  much 
by  establishing  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy,  and  insisting  upon 
the  supremacy  of  the  church  over  kings  and  princes,  to  cen- 
tralize the  power  of  the  church  in  Rome.  There  was  a  great 
struggle  between  Hildebrand  and  the  Emperor  elect  Henry  IV 
upon  the  question  of  investitures.  The  emperor  attempted  to 
depose  the  pope;  the  pope  excommunicated  the  emperor  and 
released  his  subjects  from  their  allegiance.  The  emperor  was 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES          661 

obliged  to  go  in  penitence  to  the  pope  at  Canossa  and  to  await 
forgiveness  for  three  days  and  nights  in  the  courtyard  of  the 
castle,  clad  in  sackcloth  and  barefooted  to  the  snow.  The  next 
Pope  but  one  after  Gregory  VII  was  Urban  II  (1087-1099), 
the  Pope  of  the  First  Crusade.  The  period  from  the  time  of 
Gregory  VII  onward  for  a  century  and  a  half,  was  the  great 
period  of  ambition  and  effort  for  the  church.  There  was  a  real 
sustained  attempt  to  unite  all  Christendom  under  a  purified  and 
reorganized  church. 

The  setting  up  of  Latin  kingdoms  in  Syria  and  the  Holy 
Land,  in  religious  communion  with  Rome,  after  the  First  Cru 
sade,  marked  the  opening  stage  of  a  conquest  of  Eastern  Chris- 
tianity by  Rome  that  reached  its  climax  during  the  Latin  rule 
in  Constantinople  (1204-1261). 

In  1176,  at  Venice,  the  Emperor  Frederick  Barbarossa 
(Frederick  I)  knelt  to  the  Pope  Alexander  III,  recognized  his 
spiritual  supremacy,  and  swore  fealty  to  him.  But  after  the 
death  of  Alexander  III,  in  1181,  the  peculiar  weakness  of  the 
papacy,  its  liability  to  fall  to  old  and  enfeebled  men,  became 
manifest.  Five  Popes  tottered  to  the  Lateran  to  die  within  the 
space  of  ten  years.  Only  with  Innocent  III  (1198-1216)  did 
another  vigorous  Pope  take  up  the  great  policy  of  the  City  of 
God. 

Under  Innocent  III,  the  guardian  of  that  Emperor  Frederick 
II,  whose  career  we  have  already  studied  in  §§  10  and  12,  and 
the  five  Popes  who  followed  him,  the  Pope  of  Rome  came  nearer 
to  being  the  monarch  of  a  united  Christendom  than  he  had  ever 
been  before,  and  was  ever  to  be  again.  The  empire  was  weak- 
ened by  internal  dissensions,  Constantinople  was  in  Latin 
hands,  from  Bulgaria  to  Ireland  and  from  Norway  to  Sicily 
and  Jerusalem  the  Pope  was  supreme.  Yet  this  supremacy  was 
more  apparent  than  real.  For,  as  we  have  seen,  while  in  the 
time  of  Urban  the  power  of  faith  was  strong  in  all  Christian 
Europe,  in  the  time  of  Innocent  III  the  papacy  had  lost  its 
hold  upon  the  hearts  of  princes,  and  the  faith  and  conscience 
of  the  common  people  was  turning  against  a  merely  political 
and  aggressive  church. 

The  church  in  the  thirteenth  century  was  extending  its  legal 
power  in  the  world,  and  losing  its  grip  upon  men's  consciences. 
It  was  becoming  less  persuasive  and  more  violent.  No  intelli- 
gent man  can  tell  of  this  process,  or  read  of  this  process  of  failure 


662  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

without  very  mingled  feelings.  The  church  had  sheltered  and 
formed  a  new  Europe  throughout  the  long  ages  of  European 
darkness  and  chaos;  it  had  been  the  matrix  in  which  the  new 
civilization  had  been  cast.  But  this  new-formed  civilization 
was  impelled  to  grow  by  its  own  inherent  vitality,  and  the 
church  lacked  sufficient  power  of  growth  and  accommodation. 
The  time  was  fast  approaching  when  this  matrix  was  to  be 
broken. 

The  first  striking  intimation  of  the  decay  of  the  living  and 
sustaining  forces  of  the  papacy  appeared  when  presently  the 
Popes  came  into  conflict  with  the  growing  power  of  the  French 
king.  During  the  lifetime  of  the  Emperor  Frederick  II,  Ger- 
many fell  into  disunion,  and  the  French  king  began  to  play  the 
role  of  guard,  supporter,  and  rival  to  the  Pope  that  had  hitherto 
fallen  to  the  Hohenstaufen  emperors.  A  series  of  Popes  pur- 
sued the  policy  of  supporting  the  French  monarchs.  French 
princes  were  established  in  the  kingdom  of  Sicily  and  Naples, 
with  the  support  and  approval  of  Rome,  and  the  French  kings 
saw  before  them  the  possibility  of  restoring  and  ruling  the 
Empire  of  Charlemagne.  When,  however,  the  German  inter- 
regnum after  the  death  of  Frederick  II,  the  last  of  the  Hohen- 
staufens,  came  to  an  end  and  Rudolf  of  Habsburg  was  elected 
first  Habsburg  Emperor  (1273),  the  policy  of  tne  Lateran 
began  to  fluctuate  between  France  and  Germany,  veering  about 
with  the  sympathies  of  each  successive  Pope.  In  the  East  in 
1261  the  Greeks  recaptured  Constantinople  from  the  Latin 
emperors,  and  the  founder  of  the  new  Greek  dynasty,  Michael 
Palseologus,  Michael  VIII,  after  some  unreal  tentatives  of 
reconciliation  with  the  Pope,  broke  away  from  the  Roman  com- 
munion altogether,  and  with  that,  and  the  fall  of  the  Latin  king- 
doms in  Asia,  the  eastward  ascendancy  of  the  Popes  came  to 
an  end. 

In  1294  Boniface  VIII  became  Pope.  He  was  an  Italian, 
.hostile  to  the  French,  and  full  of  a  sense  of  the  great  traditions 
and  mission  of  Rome.  For  a  time  he  carried  things  with  a 
high  hand.  In  1300  he  held  a  jubilee,  and  a  vast  multitude  of 
pilgrims  assembled  in  Rome.  "So  great  was  the  influx  of 
money  into  the  papal  treasury,  that  two  assistants  were  kept 
busy  with  rakes  collecting  the  offerings  that  were  deposited  at 
the  tomb  of  St.  Peter."  l  But  this  festival  was  a  delusive  tri- 

1 J.  H.  Robinson. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES          663 

umpli.  It  is  easier  to  raise  a  host  of  excursionists  than  a  band 
of  crusaders.  Boniface  came  into  conflict  with  the  French  king 
in  1302,  and  in  1303,  as  he  was  about  to  pronounce  sentence  of 
excommunication  against  that  monarch,  he  was  surprised  and 
arrested  in  his  own  ancestral  palace,  at  Anagni,  by  Guillaume 
de  Nogaret.  This  agent  from  the  French  king  forced  an  en- 
trance into  the  palace,  made  his  way  into  the  bedroom  of  the 
frightened  Pope — he  was  lying  in  bed  with  a  cross  in  his  hands 
— and  heaped  threats  and  insults  upon  him.  The  Pope  was 
liberated  a  day  or  so  later  by  the  townspeople,  and  returned  to 
Rome;  but  there  he  was  seized  upon  and  again  made  prisoner 
by  the  Orsini  family,  and  in  a  few  weeks'  time  the  shocked  and 
disillusioned  old  man  died  a  prisoner  in  their  hands. 

The  people  of  Anagni  did  resent  the  first  outrage,  and  rose 
against  Nogaret  to  liberate  Boniface,  but  then  Anagni  was  the 
Pope's  native  town.  The  important  point  to  note  is  that  the 
French  king,  in  this  rough  treatment  of  the  head  of  Christen- 
dom, was  acting  with  the  full  approval  of  his  people;  he  had 
summoned  a  council  of  the  Three  Estates  of  France  (lords, 
church,  and  commons)  and  gained  their  consent  before  pro- 
ceeding to  extremities.  Neither  in  Italy,  Germany,  nor  Eng- 
land was  there  the  slightest  general  manifestation  of  disap- 
proval at  this  free  handling  of  the  sovereign  pontiff.  The  idea 
of  Christendom  had  decayed  until  its  power  over  the  minds  of 
men  had  gone. 

Throughout  the  fourteenth  century  the  papacy  did  nothing 
to  recover  its  moral  sway.  The  next  Pope  elected,  Clement  V, 
was  a  Frenchman,  the  choice  of  King  Philip  of  France.  He 
never  came  to  Rome.  He  set  up  his  court  in  the  town  of 
Avignon,  which  then  belonged  not  to  France,  but  to  the  Papal 
See,  though  embedded  in  French  territory,  and  there  his  succes- 
sors remained  until  1377,  when  Pope  Gregory  XI  returned  to 
the  Vatican  palace  in  Rome.  But  Gregory  XI  did  not  take  the 
sympathies  of  the  whole  church  with  him.  Many  of  the  cardi- 
nals were  of  French  origin,  and  their  habits  and  associations 
were  rooted  deep  at  Avignon.  When  in  1378  Gregory  XI  died, 
and  an  Italian,  Urban  VI,  was  elected,  these  dissentient  cardi- 
nals declared  the  election  invalid,  and  elected  another  Pope, 
the  anti-Pope,  Clement  VII.  This  split  is  called  the  Great 
Schism.  The  Popes  remained  in  Rome,  and  all  the  anti- 
French  powers,  the  Emperor,  the  King  of  England,  Hungary, 


664  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Poland,  and  the  North  of  Europe  were  loyal  to  them.  The 
anti-Popes,  on  the  other  hand,  continued  in  Avignon,  and  were 
supported  by  the  King  of  France,  his  ally  the  King  of  Scotland, 
Spain,  Portugal,  and  various  German  princes.  Each  Pope 
excommunicated  and  cursed  the  adherents  of  his  rival,  so  that 
by  one  standard  or  another  all  Christendom  was  damned  during 
this  time  (1378-1417).  The  lamentable  effect  of  this  split 
upon  the  solidarity  of  Christendom  it  is  impossible  to  ex- 
aggerate. Is  it  any  marvel  that  such  men  as  Wycliffe  began  to 
teach  men  to  think  on  their  own  account  when  the  fountain 
of  truth  thus  squirted  against  itself  ?  In  1417  the  Great  Schism 
was  healed  at  the  Council  of  Constance,  the  same  council  that 
dug  up  and  burnt  Wycliffe's  bones,  and  which,  as  we  shall  tell 
later,  caused  the  burning  of  John  Huss ;  at  this  council,  Pope 
and  anti-Pope  resigned  or  were  swept  aside,  and  Martin  V 
became  the  sole  Pope  of  a  formally  reunited  but  spiritually 
very  badly  strained  Christendom. 

How  later  on  the  Council  of  Basle  (1437)  led  to  a  fresh 
schism,  and  to  further  anti-Popes,  we  cannot  relate  here. 

Such,  briefly,  is  the  story  of  the  great  centuries  of  papal 
ascendancy  and  papal  decline.  It  is  the  story  of  the  failure  to 
achieve  the  very  noble  and  splendid  idea  of  a  unified  and  re- 
ligious world.  We  have  pointed  out  in  the  previous  section  how 
greatly  the  inheritance  of  a  complex  dogmatic  theology  en- 
cumbered the  church  in  this  its  ambitious  adventure.  It  had 
too  much  theology,  and  not  enough  religion.  But  it  may  not 
be  idle  to  point  out  here  how  much  the  individual  insufficiency 
of  the  Popes  also  contributed  to  the  collapse  of  its  scheme  and 
dignity.  There  was  no  such  level  of  education  in  the  world 
as  to  provide  a  succession  of  cardinals  and  popes  with  the 
breadth  of  knowledge  and  outlook  needed  for  the  task  they  had 
undertaken ;  they  were  not  sufficiently  educated  for  their  task, 
and  only  a  few,  by  sheer  force  of  genius,  transcended  that  defect. 
And,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out,  they  were,  when  at  last 
they  got  to  power,  too  old  to  use  it.  Before  they  could  grasp  the 
situation  they  had  to  control,  most  of  them  were  dead.  It 
would  be  interesting  to  speculate  how  far  it  would  have  tilted  the 
balance  in  favour  of  the  church  if  the  cardinals  had  retired  at 
fifty,  and  if  no  one  could  have  been  elected  Pope  after  fifty-five. 
This  would  have  lengthened  the  average  reign  of  each  Pope,  and 
enormously  increased  the  continuity  of  the  policy  of  the  church. 


CHRISTENDOM  AND  THE  CRUSADES  665 

And  it  is  perhaps  possible  that  a  more  perfect  system  of  select- 
ing the  cardinals,  who  were  the  electors  and  counsellors  of  the 
Pope,  might  have  been  devised.  The  rules  and  ways  by  which 
men  reach  power  are  of  very  great  importance  in  human  affairs. 
The  psychology  of  the  ruler  is  a  science  that  has  still  to  be 
properly  studied.  We  have  seen  the  Roman  Republic  wrecked, 
and  here  we  see  the  church  failing  in  its  world  mission  very 
largely  through  ineffective  electoral  methods. 


XXXIII 

THE  GKEAT  EMPIRE  OF  JENGIS  KHAN  AND 
HIS  SUCCESSORS 

(The  Age  of  the  Land  Ways) 

§  1.  Asia  at  the  End  of  the  Twelfth  Century.  §  2.  The  Rise 
and  Victories  of  the  Mongols.  §  3.  The  Travels  of  Marco 
Polo.  §  4.  The  Ottoman  Turks  and  Constantinople.  §  5. 
Why  the  Mongols  Were  Not  Christianized.  §  5A.  Kublai 
Khan  Founds  the  Yuan  Dynasty.  §  SB.  The  Mongols  Re- 
vert to  Tribalism.  §  5c.  The  Kipchak  Empire  and  the  Tsar 
of  Muscovy.  §  SD.  Timurlane.  §  SE.  The  Mongol  Empire 
of  India.  §  SF.  The  Mongols  and  the  Gipsies. 


WE  have  to  tell  now  of  the  last  and  greatest  of  all  the 
raids  of  nomadism  upon  the  civilizations  of  the  East 
and  West.  We  have  traced  in  this  history  the  de- 
velopment side  by  side  of  these  two  ways  of  living,  and  we 
have  pointed  out  that  as  the  civilizations  grew  more  extensive 
and  better  organized,  the  arms,  the  mobility,  and  the  intelli- 
gence of  the  nomads  also  improved.  The  nomad  was  not  simply 
an  uncivilized  man,  he  was  a  man  specialized  and  specializing 
along  his  own  line.  From  the  very  beginning  of  history  the 
nomad  and  the  settled  people  have  been  in  reaction.  We  have 
told  of  the  Semitic  and  Elamite  raids  upon  Sumeria;  we  have 
seen  the  Western  empire  smashed  by  the  nomads  of  the  great 
plains  and  Persia  conquered  and  Byzantium  shaken  by  the 
nomads  of  Arabia.  Whenever  civilization  seems  to  be  choking 
amidst  its  weeds  of  wealth  and  debt  and  servitude,  when  its 
faiths  seem  rotting  into  cynicism  and  its  powers  of  further 
growth  are  hopelessly  entangled  in  effete  formulse,  the  nomad 
drives  in  like  a  plough  to  break  up  the  festering  stagnation  and 
release  the  world  to  new  beginnings.  The  Mongol  aggression, 
which  began  with  the  thirteenth  century,  was  the  greatest,  and 

666 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  667 

so  far  it  has  been  the  last,  of  all  these  destructive  reploughings 
of  human  association. 

From  entire  obscurity  the  Mongols  came  very  suddenly  into 
history  towards  the  close  of  the  twelfth  century.  They  ap- 
peared in  the  country  to  the  north  of  China,  in  the  land  of 
origin  of  the  Huns  and  Turks,  and  they  were  manifestly  of 
the  same  strain  as  these  peoples.  They  were  gathered  together 
under  a  chief,  with  whose  name  we  will  not  tax  the  memory 
of  the  reader;  under  his  son  Jengis  Khan  their  power  grew 
with  extraordinary  swiftness. 

The  reader  will  already  have  an  idea  of  the  gradual  breaking 
up  of  the  original  unity  of  Islam.  In  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century  there  were  a  number  of  separate  and  dis- 
cordant Moslem  states  in  Western  Asia.  There  was  Egypt 
(with  Palestine  and  much  of  Syria)  under  the  successors  of 
Saladin,  there  was  the  Seljuk  power  in  Asia  Minor,  there  was 
still  an  Abbasid  caliphate  in  Bagdad,  and  to  the  east  of  this 
again  there  had  grown  up  a  very  considerable  empire,  the 
Kharismian  empire,  that  of  the  Turkish  princes  from  Khiva 
who  had  conquered  a  number  of  fragmentary  Seljuk  principali- 
ties and  reigned  from  the  Ganges  valley  to  the  Tigris.  They 
had  but  an  insecure  hold  on  the  Persian  and  Indian  populations. 

The  state  of  the  Chinese  civilization  was  equally  inviting  to 
an  enterprising  invader.  One  last  glimpse  of  China  in  this  his- 
tory was  in  the  seventh  century  during  the  opening  years  of  the 
Tang  dynasty,  when  that  shrewd  and  able  emperor  Tai-tsung 
was  weighing  the  respective  merits  of  Nestorian  Christianity, 
Islam,  Buddhism,  and  the  teachings  of  Lao  Tse,  and  on  the 
whole  inclining  to  the  opinion  that  Lao  Tse  was  as  good  a 
teacher  as  any.  We  have  described  his  reception  of  the  traveller 
Yuan  Chwang.  Tai-tsung  tolerated  all  religions,  but  several 
of  his  successors  conducted  a  pitiless  persecution  of  the  Buddhist 
faith ;  it  nourished  in  spite  of  these  persecutions,  and  its  monas- 
teries played  a  somewhat  analogous  part  in  at  first  sustaining 
learning  and  afterwards  retarding  it,  that  the  Christian 
monastic  organization  did  in  the  West.  By  the  tenth  century 
the  great  Tang  dynasty  was  in  an  extreme  state  of  decay;  the 
usual  degenerative  process  through  a  series  of  voluptuaries  and 
incapables  had  gone  on,  and  China  broke  up  again  politically 
into  a  variable  number  of  contending  states,  "The  age  of  the 
Ten  States,"  an  age  of  confusion  that  lasted  through  the  first 


668 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  669 

half  of  the  tenth  century.  Then,  arose  a  dynasty,  the  Northern 
Sung  (960-1127),  which  established  a  sort  of  unity,  but  which 
was  in  constant  struggle  with  a  number  of  Hunnish  peoples 
from  the  north  who  were  pressing  down  the  eastern  coast.  For 
a  time  one  of  these  peoples,  the  Khitan,  prevailed.  In  the 
twelfth  century  these  people  had  been  subjugated  and  had  given 
place  to  another  Hunnish  empire,  the  empire  of  the  Kin,  with 
its  capital  at  Pekin  and  its  southern  boundary  south  of  Hwang- 
ho.  The  Sung  empire  shrank  before  this  Kin  empire.  In  1138 
the  capital  was  shifted  from  Nankin,  which  was  now  too  close 
to  the  northern  frontier,  to  the  city  of  Han  Chau  on  the  coast. 
From  1127  onward  to  1295,  the  Sung  dynasty  is  known  as  the 
Southern  Sung.  To  the  north-west  of  its  territories  there  was 
now  the  Tartar  empire  of  the  Hsia ;  to  the  north,  the  Kin  em- 
pire, both  states  in  which  the  Chinese  population  was  under 
rulers  in  whom  nomadic  traditions  were  still  strong.  So  that 
here  on  the  east  also  the  main  masses  of  Asiatic  mankind  were 
under  uncongenial  rulers  and  ready  to  accept,  if  not  to  welcome, 
the  arrival  of  a  conqueror. 

Northern  India  we  have  already  noted  was  also  a  conquered 
country  at  the  opening  of  the  thirteenth  century.  It  was  at 
first  a  part  of  the  Khivan  empire,  but  in  1206  an  adventurous 
ruler,  Kutub,  who  had  been  a  slave  and  who  had  risen  as  a  slave 
to  be  governor  of  the  Indian  province,  set  up  a  separate  Mos- 
lem state  of  Hindustan  in-  Delhi.  Brahminism  had  long  since 
ousted  Buddhism  from  India,  but  the  converts  to  Islam  were 
still  but  a  small  ruling  minority  in  the  land. 

Such  was  the  political  state  of  Asia  when  Jengis  Khan  began 
to  consolidate  his  power  among  the  nomads  in  the  country 
between  Lakes  Balkash  and  Baikal  in  the  beginning  of  the 
thirteenth  century. 

§  2 

The  career  of  conquest  of  Jengis  Khan  and  his  immediate 
successors  astounded  the  world,  and  probably  astounded  no  one 
more  than  these  Mongol  Khans  themselves. 

The  Mongols  were  in  the  twelfth  century  a  tribe  subject  to 
those  Kin  who  had  conquered  North-east  China.  They  were  a 
horde  of  nomadic  horsemen  living  in  tents,  and  subsisting  mainly 
upon  mare's  milk  products  and  meat.  Their  occupations  were 


670  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

pasturage  and  hunting,  varied  by  war.  They  drifted  north- 
ward as  the  snows  melted  for  summer  pasture,  and  southward 
to  winter  pasture  after  the  custom  of  the  steppes.  Their  mili- 
tary education  began  with  a  successful  insurrection  against 
the  Kin.  The  empire  of  Kin  had  the  resources  of  half  China 
behind  it,  and  in  the  struggle  the  Mongols  learnt  very  much 
of  the  military  science  of  the  Chinese.  By  the  end  of  the 
twelfth  century  they  were  already  a  fighting  tribe  of  excep- 
tional quality. 

The  opening  years  of  the  career  of  Jengis  were  spent  in  de- 
veloping his  military  machine,  in  assimilating  the  Mongols  and 
the  associated  tribes  about  them  into  one  organized  army.  His 
first  considerable  extension  of  power  was  westward,  when  the 
Tartar  Kirghis  and  the  Uigurs  (who  were  the  Tartar  people  of 
the  Tarim  basin)  were  not  so  much  conquered  as  induced  to 
join  his  organization.  He  then  attacked  the  Kin  empire 
and  took  Pekin  (1214).  The  Khitan  people,  who  had  been  so 
recently  subdued  by  the  Kin,  threw  in  their  fortunes  with  his, 
and  were  of  very  great  help  to  him.  The  settled  Chinese 
population  went  on  sowing  and  reaping  and  trading  during  this 
change  of  masters  without  lending  its  weight  to  either  side. 

We  have  already  mentioned  the  very  recent  Kharismian  em- 
pire of  Turkestan,  Persia,  and  North  India.  This  empire  ex- 
tended eastward  to  Kashgar,  and  it  must  have  seemed  one  of  the 
most  progressive  and  hopeful  empires  of  the  time.  Jengis 
Khan,  while  still  engaged  in  this  war  with  the  Kin  empire, 
sent  envoys  to  Kharismia.  They  were  put  to  death,  an  almost 
incredible  stupidity.  The  Kharismian  government,  to  use  the 
political  jargon  of  to-day,  had  decided  not  to  "recognize"  Jengis 
Khan,  and  took  this  spirited  course  with  him.  Thereupon 
(1218)  the  great  host  of  horsemen  that  Jengis  Khan  had  con- 
solidated and  disciplined  swept  over  the  Pamirs  and  down 
into  Turkestan.  It  was  well  armed,  and  probably  it  had  some 
guns  and  gunpowder  for  siege  work — for  the  Chinese  were  cer- 
tainly using  gunpowder  at  this  time,  and  the  Mongols  learnt 
its  use  from  them.  Kashgar,  Khokand,  Bokhara  fell  and  then 
Samarkand,  the  capital  of  the  Kharismian  empire.  There- 
after nothing  held  the  Mongols  in  the  Kharismian  territories. 
They  swept  westward  to  the  Caspian,  and  southward  as  far  as 
Lahore.  To  the  north  of  the  Caspian  a  Mongol  army  en- 
countered a  Russian  force  from  Kieff.  There  was  a  series  of 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS 


671 


672  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

battles,  in  which  the  Russian  armies  were  finally  defeated  and 
the  Grand  Duke  of  Kieff  taken  prisoner.  So  it  was  the  Mon- 
gols appeared  on  the  northern  shores  of  the  Black  Sea.  A 
panic  swept  Constantinople,  which  set  itself  to  reconstruct  its 
fortifications.  Meanwhile  other  armies  were  engaged  in  the 
conquest  of  the  empire  of  the  Hsia  in  China.  This  was 
annexed,  and  only  the  southern  part  of  the  Kin  empire  re- 
mained unsubdued.  In  1227  Jengis  Khan  died  in  the  midst 
of  a  career  of  triumph.  His  empire  reached  already  from  the 
Pacific  to  the  Dnieper.  And  it  was  an  empire  still  vigorously 
expanding. 

Like  all  the  empires  founded  by  nomads,  it  was,  to  begin  with, 
purely  a  military  and  administrative  empire,  a  framework 
rather  than  a  rule.  It  centred  on  the  personality  of  the  mon- 
arch, and  its  relations  with  the  mass  of  the  populations  over 
which  it  ruled  was  simply  one  of  taxation  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  horde.  But  Jengis  Khan  had  called  to  his  aid  a  very 
able  and  experienced  administrator  of  the  Kin  empire,  who 
was  learned  in  all  the  traditions  and  science  of  the  Chinese. 
This  statesman,  Yeliu  Chutsai,  was  able  to  carry  on  the  affairs 
of  the  Mongols  long  after  the  death  of  Jengis  Khan,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt  that  he  is  one  of  the  great  political  heroes  of 
history.  He  tempered  the  barbaric  ferocity  of  his  masters, 
and  saved  innumerable  cities  and  works  of  art  from  destruction. 
He  collected  archives  and  inscriptions,  and  when  he  was  accused 
of  corruption,  his. sole  wealth  was  found  to  consist  of  documents 
and  a  few  musical  instruments.  To  him  perhaps  quite  as  much 
as  to  Jengis  is  the  efficiency  of  the  Mongol  military  machine  to 
be  ascribed.  Under  Jengis,  we  may  note  further,  we  find  the 
completest  religious  toleration  established  across  the  entire 
breadth  of  Asia. 

At  the  death  of  Jengis  the  capital  of  the  new  empire  was  still 
in  the  great  barbaric  town  of  Karakorum  in  Mongolia.  There 
an  assembly  of  Mongol  leaders  elected  Ogdai  Khan,  the  son  of 
Jengis,  as  his  successor.  The  war  against  the  vestiges  of  the 
Kin  empire  was  prosecuted  until  Kin  was  altogether  subdued 
(1234).  The  Chinese  empire  to  the  south  under  the  Sung 
dynasty  helped  the  Mongols  in  this  task,  so  destroying  their 
own  bulwark  against  the  universal  conquerors.  The  Mongol 
hosts  then  swept  right  across  Asia  to  Russia  (1235),  an  amaz- 
ing march.  Kieff  was  destroyed  in  1240,  and  nearly  all  Russia 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  673 

became  tributary  to  the  Mongols.  Poland  was  ravaged,  and  a 
mixed  army  of  Poles  and  Germans  was  annihilated  at  the  battle 
of  Liegnitz  in  Lower  Silesia  in  1241.  The  Emperor  Frederick 
II  does  not  seem  to  have  made  any  great  efforts  to  stay  the 
advancing  tide. 

"It  is  only  recently/7  says  Bury  in  his  notes  to  Gibbon's 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,  "that  European  history 
has  begun  to  understand  that  the  successes  of  the  Mongol  army 
which  overran  Poland  and  occupied  Hungary  in  the  spring  of 
A.D.  1241  were  won  by  consummate  strategy  and  were  not  due 
to  a  mere  overwhelming  superiority  of  numbers.  But  this  fact 
has  not  yet  become  a  matter  of  common  knowledge ;  the  vulgar 
opinion  which  represents  the  Tartars  as  a  wild  horde  carrying 
all  before  them  solely  by  their  multitude,  and  galloping  through 
Eastern  Europe  without  a  strategic  plan,  rushing  at  all  obstacles 
and  overcoming  them  by  mere  weight,  still  prevails.  .  .  . 

"It  was  wonderful  how  punctually  and  effectually  the  arrange- 
ments of  the  commander  were  carried  out  in  operations  extend- 
ing from  the  Lower  Vistula  to  Transylvania.  Such  a  cam- 
paign was  quite  beyond  the  power  of  any  European  army  of  the 
time,  and  it  was  beyond  the  vision  of  any  European  commander. 
There  was  no  general  in  Europe,  from  Frederick  II  downward, 
who  was  not  a  tyro  in  strategy  compared  to  Subutai.  It  should 
also  be  noticed  that  the  Mongols  embarked  upon  the  enterprise 
with  full  knowledge  of  the  political  situation  of  Hungary  and 
the  condition  of  Poland — they  had  taken  care  to  inform  them- 
selves by  a  well-organized  system  of  spies;  on  the  other  hand, 
the  Hungarians  and  Christian  powers,  like  childish  barbarians, 
knew  hardly  anything  about  their  enemies." 

But  though  the  Mongols  were  victorious  at  Liegnitz,  they  did 
not  continue  their  drive  westward.  They  were  getting  into 
woodlands  and  hilly  country,  which  did  not  suit  their  tactics j 
and  so  they  turned  southward  and  prepared  to  settle  in  Hun- 
gary, massacring  or  assimilating  the  kindred  Magyar,  even  as 
these  had  previously  massacred  and  assimilated  the  mixed  Scy- 
thians and  Avars  and  Huns  before  them.  From  the  Hungarian 
plain  they  would  probably  have  made  raids  west  and  south  as  the 
Hungarians  had  done  in  the  ninth  century,  the  Avars  in  the 
seventh  and  eighth,  and  the  Huns  in  the  fifth.  But  in  Asia  the 
Mongols  were  fighting  a  stiff  war  of  conquest  against  the  Sung, 
and  they  were  also  raiding  Persia  and  Asia  Minor ;  Ogdai  died 


674  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

suddenly,  and  in  1242  there  was  trouble  about  the  succession, 
and  recalled  by  this,  the  undefeated  hosts  of  Mongols  began  to 
pour  back  across  Hungary  and  Rumania  towards  the  east. 

To  the  great  relief  of  Europe  the  dynastic  troubles  at  Kara- 
korum  lasted  for  some  years,  and  this  vast  new  empire  showed 
signs  of  splitting  up.  Mangu  Khan  became  the  Great  Khan  in 
1251,  and  he  nominated  his  brother  Kublai  Khan  as  Governor- 
General  of  China.  Slowly  but  surely  the  entire  Sung  empire 
was  subjugated,  and  as  it  was  subjugated  the  eastern  Mongols 
became  more  and  more  Chinese  in  their  culture  and  methods. 
Tibet  was  invaded  and  devastated  by  Mangu,  and  Persia  and 
Syria  invaded  in  good  earnest.  Another  brother  of  Mangu, 
Hulagu,  was  in  command  of  this  latter  war.  He  turned  his 
arms  against  the  caliphate  and  captured  Bagdad,  in  which  city 
he  perpetrated  a  massacre  of  the  entire  population.  Bagdad  was 
still  the  religious  capital  of  Islam,  and  the  Mongols  had  become 
bitterly  hostile  to  the  Moslems.  This  hostility  exacerbated  the 
natural  discord  of  nomad  and  townsman.  In  1259  Mangu  died, 
and  in  1260 — for  it  took  the  best  part  of  a  year  for  the  Mongol 
leaders  to  gather  from  the  extremities  of  this  vast  empire,  from 
Hungary  and  Syria  and  Scind  and  China — Kublai  was  elected 
Great  Khan.  He  was  already  deeply  interested  in  Chinese  af- 
fairs ;  he  made  his  capital  Pekin  instead  of  Karakorum,  and  Per- 
sia, Syria,  and  Asia  Minor  became  virtually  independent  under 
his  brother  Hulagu,  while  the  hordes  of  Mongols  in  Russia  and 
Asia  next  to  Russia,  and  various  smaller  Mongol  groups  in 
Turkestan  became  also  practically  separate.  Kublai  died  in 
1294,  and  with  his  death  even  the  titular  supremacy  of  the 
Great  Khan  disappeared. 

At  the  death  of  Kublai  there  was  a  main  Mongol  empire, 
with  Pekin  as  its  capital,  including  all  China  and  Mongolia; 
there  was  a  second  great  Mongol  empire,  that  of  Kipchak  in 
Russia ;  there  was  a  third  in  Persia,  that  founded  by  Hulagu, 
the  Ilkhan  empire,  to  which  the  Seljuk  Turks  in  Asia  Minor 
were  tributary;  there  was  a  Siberian  state  between  Kipchak  and 
Mongolia ;  and  another  separate  state  "Great  Turkey'7  in  Turk- 
estan. It  is  particularly  remarkable  that  India  beyond  the 
Punjab  was  never  invaded  by  the  Mongols  during  this  period, 
and  that  an  army  under  the  Sultan  of  Egypt  completely  de- 
feated Ketboga,  Hulagu's  general,  in  Palestine  (1260),  and 
stopped  them  from  entering  Africa.  By  1260  the  impulse  of 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  675 

Mongol  conquest  had  already  passed  its  zenith.     Thereafter  the 
Mongol  story  is  one  of  division  and  decay. 

The  Mongol  dynasty  that  Kuhlai  Khan  had  founded  in  China, 
the  Yuan  dynasty,  lasted  from  1280  until  1368.  Later  on  a 
recrudescence  of  Mongolian  energy  in  Western  Asia  was  des- 
tined to  create  a  still  more  enduring  monarchy  in  India. 

§0 
3 

Now  this  story  of  Mongolian  conquests  is  surely  the  most 
remarkable  in  all  history.  The  conquests  of  Alexander  the 
Great  cannot  compare  with  them  in  extent.  And  their  effect 
in  diffusing  and  broadening  men's  ideas,  though  such  things  are 
more  difficult  to  estimate,  is  at  least  comparable  to  the  spread  of 
the  Hellenic  civilization  which  is  associated  with  Alexander's 
adventure.  For  a  time  all  Asia  and  Western  Europe  enjoyed 
an  open  intercourse;  all  the  roads  were  temporarily  open,  and 
representatives  of  every  nation  appeared  at  the  court  of  Kara- 
korum.  The  barriers  between  Europe  and  Asia  set  up  by  the 
religious  feud  of  Christianity  and  Islam  were  lowered.  Great 
hopes  were  entertained  by  the  papacy  for  the  conversion  of  the 
Mongols  to  Christianity.  Their  only  religion  so  far  had  been 
Shamanism,  a  primitive  paganism.  Envoys  of  the  Pope,  Bud- 
dhist priests  from  India,  Parisian  and  Italian  and  Chinese 
artificers,  Byzantine  and  Armenian  merchants,  mingled  with 
Arab  officials  and  Persian  and  Indian  astronomers  and  mathe- 
maticians at  the  Mongol  court.  We  hear  too  much  in  history 
of  the  campaigns  and  massacres  of  the  Mongols,  and  not  enough, 
of  their  indubitable  curiosity  and  zest  for  learning.  Not  per- 
haps as  an  originative  people,  but  as  transmitters  of  knowledge 
and  method  their  influence  upon  the  world's  history  has  been 
enormous.  And  everything  one  can  learn  of  the  vague  and 
romantic  personalities  of  Jengis  or  Kublai  tends  to  confirm  the 
impression  that  these  men  were  built  upon  a  larger  scale,  and 
were  at  least  as  understanding  and  creative  monarchs  as  either 
that  flamboyant  but  egotistical  figure  Alexander  the  Great,  or 
that  raiser  of  political  ghosts,  that  energetic  but  illiterate 
theologian,  Charlemagne. 

The  missionary  enterprises  of  the  papacy  in  Mongolia  ended 
in  failure.  Christianity  was  losing  its  persuasive  power.  The 
Mongols  had  no  prejudice  against  Christianity ;  they  evidently 


676 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  677 

preferred  it  at  first  to  Islam ;  but  the  missions  that  came  to  them 
were  manifestly  using  the  power  in  the  great  teachings  of  Jesus 
to  advance  the  vast  claims  of  the  Pope  to  world  dominion. 
Christianity  so  vitiated  was  not  good  enough  for  the  Mongol 
mind.  To  make  the  empire  of  the  Mongols  part  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  might  have  appealed  to  them ;  but  not  to  make  it  a  fief 
of  a  group  of  French  and  Italian  priests,  whose  claims  were 
as  gigantic  as  their  powers  and  outlook  were  feeble,  who  were 
now  the  creatures  of  the  Emperor  of  Germany,  now  the  nominees 
of  the  King  of  France,  and  now  the  victims  of  their  own  petty 
spites  and  vanities.  In  1269  Kublai  Khan  sent  a  mission  to  the 
Pope  with  the  evident  intention  of  finding  some  common  mode 
of  action  with  Western  Christendom.  He  asked  that  a  hundred 
men  of  learning  and  ability  should  be  sent  to  his  court  to  estab- 
lish an  understanding.  His  mission  found  the  Western  world 
popeless,  and  engaged  in  one  of  those  disputes  about  the  suc- 
cession that  are  so  frequent  in  the  history  of  the  papacy.  For 
two  years  there  was  no  pope  at  all.  When  at  last  a  pope  was 
appointed,  he  dispatched  two  Dominican  friars  to  convert  the 
greatest  power  in  Asia  to  his  rule!  Those  worthy  men  were 
appalled  by  the  length  and  hardship  of  the  journey  before  them, 
and  found  an  early  excuse  for  abandoning  the  expedition. 

But  this  abortive  mission  was  only  one  of  a  number  of  at- 
tempts to  communicate,  and  always  they  were  feeble  and  feeble- 
spirited  attempts,  with  nothing  of  the  conquering  fire  of  the 
earlier  Christian  missions.  Innocent  IV  had  already  sent  some 
Dominicans  to  Karakorum,  and  St.  Louis  of  France  had  also 
dispatched  missionaries  and  relics  by  way  of  Persia;  Mangu 
Khan  had  numerous  Nestorian  Christians  at  his  court,  and  sub- 
sequent papal  envoys  actually  reached  Pekin.  We  hear  of 
the  appointment  of  various  legates  and  bishops  to  the  East,  but 
many  of  these  seem  to  have  lost  themselves  and  perhaps  their 
lives  before  they  reached  China.  There  was  a  papal  legate  in 
Pekin  in  1346,  but  he  seems  to  have  been  a  mere  papal  diplo- 
matist. With  the  downfall  of  the  Mongolian  (Yuan)  dynasty 
(1368),  the  dwindling  opportunity  of  the  Christian  missions 
passed  altogether.  The  house  of  Yuan  was  followed  by  that  of 
Ming,  a  strongly  nationalist  Chinese  dynasty,  at  first  very  hos- 
tile to  all  foreigners.  There  may  have  been  a  massacre  of  the 
Christian  missions.  Until  the  later  days  of  the  Mings  (1644) 
little  more  is  heard  of  Christianity,  whether  Nestorian  or  Cath- 


678  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

olie,  in  China.  Then  a  fresh  and  rather  more  successful  at- 
tempt to  propagate  Catholic  Christianity  in  China  was  made 
by  the  Jesuits,  but  this  second  missionary  wave  reached  China 
by  the  sea. 

In  the  year  1298  a  naval  battle  occurred  between  the  Genoese 
and  the  Venetians,  in  which  the  latter  were  defeated.  Among 
the  7,000  prisoners  taken  by  the  Genoese  was  a  Venetian  gentle- 
man named  Marco  Polo,  who  had  been  a  great  traveller,  and 
who  was  very  generally  believed  by  his  neighbours  to  be  given 
to  exaggeration.  He  had  taken  part  in  that  first  mission  to 
Kublai  Khan,  and  had  gone  on  when  the  two  Dominicans  turned 
back.  While  this  Marco  Polo  was  a  prisoner  in  Genoa,  he  be- 
guiled his  tedium  by  talking  of  his  travels  to  a  certain  writer 
named  Rusticiano,  who  wrote  them  down.  We  will  not  enter 
here  into  the  vexed  question  of  the  exact  authenticity  of  Rusti- 
ciano's  story — we  do  not  certainly  know  in  what  language  it  was 
written — but  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  general  truth  of  this 
remarkable  narrative,  which  became  enormously  popular  in  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  with  all  men  of  active  intelli- 
gence. The  Travels  of  Marco  Polo  is  one  of  the  great  books  of 
history.  It  opens  this  world  of  the  thirteenth  century,  this  cen- 
tury which  saw  the  reign  of  Frederick  II  and  the  beginnings  of 
the  Inquisition,  to  our  imaginations  as  no  mere  historian's  chron- 
icle can  do.  It  led  directly  to  the  discovery  of  America. 

It  begins  by  telling  of  the  journey  of  Marco's  father,  Nicolo 
Polo,  and  uncle,  Maffeo  Polo,  to  China.  These  two  were  Vene- 
tian merchants  of  standing,  living  in  Constantinople,  and  some- 
when  about  1260  they  went  to  the  Crimea  and  thence  to  Kazan ; 
from  that  place  they  journeyed  to  Bokhara,  and  at  Bokhara 
they  fell  in  with  a  party  of  envoys  from  Kublai  Khan  in  China 
to  his  brother  Hulagu  in  Persia.  These  envoys  pressed  them 
to  come  on  to  the  Great  Khan,  who  at  that  time  had  never  seen 
men  of  the  "Latin"  peoples.  They  went  on ;  and  it  is  clear  they 
made  a  very  favourable  impression  upon  Kublai,  and  interested 
him  greatly  in  the  civilization  of  Christendom.  They  were 
made  the  bearers  of  that  request  for  a  hundred  teachers  and 
learned  men,  "intelligent  men  acquainted  with  the  Seven  Arts, 
able  to  enter  into  controversy  and  able  clearly  to  prove  to  idol- 
ators  and  other  kinds  of  folk  that  the  Law  of  Christ  was  best," 
to  which  we  have  just  alluded.  But  when  they  returned  Chris- 
tendom was  in  a  phase  of  confusion,  and  it  was  only  after  a 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  679 

delay  of  two  years  that  they  got  their  authorization  to  start  for 
China  again  in  the  company  of  those  two  faint-hearted  Domini- 
cans. They  took  with  them  young  Marco,  and  it  is  due  to  his 
presence  and  the  boredom  of  his  subsequent  captivity  at  Genoa 
that  this  most  interesting  experience  has  been  preserved  to  us. 
The  three  Polos  started  by  way  of  Palestine  and  not  by  the 
Crimea,  as  in  the  previous  expedition.  They  had  with  them 
a  gold  tablet  and  other  indications  from  the  Great  Khan  that 
must  have  greatly  facilitated  their  journey.  The  Great  Kahn 
had  asked  for  some  oil  from  the  lamp  that  burns  in  the  Holy 
Sepulchre  at  Jerusalem;  and  so  thither  they  first  went,  and 
then  by  way  of  Cilicia  into  Armenia.  They  went  thus  far  north 
because  the  Sultan  of  Egypt  was  raiding  the  Ilkhan  domains  at 
this  time.  Thence  they  came  by  way  of  Mesopotamia  to  Ormuz 
on  the  Persian  Gulf,  as  if  they  contemplated  a  sea  voyage.  At 
Ormuz  they  met  merchants  from  India.  For  some  reason  they 
did  not  take  ship,  but  instead  turned  northward  through  the 
Persian  deserts,  and  so  by  way  of  Balkh  over  the  Pamir  to  Kash- 
gar,  and  by  way  of  Kotan  and  the  Lob  Nor  (so  following  in  the 
footsteps  of  Yuan  Chwang)  into  the  Hwangho  valley  and  on  to 
Pekin.  Pekin,  Polo  calls  "Cambaluc";  Northern  China, 
"Cathay"  (—  Khitan)  ;  and  Southern  China  of  the  former 
Sung  dynasty,  "Manzi."  At  Pekin  was  the  Great  Khan,  and 
they  were  hospitably  entertained.  Marco  particularly  pleased 
Kublai ;  he  was  young  and  clever,  and  it  is  clear  he  had  mastered 
the  Tartar  language  very  thoroughly.  He  was  given  an  official 
position  and  sent  on  several  missions,  chiefly  in  South-west 
China.  The  tale  he  had  to  tell  of  vast  stretches  of  smiling  and 
prosperous  country,  "all  the  way  excellent  hostelries  for  travel- 
lers," and  "fine  vineyards,  fields  and  gardens/'  of  "many 
abbeys"  of  Buddhist  monks,  of  manufactures  of  "cloth  of  silk 
and  gold  and  many  fine  taffetas,"  a  "constant  succession  of 
cities  and  boroughs,"  and  so  on,  first  roused  the  incredulity  and 
then  fired  the  imagination  of  all  Europe.  He  told  of  Burmah, 
and  of  its  great  armies  with  hundreds  of  elephants,  and  how 
these  animals  were  defeated  by  the  Mongol  bowmen,  and  also  of 
the  Mongol  conquest  of  Pegu.  He  told  of  Japan,  and  greatly  ex- 
aggerated the  amount  of  gold  in  that  country.  And,  still  more 
wonderful,  he  told  of  Christians  and  Christian  rulers  in  China, 
and  of  a  certain  "Prester  John,"  John  the  Priest,  who  was  the 
"king"  of  a  Christian  people.  Those  people  he  had  not  seen.  Ap- 


680  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

parently  they  were  a  tribe  of  Nestorian  Tartars  in  Mongolia.  An 
understandable  excitement  probably  made  Rusticiano  over-em- 
phasize what  must  have  seemed  to  him  the  greatest  marvel  of 
the  whole  story,  and  Prester  John  became  one  of  the  most  stimu- 
lating legends  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries.  It 
encouraged  European  enterprise  enormously  to  think  that  far 
away  in  China  was  a  community  of  their  co-religionists,  pre- 
sumably ready  to  welcome  and  assist  them.  For  three  years 
Marco  ruled  the  city  of  Yang-chow  as  governor,  and  he  prob- 
ably impressed  the  Chinese  inhabitants  as  being  very  little  more 
of  a  foreigner  than  any  Tartar  would  have  been.  He  may  also 
have  been  sent  on  a  mission  to  India.  Chinese  records  mention 
a  certain  Polo  attached  to  the  imperial  council  in  1277,  a  very 
valuable  confirmation  of  the  general  truth  of  the  Polo  story. 

The  Polos  had  taken  about  three  and  a  half  years  to  get  to 
China.  They  stayed  there  upwards  of  sixteen.  Then  they  began 
to  feel  homesick.  They  were  the  proteges  of  Kublai,  and  pos- 
sibly they  felt  that  his  favours  roused  a  certain  envy  that  might 
have  disagreeable  results  after  his  death.  They  sought  his  per- 
mission to  return.  For  a  time  he  refused  it,  and  then  an  oppor- 
tunity occurred.  Argon,  the  Ilkhan  monarch  of  Persia,  the 
grandson  of  Hulagu,  Kublai's  brother,  had  lost  his  Mongol  wife, 
and  on  her  deathbed  had  promised  not  to  wed  any  other  woman 
but  a  Mongol  of  her  own  tribe.  He  sent  ambassadors  to  Pekin, 
and  a  suitable  princess  was  selected,  a  girl  of  seventeen.  To 
spare  her  the  fatigues  of  the  caravan  route,  it  was  decided  to 
send  her  by  sea  with  a  suitable  escort.  The  "Barons"  in  charge 
of  her  asked  for  the  company  of  the  Polos  because  these  latter 
were  experienced  travellers  and  sage  men,  and  the  Polos 
snatched  at  this  opportunity  of  getting  homeward.  The  expedi- 
tion sailed  from  some  port  on  the  east  of  South  China;  they 
staved  long  in  Sumatra  and  South  India,  and  they  reached  Per- 
sia^after  a  voyage  of  two  years.  They  delivered  the  young  lady 
safely  to  Argon's  successor — for  Argon  was  dead — and  she  mar- 
ried Argon's  son.  The  Poles  then  went  by  Tabriz  to  Trebizond, 
sailed  to  Constantinople,  and  got  back  to  \renice  about  1295.  It 
is  related  that  the  returned  travellers,  dressed  in  Tartar  garb, 
were  refused  admission  to  their  own  house.  It  was  some  time 
before  they  could  establish  their  identity.  Many  people  A^ho 
admitted  that,  were  still  inclined  to  look  askance  at  them  as 
shabby  wanderers;  and,  in  order  to  dispel  such  doubts,  they 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  681 

gave  a  great  feast,  and  when  it  was  at  its  height  they  had  their 
old  padded  suits  brought  to  them,  dismissed  the  servants,  and 
then  ripped  open  these  garments,  whereupon  an  incredible  dis- 
play of  "rubies,  sapphires,  carbuncles,  emeralds,  and  diamonds" 
poured  out  before  the  dazzled  company.  Even  after  this, 
Marco's  accounts  of  the  size  and  population  of  China  were  re- 
ceived with  much  furtive  mockery.  The  wits  nicknamed  him 
II  Milione,  because  he  was  always  talking  of  millions  of  people 
and  millions  of  ducats. 

Such  was  the  story  that  raised  eyebrows  first  in  Venice  and 
then  throughout  the  Western  world.  The  European  literature, 
and  especially  the  European  romance  of  the  fifteenth  century. 
echoes  with  the  names  in  Marco  Polo's  story,  with  Cathay  and 
Cambaluc  and  the  like. 


These  travels  of  Marco  Polo  were  only  the  beginning  of  a  very 
considerable  intercourse.  That  intercourse  was  to  bring  many 
revolutionary  ideas  and  many  revolutionary  things  to  Europe, 
including  a  greatly  extended  use  of  paper  and  printing  from 
blocks,  the  almost  equally  revolutionary  use  of  gunpowder  in 
warfare,  and  the  mariner's  compass  which  was  to  release  the 
European  shipping  from  navigation  by  coasting.  The  popular 
imagination  has  always  been  disposed  to  ascribe  every  such 
striking  result  to  Marco  Polo.  He  has  become  the  type  and 
symbol  for  all  such  interchanges.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is 
no  evidence  that  he  had  any  share  in  these  three  importations. 
There  were  many  mute  Marco  Polos  who  never  met  their  Rusti- 
cianos,  and  history  has  not  preserved  their  names.  Before  we  go 
on,  however,  to  describe  the  great  widening  of  the  mental  hori- 
zons of  Europe  that  was  now  beginning,  and  to  which  this  book 
of  travels  was  to  contribute  very  materially,  it  will  be  convenient 
first  to  note  a  curious  side  consequence  of  the  great  Mongol  con- 
quests, the  appearance  of  the  Ottoman  Turks  upon  the  Darda- 
nelles, and  next  to  state  in  general  terms  the  breaking  up  and 
development  of  the  several  parts  of  the  empire  of  Jengis  Khan. 

The  Ottoman  Turks  were  a  little  band  of  fugitives  who  fled 
south-westerly  before  the  first  invasion  of  Western  Turkestan 
by  Jengis.  They  made  their  long  way  from  Central  Asia,  over 
deserts  and  mountains  and  through  alien  populations,  seeking 


682  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

some  new  lands  in  which  they  might  settle.  "A  small  hand  of 
alien  herdsmen,"  says  Sir  Mark  Sykes,  "wandering  unchecked 
through  crusades  and  counter-crusades,  principalities,  empires, 
and  states.  Where  they  camped,  how  they  moved  and  preserved 
their  flocks  and  herds,  where  they  found  pasture,  how  they  made 
their  peace  with  the  various  chiefs  through  whose  territories 
they  passed,  are  questions  which  one  may  well  ask  in  wonder." 

They  found  a  resting-place  at  last  and  kindred  and  congenial 
neighbours  on  the  table-lands  of  Asia  Minor  among  the  Seljuk 
Turks.  Most  of  this  country,  the  modern  Anatolia,  was  now 
largely  Turkish  in  speech  and  Moslem  in  religion,  except  that 
there  was  a  considerable  proportion  of  Greeks,  Jews,  and  Arme- 
nians in  the  town  populations.  No  doubt  the  various  strains  of 
Hittite,  Phrygian,  Trojan,  Lydian,  Ionian  Greek,  Cimmerian, 
Galatian,  and  Italian  (from  the  Pergamus  times)  still  flowed 
in  the  blood  of  the  people,  but  they  had  long  since  forgotten 
these  ancestral  elements.  They  were  indeed  much  the  same 
blend  of  ancient  Mediterranean  dark  whites,  Nordic  Aryans, 
Semites  and  Mongolians  as  were  the  inhabitants  of  the  Balkan 
peninsula,  but  they  believed  themselves  to  be  a  pure  Turanian 
race,  and  altogether  superior  to  the  Christians  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Bosphorus. 

Gradually  the  Ottoman  Turks  became  important,  and  at  last 
dominant  among  the  small  principalities  into  which  the  Seljuk 
empire,  the  empire  of  "Roum,"  had  fallen.  Their  relations  with 
the  dwindling  empire  of  Constantinople  remained  for  some  cen- 
turies tolerantly  hostile.  They  made  no  attack  upon  the  Bos- 
phorus,  but  they  got  a  footing  in  Europe  at  the  Dardanelles, 
and,  using  this  route,  the  route  of  Xerxes  and  not  the  route 
of  Darius,  they  pushed  their  way  steadily  into  Macedonia,  Epi- 
rus,  Illyria,  Yugo-Slavia,  and  Bulgaria.  In  the  Serbs  (Yugo- 
Slavs)  and  Bulgarians  the  Turks  found  people  very  like  them- 
selves in  culture  and,  though  neither  side  recognized  it,  prob- 
ably very  similar  in  racial  admixture,  with  a  little  less  of  the 
dark  Mediterranean  and  Mongolian  strains  than  the  Turks  and 
a  trifle  more  of  the  Nordic  element.  But  these  Balkan  peoples 
were  Christians,  and  bitterly  divided  among  themselves.  The 
Turks  on  the  other  hand  spoke  one  language ;  they  had  a  greater 
sense  of  unity,  they  had  the  Moslem  habits  of  temperance  and 
frugality,  and  they  were  on  the  whole  better  soldiers.  They 
converted  what  they  could  of  the  conquered  people  to  Islam ;  the 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  683 

Christians  they  disarmed,  and  conferred  upon  them  the  monop- 
oly of  tax-paying.  Gradually  the  Ottoman  princes  consolidated 
an  empire  that  reached  from  the  Taurus  mountains  in  the  east 
to  Hungary  and  Roumania  in  the  west.  Adrianople  became 
their  chief  city.  They  surrounded  the  shrunken  empire  of  Con- 
stantinople on  every  side. 

The  Ottomans  organized  a  standing  military  force,  the  Janis- 
saries, rather  on  the  lines  of  the  Mamelukes  who  dominated 
Egypt.  "These  troops  were  formed  of  levies  of  Christian  youths 
to  the  extent  of  one  thousand  per  annum,  who  were  affiliated  to 
the  Bektashi  order  of  dervishes,  and  though  at  first  not  obliged 
to  embrace  Islam,  were  one  and  all  strongly  imbued  with  the 
mystic  and  fraternal  ideas  of  the  confraternity  to  which  they 
were  attached.  Highly  paid,  well  disciplined,  a  close  and  jeal- 
ous secret  society,  the  Janissaries  provided  the  newly  formed 
Ottoman  state  with  a  patriotic  force  of  trained  infantry  soldiers, 
which,  in  an  age  of  light  cavalry  and  hired  companies  of  mer- 
cenaries, was  an  invaluable  asset.  .  .  . 

"The  relations  between  the  Ottoman  Sultans  and  the  Em- 
perors has  been  singular  in  the  annals  of  Moslem  and  Christian 
states.  The  Turks  had  been  involved  in  the  family  and  dynastic 
quarrels  of  the  Imperial  City,  were  bound  by  ties  of  blood  to  the 
ruling  families,  frequently  supplied  troops  for  the  defence  of 
Constantinople,  and  on  occasion  hired  parts  of  its  garrison  to 
assist  them  in  their  various  campaigns ;  the  sons  of  the  Emperors 
and  Byzantine  statesmen  even  accompanied  the  Turkish  forces 
in  the  field,  yet  the  Ottomans  never  ceased  to  annex  Imperial 
territories  and  cities  both  in  Asia  and  Thrace.  This  curious 
intercourse  between  the  House  of  Osman  and  the  Imperial  gov- 
ernment had  a  profound  effect  on  both  institutions ;  the  Greeks 
grew  more  and  more  debased  and  demoralized  by  the  shifts  and 
tricks  that  their  military  weakness  obliged  them  to  adopt  to- 
wards their  neighbours,  the  Turks  were  corrupted  by  the  alien 
atmosphere  of  intrigue  and  treachery  which  crept  into  their 
domestic  life.  Fratricide  and  parricide,  the  two  crimes  which 
most  frequently  stained  the  annals  of  the  Imperial  Palace,  even- 
tually formed  a  part  of  the  policy  of  the  Ottoman  dynasty.  One 
of  the  sons  of  Murad  I  embarked  on  an  intrigue  with  Androni- 
cus,  the  son  of  the  Greek  Emperor,  to  murder  their  respective 
fathers.  .  .  . 

"The  Byzantine  found  it  more  easy  to  negotiate  with  the  Otto- 


684 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


man  Pasha  than  with  the  Pope.  For  years  the  Turks  and  By- 
zantines had  intermarried,  and  hunted  in  couples  in  strange  by- 
paths of  diplomacy.  The  Ottoman  had  played  the  Bulgar  and 
the  Serb  of  Europe  against  the  Emperor,  just  as  the  Emperor 
had  played  the  Asiatic  Amir  against  the  Sultan ;  the  Greek  and 
Turkish  Royal  Princes  had  mutually  agreed  to  hold  each  other's 
rivals  as  prisoners  and  hostages;  in  fact,  Turk  and  Byzantine 
policy  had  so  intertwined  that  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  the 
Turks  regarded  the  Greeks  as  their  allies,  enemies,  or  subjects, 


OTTOMAN  EMPIRE  Ic&rc  1453. 


jr.KM. 


or  whether  the  Greeks  looked  upon  the  Turks  as  their  tyrants, 
destroyers,  or  protectors.  .  .  ."  l 

It  was  in  1453,  under  the  Ottoman  Sultan,  Muhammad  II, 
that  Constantinople  at  last  fell  to  the  Moslems.  He  attacked 
it  from  the  European  side,  and  with  a  great  power  of  artillery. 
The  Greek  Emperor  was  killed,  and  there  was  much  looting 
and  massacre.  The  great  church  of  St.  Sophia  which  Justin- 
ian the  Great  had  built  (532)  was  plundered  of  its  treasures 
and  turned  at  once  into  a  mosque.  This  event  sent  a  wave  of 

'Sir  Mark  Sykes,  The  Caliphs'  Last  Heritage. 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  685 

excitement  throughout  Europe,  and  an  attempt  was  made  to 
organize  a  crusade,  but  the  days  of  the  crusades  were  past. 

Says  Sir  Mark  Sykes:  "To  the  Turks  the  capture  of  Con- 
stantinople was  a  crowning  mercy  and  yet  a  fatal  blow.  Con- 
stantinople had  been  the  tutor  and  polisher  of  the  Turks.  So 
long  as  the  Ottomans  could  draw  science,  learning,  philosophy, 
art,  and  tolerance  from  a  living  fountain  of  civilization  in  the 
heart  of  their  dominions,  so  long  had  the  Ottomans  not  only 
brute  force,  but  intellectual  power.  So  long  as  the  Ottoman 
Empire  had  in  Constantinople  a  free  port,  a  market,  a  centre  of 
world  finance,  a  pool  of  gold,  an  exchange,  so  long  did  the  Otto- 
mans never  lack  for  money  and  financial  support.  Muhammad 
was  a  great  statesman,  the  moment  he  entered  Constantinople  he 
endeavoured  to  stay  the  damage  his  ambition  had  done ;  he  sup- 
ported the  patriarch,  he  conciliated  the  Greeks,  he  did  all  he 
could  to  continue  Constantinople  the  city  of  the  Emperors  .  .  . 
but  the  fatal  step  had  been  taken,  Constantinople  as  the  city  of 
the  Sultans  was  Constantinople  no  more;  the  markets  died 
away,  the  culture  and  civilization  fled,  the  complex  finance 
faded  from  sight ;  and  the  Turks  had  lost  their  governors  and 
their  support.  On  the  other  hand,  the  corruptions  of  Byzantium 
remained,  the  bureaucracy,  the  eunuchs,  the  palace  guards,  the 
spies,  the  bribers,  go-betweens — all  these  the  Ottomans  took 
over,  and  all  these  survived  in  luxuriant  life.  The  Turks,  in 
taking  Stambul,  let  slip  a  treasure  and  gained  a  pestilence.  .  .  ." 

Muhammad's  ambition  was  not  sated  by  the  capture  of  Con- 
stantinople. He  set  his  eyes  also  upon  Rome.  He  captured 
and  looted  the  Italian  town  of  Otranto,  and  it  is  probable  that 
a  very  vigorous  and  perhaps  successful  attempt  to  conquer  Italy 
—for  the  peninsula  was  divided  against  itself — was  averted  only 
by  his  death  (1481).  His  sons  engaged  in  fratricidal  strife. 
Under  Bayezid  II  (1481-1512),  his  successor,  war  was  carried 
into  Poland,  and  most  of  Greece  was  conquered.  Selim  (1512- 
1520),  the  son  of  Bayezid,  extended  the  Ottoman  power  over 
Armenia  and  conquered  Egypt.  In  Egypt,  the  last  Abbasid 
Caliph  was  living  under  the  protection  of  the  Mameluke  Sultan 
— for  the  Fatimite  caliphate  was  a  thing  of  the  past.  Selim 
bought  the  title  of  Caliph  from  this  last  degenerate  Abbasid, 
and  acquired  the  sacred  banner  and  other  relics  of  the  Prophet. 
So  the  Ottoman  Sultan  became  also  Caliph  of  all  Islam.  Selim 
was  followed  by  Suleiman  the  Magnificent  (1520-1566),  who 


686 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  687 

conquered  Bagdad  in  the  east  and  the  greater  part  of  Hungary 
in  the  west,  and  very  nearly  captured  Vienna.  His  fleets  also 
took  Algiers,  and  inflicted  a  number  of  reverses  upon  the  Vene- 
tians. In  most  of  his  warfare  with  the  empire  he  was  in  alliance 
with  the  French.  Under  him  the  Ottoman  power  reached  its 
zenith. 

§  5 

Let  us  now  very  briefly  run  over  the  subsequent  development 
of  the  main  masses  of  the  empire  of  the  Great  Khan.  In  no 
case  did  Christianity  succeed  in  capturing  the  imagination  of 
these  Mongol  states.  Christianity  was  in  a  phase  of  moral  and 
intellectual  insolvency,  without  any  collective  faith,  energy,  or 
honour;  we  have  told  of  the  wretched  brace  of  timid  Domini- 
cans which  was  the  Pope's  reply  to  the  appeal  of  Kublai  Khan, 
and  we  have  noted  the  general  failure  of  the  overland  missions 
of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  That  apostolic  pas- 
sion that  could  win  whole  nations  to  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven 
was  dead  in  the  church. 

In  1305,  as  we  have  told,  the  Pope  became  the  kept  pontiff 
of  the  French  king.  All  the  craft  and  policy  of  the  Popes 
of  the  thirteenth  century  to  oust  the  Emperor  from  Italy  had 
only  served  to  let  in  the  French  to  replace  him.  From  1305 
to  1377  the  Popes  remained  at  Avignon;  and  such  slight  mis- 
sionary effort  as  they  made  was  merely  a  part  of  the  strategy 
of  Western  European  politics.  In  1377  the  Pope  Gregory  XI 
did  indeed  re-enter  Rome  and  die  there,  but  the  French  car- 
dinals split  off  from  the  others  at  the  election  of  his  successor, 
and  two  Popes  were  elected,  one  at  Avignon  and  one  at  Rome. 
This  split,  the  Great  Schism,  lasted  from  1378  to  1418.  Each 
Pope  cursed  the  other,  and  put  all  his  supporters  under  an  inter- 
dict. Such  was  the  state  of  Christianity,  and  such  were  now 
the  custodians  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  All  Asia 
was  white  unto  harvest,  but  there  was  no  effort  to  reap  it. 

When  at  last  the  church  was  reunited  and  missionary  energy 
returned  with  the  foundation  of  the  order  of  the  Jesuits,  the 
days  of  opportunity  were  over.  The  possibility  of  a  world-wide 
moral  unification  of  East  and  West  through  Christianity  had 
passed  away.  The  Mongols  in  China  and  Central  Asia  turned 
to  Buddhism;  in  South  Russia,  Western  Turkestan,  and  the 
Ilkhan  Empire  they  embraced  Islam. 


688  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

§  5A 

In  China  the  Mongols  were  already  saturated  with  Chinese 
civilization  by  the  time  of  Kublai.  After  1280  the  Chinese  an- 
nals treat  Kublai  as  a  Chinese  monarch,  the  founder  of  the 
Yuan  dynasty  (1280-1368).  This  Mongol  dynasty  was  finally 
overthrown  by  a  Chinese  nationalist  movement  which  set  up 
the  Ming  dynasty  (1368-1644),  a  cultivated  and  artistic  line 
of  emperors,  ruling  until  a  northern  people,  the  Manchus,  who 
were  the  same  as  the  Kin  whom  Jengis  had  overthrown,  con- 
quered China  and  established  a  dynasty  which  gave  way  only 
to  a  native  republican  form  of  government  in  1912. 

It  was  the  Manchus  who  obliged  the  Chinese  to  wear  pigtails 
as  a  mark  of  submission.  The  pigtailed  Chinaman  is  quite  a 
recent  figure  in  history.  With  the  coming  of  the  republic 
the  wearing  of  the  pigtail  has  ceased  to  be  compulsory,  and 
many  Chinamen  no  longer  wear  it. 


In  the  Pamirs,  in  much  of  Eastern  and  Western  Turkestan, 
and  to  the  north,  the  Mongols  dropped  back  towards  the  tribal 
conditions  from  which  they  had  been  lifted  by  Jengis.  It  is 
possible  to  trace  the  dwindling  succession  of  many  of  the  small 
Khans  who  became  independent  during  this  period,  almost  down 
to  the  present  time.  The  Kalmuks  in  the  seventeenth  and  eigh- 
teenth centuries  founded  a  considerable  empire,  but  dynastic 
troubles  broke  it  up  before  it  had  extended  its  power  beyond 
Central  Asia.  The  Chinese  recovered  Eastern  Turkestan  from 
them  about  1757. 

Tibet  was  more  and  more  closely  linked  with  China,  and  be- 
came the  great  home  of  Buddhism  and  Buddhist  monasticism. 

Over  most  of  the  area  of  Western  Central  Asia  and  Persia 
and  Mesopotamia,  the  ancient  distinction  of  nomad  and  settled 
population  remains  to  this  day.  The  townsmen  despise  and 
cheat  the  nomads,  the  nomads  ill-treat  and  despise  the  townsfolk. 

§  5c 

The  Mongols  of  the  great  realm  of  Kipchak  remained  no- 
madic, and  grazed  their  stock  across  the  wide  plains  of  South 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  689 

Russia  and  Western  Asia  adjacent  to  Russia.  They  became 
not  very  devout  Moslems,  retaining  many  traces  of  their  earlier 
barbaric  Shamanism.  Their  chief  Khan  was  the  Khan  of  the 
Golden  Horde.  To  the  west,  over  large  tracts  of  open  country, 
and  more  particularly  in  what  is  now  known  as  Ukrainia,  the 
old  Scythian  population,  Slavs  with  a  Mongol  admixture,  re- 
verted to  a  similar  nomadic  life.  These  Christian  nomads,  the 
Cossacks,  formed  a  sort  of  frontier  screen  against  the  Tartars, 
and  their  free  and  adventurous  life  was  so  attractive  to  the  peas- 
ants of  Poland  and  Lithuania  that  severe  laws  had  to  be  passed 
to  prevent  a  vast  migration  from  the  plough-lands  to  the  steppes. 
The  serf-owning  landlords  of  Poland  regarded  the  Cossacks  with 
considerable  hostility  on  this  account,  and  war  was  as  frequent 
between  the  Polish  chivalry  and  the  Cossacks  as  it  was  between 
the  latter  and  the  Tartars. 

In  the  empire  of  Kipchak,  as  in  Turkestan  almost  up  to  the 
present  time,  while  the  nomads  roamed  over  wide  areas,  a  num- 
ber of  towns  and  cultivated  regions  sustained  a  settled  popula- 
tion which  usually  paid  tribute  to  the  nomad  Khan.  In  such 
towns  as  Kieif,  Moscow,  and  the  like,  the  pre-Mongol,  Christian 
town  life  went  on  under  Russian  dukes  or  Tartar  governors,  who 
collected  the  tribute  for  the  Khan  of  the  Golden  Horde.  The 
Grand  Duke  of  Moscow  gained  the  confidence  of  the  Khan,  and 
gradually,  under  his  authority,  obtained  an  ascendancy  over 
many  of  his  fellow  tributaries.  In  the  fifteenth  century,  under 
its  grand  duke,  Ivan  III,  Ivan  the  Great  (1462-1505),  Mos- 
cow threw  off  its  Mongol  allegiance  and  refused  to  pay  tribute 
any  longer  (1480).  The  successors  of  Constantine  no  longer 
reigned  in  Constantinople,  and  Ivan  took  possession  of  the  By- 
zantine double-headed  eagle  for  his  arms.  He  claimed  to  be  the 
heir  to  Byzantium  because  of  his  marriage  (1472)  with  Zoe 
Palseologus  of  the  imperial  line.  This  ambitious  grand  dukedom 
of  Moscow  assailed  and  subjugated  the  ancient  Northman  trad- 
ing republic  of  Novgorod  to  the  north,  and  so  the  foundations 
of  the  modern  Russian  Empire  were  laid  and  a  link  with  the 
mercantile  life  of  tjie  Baltic  established.  Ivan  III  did  not,  how- 
ever, carry  his  claim  to  be  the  heir  of  the  Christian  rulers  of 
Constantinople  to  the  extent  of  assuming  the  imperial  title. 
This  step  was  taken  by  his  grandson,  Ivan  TV  (Ivan  the  Terri- 
ble, because  of  his  insane  cruelties;  1533-1584).  Although  the 
ruler  of  Moscow  thus  came  to  be  called  Tsar  (Caesar),  his  tradi- 


690  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tion  was  in  many  respects  Tartar  rather  than  European ;  he  was 
autocratic  after  the  unlimited  Asiatic  pattern,  and  the  form  of 
Christianity  he  affected  was  the  Eastern,  court-ruled,  "orthodox" 
form,  which  had  reached  Russia  long  before  the  Mongol  con- 
quest, by  means  of  Bulgarian  missionaries  from  Constantinople. 
To  the  west  of  the  domains  of  Kipchak,  outside  the  range 
of  Mongol  rule,  a  second  centre  of  Slav  consolidation  had  been 
set  up  during  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  in  Poland.  The 
Mongol  wave  had  washed  over  Poland,  but  had  never  subjugated 
it.  Poland  was  not  "orthodox,"  but  Roman  Catholic  in  re- 
ligion ;  it  used  the  Latin  alphabet  instead  of  the  strange  Russian 
letters,  and  its  monarch  never  assumed  an  absolute  independence 
of  the  Emperor.  Poland  was  in  fact  in  its  origins  an  outlying 
part  of  Christendom  and  of  the  Holy  Empire ;  Russia  never  was 
anything  of  the  sort. 


§  SD 

The  nature  and  development  of  the  empire  of  the  Ilkhans  in 
Persia,  Mesopotamia,  and  Syria  is  perhaps  the  most  interesting 
of  all  the  stories  of  these  Mongol  powers,  because  in  this  region 
nomadism  really  did  attempt,  and  really  did  to  a  very  consider- 
able degree  succeed  in  its  attempt  to  stamp  a  settled  civilized 
system  out  of  existence.  When  Jengis  Kahn  first  invaded 
China,  we  are  told  that  there  was  a  serious  discussion  among 
the  Mongol  chiefs  whether  all  the  towns  and  settled  populations 
should  not  be  destroyed.  To  these  simple  practitioners  of  the 
open-air  life  the  settled  populations  seemed  corrupt,  crowded, 
vicious,  effeminate,  dangerous,  and  incomprehensible ;  a  detesta- 
ble human  efflorescence  upon  what  would  otherwise  have, been 
good  pasture.  They  had  no  use  whatever  for  the  towns.  The 
early  Franks  and  the  Anglo-Saxon  conquerors  of  South  Britain 
seem  to  have  had  much  the  same  feeling  towards  townsmen. 
But  it  was  only  under  Hulagu  in  Mesopotamia  that  these  ideas 
seem  to  have  been  embodied  in  a  deliberate  policy.  The  Mon- 
gols here  did  not  only  burn  and  massacre;  they  destroyed  the 
irrigation  system  that  had  endured  for  at  least  eight  thousand 
years,  and  with  that  the  mother  civilization  of  all  the  Western 
world  came  to  an  end.  Since  the  days  of  the  priest-kings  of 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  691 

Sumeria  there  had  been  a  continuous  cultivation  in  these  fertile 
regipns,  an  accumulation-of  tradition,  a  great  population,  a  suc- 
cession of  busy  cities,  Eridu,  Nippur,  Babylon,  Nineveh,  Ctesi- 
phon,  Bagdad.  Now  the  fertility  ceased.  Mesopotamia  became 
a  land  of  ruins  and  desolation,  through  which  great  waters  ran 
to  waste,  or  overflowed  their  banks  to  make  malarious  swamps. 
Later  on  Mosul  and  Bagdad  revived  feebly  as  second-rate 
towns.  .  .  . 

But  for  the  defeat  and  death  of  Hulagu's  general  Kitboga 
in  Palestine  (1260),  the  same  fate  might  have  overtaken  Egypt. 
But  Egypt  was  now  a  Turkish  sultanate;  it  was  dominated  by  a 
body  of  soldiers,  the  Mamelukes,  whose  ranks,  like  those  of  their 
imitators,  the  Janissaries  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  were  re- 
cruited and  kept  vigorous  by  the  purchase  and  training  of  boy 
slaves.  A  capable  Sultan  such  men  would  obey ;  a  weak  or  evil 
one  they  would  replace.  Under  this  ascendancy  Egypt  remained 
an  independent  power  until  1517,  when  it  fell  to  the  Ottoman 
Turks. 

The  first  destructive  vigor  of  Hulagu's  Mongols  soon  subsided, 
but  in  the  fifteenth  century  a  last  tornado  of  nomadism  arose 
in  Western  Turkestan  under  the  leadership  of  a  certain  Timur 
the  Lame,  or  Timurlane.  He  was  descended  in  the  female  line 
from  Jengis  Khan.  He  established  himself  in  Samarkand,  and 
spread  his  authority  over  Kipchak  (Turkestan  to  South  Kus- 
sia)^  Siberia,  and  southward  as  far  as  the  Indus.  He  assumed 
the  title  of  Great  Khan  in  1369.  He  was  a  nomad  of  the  savage 
schojpl,  and  he  created  an  empire  of  desolation  from  North  India 
to  Syria.  Pyramids  of  skulls  were  his  particular  architectural 
fancy;  after  the  storming  of  Ispahan  he  made  one  of  70,000. 
His  ambition  was  to  restore  the  empire  of  Jengis  Kahn  as  he 
conceived  it,  a  project  in  which  he  completely  failed.  He  spread 
destruction  far  and  wide;  the  Ottoman  Turks — it  was  before 
the  taking  of  Constantinople  and  their  days  of  greatness — and 
Egypt  paid  him  tribute;  the  Punjab  he  devastated;  and  Delhi 
surrendered  to  him.  After  Delhi  had  surrendered,  however,  he 
made  a  frightful  massacre  of  its  inhabitants.  At  the  time  of 
his  death  (1405)  very  little  remained  to  witness  to  his  power 
but  a  name  of  horror,  ruins  and  desolated  countries,  and  a 
shrunken  and  impoverished  domain  in  Persia. 

The  dynasty  founded  by  Timur  in  Persia  was  extinguished 
by  another  Turkoman  horde  fifty  years  later. 


692 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  693 

§   5E 

In  1505  a  small  Turkoman  chieftain,  Baber,  a  descendant  of 
Timur  and  therefore  of  Jengis,  was  forced  after  some  years  of 
warfare  and  some  temporary  successes — for  a  time  he  held  Sam- 
arkand— to  fly  with  a  few  followers  over  the  Hindu  Kush  to 
Afghanistan.  There  his  band  increased,  and  he  made  himself 
master  of  Cabul.  He  assembled  an  army,  accumulated  guns, 
and  then  laid  claim  to  the  Punjab,  because  Timur  had  conquered 
it  a  hundred  and  seven  years  before.  He  pushed  his  successes 
beyond  the  Punjab.  India  was  in  a  state  of  division,  and  quite 
ready  to  welcome  any  capable  invader  who  promised  peace  and 
order.  After  various  fluctuations  of  fortune  Baber  met  the 
Sultan  of  Delhi  at  Panipat  (1525),  ten  miles  north  of  that 
town,  and  though  he  had  but  25,000  men,  provided,  however, 
with  guns,  against  a  thousand  elephants  and  four  times  as  many 
men — the  numbers,  by  the  by,  are  his  own  estimate — he  gained 
a  complete  victory.  He  ceased  to  call  himself  King  of  Cabul, 
and  assumed  the  title  of  Emperor  of  Hindustan.  "This,"  he 
wrote,  "is  quite  a  different  world  from  our  countries."  It  was 
finer,  more  fertile,  altogether  richer.  He  conquered  as  far  as 
Bengal,  but  his  untimely  death  in  1530  checked  the  tide  of 
Mongol  conquest  for  a  quarter  of  a  century,  and  it  was  only 
after  the  accession  of  his  grandson  Akbar  that  it  flowed  again. 
Akbar  subjugated  all  India  as  far  as  Berar,  and  his  great-grand- 
son Aurungzeb  (1658-1707)  was  practically  master  of  the  entire 
peninsula.  This  great  dynasty  of  Baber  (1526-1530),  Huma- 
yun  (1530-1556),  Akbar  (1556-1605),  Jehangir  (1605-1628), 
Shah  Jehan  (1628-1658),  and  Aurungzeb  (1658-1707),  in 
which  son  succeeded  father  for  six  generations,  this  "Mogul 
(=  Mongol)  dynasty,"  x  marks  the  most  splendid  age  that  had 
hitherto  dawned  upon  India.  Akbar,  next  perhaps  to  Asoka, 
was  one  of  the  greatest  of  Indian  monarchs,  and  one  of  the  few 
royal  figures  that  approach  the  stature  of  great  men. 

To  Akbar  it  is  necessary  to  give  the  same  distinctive  atten- 
tion that  we  have  shown  to  Charlemagne  or  Constantine  the 
Great.  He  is  one  of  the  hinges  of  history.  Much  of  his  work 
of  consolidation  and  organization  in  India  survives  to  this  day. 

1  "Mogul"  is  our  rendering  of  the  Arabic  spelling  Mughal,  which  itself 
was  a  corruption  of  Mongol,  the  Arabic  alphabet  having  10  symbol  for 
n*_H.  H.  J. 


694  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

It  was  taken  over  and  continued-  by  the  British  when  they  be- 
came the  successors  of  the  Mogul  emperors.  The  British  mon- 
arch, indeed,  now  uses  as  his  Indian  title  the  title  of  the  Mogul 
emperors,  Kaisar-i-Hind.  All  the  other  great  administrations 
of  the  descendants  of  Jengis  Khan,  in  Russia,  throughout  West- 
ern and  Central  Asia  and  in  China,  have  long  since  dissolved 
away  and  given  place  to  other  forms  of  government.  Their 
governments  were  indeed  little  more  than  taxing  governments ; 
a  system  of  revenue-collecting  to  feed  the  central  establishment 
of  the  ruler,  like  the  Golden  Horde  in  South  Russia  or  the 
imperial  city  at  Karakorum  or  Pekin.  The  life  and  ideas  of 
the  people  they  left  alone,  careless  how  they  lived — so  long  as 
they  paid.  So  it  was  that  after  centuries  of  subjugation,  a 
Christian  Moscow  and  Kieff,  a  Shiite  Persia,  and  a  thoroughly 
Chinese  China  rose  again  from  their  Mongol  submergence.  But 
Akbar  made  a  new  India.  He  gave  the  princes  and  ruling 
classes  of  India  some  inklings  at  least  of  a  common  interest.  If 
India  is  now  anything  more  than  a  sort  of  rag-bag  of  inco- 
herent states  and  races,  a  prey  to  every  casual  raider  from  the 
north,  it  is  very  largely  due  to  him. 

His  distinctive  quality  was  his  openness  of  mind.  He  set 
himself  to  make  every  sort  of  able  man  in  India,  whatever  his 
race  or  religion,  available  for  the  public  work  of  Indian  life. 
His  instinct  was  the  true  statesman's  instinct  for  synthesis. 
His  empire  was  to  be  neither  a  Moslem  nor  a  Mongol  one,  nor 
was  it  to  be  Rajput  or  Aryan,  or  Dravidian,  or  Hindu,  or 
high  or  low  caste ;  it  was  to  be  Indian.  "During  the  years  of 
his  training  he  enjoyed  many  opportunities  of  noting  the  good 
qualities,  the  fidelity,  the  devotion,  often  the  nobility  of  soul, 
of  those  Hindu  princes,  whom,  because  they  were  followers  of 
Brahma,  his  Moslem  courtiers  devoted  mentally  to  eternal  tor- 
ments. He  noted  that  these  men,  and  men  who  thought  like 
them,  constituted  the  vast  majority  of  his  subjects.  He  noted, 
further,  of  many  of  them,  and  those  the  most  trustworthy,  that 
though  they  had  apparently  much  to  gain  from  a  worldly  point 
of  view  by  embracing  the  religion  of  the  court,  they  held  fast  to 
their  own.  His  reflective  mind,  therefore,  was  unwilling  from 
the  outset  to  accept  the  theory  that  because  he,  the  conqueror, 
the  ruler,  happened  to  be  born  a  Muhammadan,  therefore  Mu- 
hammadanism  was  true  for  all  mankind.  Gradually  his 
thoughts  found  words  in  the  utterance :  'Why  should  I  claim  to 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  695 

guide  men  before  I  myself  am  guided  ?'  and,  as  he  listened  to 
other  doctrines  and  other  creeds,  his  honest  doubts  became  con- 
firmed, and,  noting  daily  the  bitter  narrowness  of  sectarianism, 
no  matter  of  what  form  of  religion,  he  became  more  and  more 
wedded  to  the  principle  of  toleration  for  all." 

"The  son  of  a  fugitive  emperor/'  says  Dr.  Emil  Schmit,  "born 
in  the  desert,  brought  up  in  nominal  confinement,  he  had  known 
the  bitter  side  of  life  from  his  youth  up.  Fortune  had  given 
him  a  powerful  frame,  which  he  trained  to  support  the  ex- 
tremities of  exertion.  Physical  exercise  was  with  him  a  pas- 
sidn;  he  was  devoted  to  the  chase  and  especially  to  the  fierce 
excitement  of  catching  the  wild  horse  or  elephant  or  slaying  the 
dangerous  tiger.  On  one  occasion,  when  it  was  necessary  to 
dissuade  the  Raja  of  Jodhpore  to  abandon  his  intention  of  forc- 
ing the  widow  of  his  deceased  son  to  mount  the  funeral  pyre, 
Akbar  rode  two  hundred  and  twenty  miles  in  two  days.  In  bat- 
tle he  displayed  the  utmost  bravery.  He  led  his  troops  in  person 
during  the  dangerous  part  of  a  campaign,  leaving  to  his  gen- 
erals the  lighter  task  of  finishing  the  war.  In  every  victory  he 
displayed  humanity  to  the  conquered,  and  decisively  opposed 
any  exhibition  of  cruelty.  Free  from  all  those  prejudices 
which  separate  society  and  create  dissension,  tolerant  to  men  of 
other  beliefs,  impartial  to  men  of  other  races,  whether  Hindu 
or  Dravidian,  he  was  a  man  obviously  marked  out  to  weld  the 
conflicting  elements  of  his  kingdom  into  a  strong  and  prosperous 
whole. 

"In  all  seriousness  he  devoted  himself  to  the  work  of  peace. 
Moderate  in  all  pleasures,  needing  but  little  sleep  and  accus- 
tomed to  divide  his  time  with  the  utmost  accuracy,  he  found 
leisure  to  devote  himself  to  science  and  art  after  the  completion 
of  his  State  duties.  The  famous  personages  and  scholars  wh® 
adorned  the  capital  he  had  built  for  himself  at  Fatepur-Sikri 
were  at  the  same  time  his  friends ;  every  Thursday  evening  a 
circle  of  these  was  collected  for  intellectual  conversation  and 
philosophical  discussion.  His  closest  friends  were  two  highly 
talented  brothers,  Faizi  and  Abul  Fazl,  the  sons  of  a  learned 
free-thinker.  The  elder  of  these  was  a  famous  scholar  in  Hindu 
literature;  with  his  help,  and  under  his  direction,  Akbar  had 
the  most  important  of  the  Sanskrit  works  translated  into  Per- 
sian. Fazl,  on  the  other  hand,  who  was  an  especially  close 
friend  of  Akbar,  was  a  general,  a  statesman,  and  an  organizer, 


696  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  to  his  activity  Akbar  s  kingdom  chiefly  owed  the  solidarity 
of  its  internal  organization."  l 

(Such  was  the  quality  of  the  circle  that  used  to  meet  in  the 
palaces  of  Fatehpur-Sikri,  buildings  which  still  stand  in  the 
Indian  sunlight — but  empty  now  and  desolate.  Fatehpur- 
Sikri,  like  the  city  of  Ambar,  is  now  a  dead  city.  A  few  years 
ago  the  child  of  a  British  official  was  killed  by  a  panther  in 
one  of  its  silent  streets.) 

All  this  that  we  have  quoted  reveals  a  pre-eminent  monarch. 
But  Akbar,  like  all  men,  great  or  petty,  lived  within  the  limita- 
tions of  his  period  and  its  circle  of  ideas.  And  a  Turkoman, 
ruling  in  India,  was  necessarily  ignorant  of  much  that  Europe 
had  been  painfully  learning  for  a  thousand  years.  He  knew 
nothing  of  the  growth  of  a  popular  consciousness  in  Europe, 
and  little  or  nothing  of  the  wide  educational  possibilities  that 
the  church  had  been  working  out  in  the  West.  His  upbringing 
in  Islam  and  his  native  genius  made  it  plain  to  him  that  a 
great  nation  in  India  could  only  be  cemented  by  common  ideas 
upon  a  religious  basis,  but  the  knowledge  of  how  such  a  soli- 
darity could  be  created  and  sustained  by  universal  schools, 
cheap  books,  and  a  university  system  at  once  organized  and 
free  to  think,  to  which  the  modern  state  is  still  feeling  its  way, 
was  as  impossible  to  him  as  a  knowledge  of  steamboats  or  aero- 
planes. The  form  of  Islam  he  knew  best  was  the  narrow  and 
fiercely  intolerant  form  of  the  Turkish  Sunnites.  The  Mos- 
lems were  only  a  minority  of  the  population.  The  problem  he 
faced  was  indeed  very  parallel  to  the  problem  of  Constantine 
the  Great.  But  it  had  peculiar  difficulties  of  its  own.  He 
never  got  beyond  an  attempt  to  adapt  Islam  to  a  wider  appeal 
by  substituting  for  "There  is  one  God,  and  Muhammad  is  his 
prophet,"  the  declaration,  "There  is  one  God,  and  the  Emperor 
is  his  vice-regent."  This  he  thought  might  form  a  common 
platform  for  every  variety  of  faith  in  India,  that  kaleidoscope 
of  religions.  With  this  faith  he  associated  a  simple  ritual  bor- 
rowed from  the  Persian  Zorastrians  (the  Parsees)  who  still 
survived,  and  survive  to-day,  in  India.  This  new  state  re- 
ligion, however,  died  with  him,  because  it  had  no  roots  in  the 
minds  of  the  people  about  him. 

The  essential  factor  in  the  organization  of  a  living  state, 
the  world  is  coming  to  realize,  is  the  organization  of  an  educa- 
1  Dr.  Schmit  in  Helmolt's  History  of  the  World. 


JENGIS  KHAN  AND  HIS   SUCCESSORS  697 

tion.  This  Akbar  never  understood.  And  he  had  no  class  of 
men  available  who  would  suggest  such  an  idea  to  him  or  help 
him  to  carry  it  out.  The  Moslem  teachers  in  India  were  not 
so  much  teachers  as  conservators  of  an  intense  bigotry;  they 
did  not  want  a  common  mind  in  India,  but  only  a  common  in- 
tolerance in  Islam.  The  Brahmins,  who  had  the  monopoly  of 
teaching  among  the  Hindus,  had  all  the  conceit  and  slackness 
of  hereditary  privilege.  Yet  though  Akbar  made  no  general 
educational  scheme  for  India,  he  set  up  a  number  of  Moslem 
and  Hindu  schools.  He  knew  less  and  he  did  more  for  India 
in  these  matters  than  the  British  who  succeeded  him.  Some 
of  the  British  viceroys  have  aped  his  magnificence,  his  costly 
tents  and  awnings,  his  palatial  buildings  and  his  elephants  of 
state,  but  none  have  gone  far  enough  beyond  the  political  out- 
look of  this  mediaeval  Turkoman  to  attempt  that  popular  edu- 
cation which  is  an  absolute  necessity  to  India  before  she  can 
play  her  fitting  part  in  the  commonweal  of  mankind. 

§  5F 

A  curious  side  result  of  these  later  Mongol  perturbations, 
those  of  the  fourteenth  century  of  which  Timurlane  was  the 
head  and  centre,  was  the  appearance  of  drifting  batches  of  a 
strange  refugee  Eastern  people  in  Europe,  the  Gipsies.  They 
appeared  somewhen  about  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  and  early 
fifteenth  centuries  in  Greece,  where  they  were  believed  to  be 
Egyptians  (hence  Gipsy),  a  very  general  persuasion  which 
they  themselves  accepted  and  disseminated.  Their  leaders, 
however,  styled  themselves  '"Counts  of  Asia  Minor."  They 
had  probably  been  drifting  about  Western  Asia  for  some  cen- 
turies before  the  massacres  of  Timurlane  drove  them  over  the 
Hellespont.  They  may  have  been  dislodged  from  their  original 
homeland — as  the  Ottoman  Turks  were — by  the  great  cataclysm 
of  Jengis  or  even  earlier.  They  had  drifted  about  as  the  Otto- 
man Turks  had  drifted  about,  but  with  less  good  fortune.  They 
spread  slowly  westward  across  Europe,  strange  fragments  of 
nomadism  in  a  world  of  plough  and  city,  driven  off  their  an- 
cient habitat  of  the  Bactrian  steppes  to  harbour  upon  European 
commons  and  by  hedgerows  and  in  wild  woodlands  and 
neglected  patches.  The  Germans  called  them  "Hungarians" 
and  "Tartars,"  the  French,  "Bohemians."  They  do  not  seem 


698  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  have  kept  the  true  tradition  of  their  origin,  but  they  have 
a  distinctive  language  which  indicates  their  lost  history;  it- 
contains  many  North  Indian  words,  and  is  probably  in  its 
origin  iNorth  Indian.  There  are  also  considerable  Armenian 
and  Persian  elements  in  their  speech.  They  are  found  in  all 
European  countries  to-day;  they  are  tinkers,  pedlars,  horse- 
dealers,  showmen,  fortune-tellers,  and  beggars.  To  many 
imaginative  minds  their  wayside  encampments,  with  their 
smoking  fires,  their  rounded  tents,  their  hobbled  horses,  and 
their  brawl  of  sunburnt  children,  have  a  very  strong  appeal. 
Civilization  is  so  new  a  thing  in  history,  and  has  been  for  most 
of  the  time  so  very  local  a  thing,  that  it  has  still  to  conquer  and 
assimilate  most  of  our  instincts  to  its  needs.  In  most  of  us, 
irked  by  its  conventions  and  complexities,  there  stirs  the  nomad 
strain.  We  are  but  half-hearted  home-keepers.  The  blood  in 
our  veins  was  brewed  on  the  steppes  as  well  as  on  the  plough 
lands. 


XXXIV 

THE  RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION1 

(Land  Ways  Give  Place  to  Sea  Ways) 

§  1.  Christianity  and  Popular  Education.  §  2.  Europe  Be- 
gins to  Think  for  Itself.  §  3.  The  Great  Plague  and  the 
Dawn  of  Communism.  §  4.  How  Paper  Liberated  the 
Human  Mind.  §  5.  Protestantism  of  the  Princes  and 
Protestantism  of  the  Peoples.  §  6.  The  Reawakening  of 
Science.  §  7.  The  New  Growth  of  European  Towns.  §  8. 
America  Comes  into  History.  §  9.  What  Machiavelli 
Thought  of  the  World.  §10.  The  Republic  of  Switzerland. 
§  HA.  The  Life  of  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  §  lls.  Prot- 
estants if  the  Prince  Wills  It.  §  He.  The  Intellectual 
Undertow. 


JUDGED  by  the  map,  the  three  centuries  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  thirteenth  to  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century 
were  an  age  of  recession  for  Christendom.     These  cen- 
turies were  the  Age  of  the  Mongolian  peoples.    Nomadism  from 
Central  Asia  dominated  the  known  world.    At  the  crest  of  this 
period  there  were  rulers  of  Mongol  or  the  kindred  Turkish  race 
and  nomadic  tradition  in  China,  India,  Persia,  Egypt,  North 
Africa,  the  Balkan  peninsula,  Hungary,  and  Russia.    The  Otto- 
man Turk  had  even  taken  to  the  sea,  and  fought  the  Venetian 
upon   his    own   Mediterranean   waters.     In    1529    the    Turks 

1  Renascence  here  means  rebirth,  and  it  is  applied  to  the  recovery  of 
the  entire  Western  world.  It  is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  "Renaissance," 
an  educational,  literary,  and  artistic  revival  that  went  on  in  Italy  and  the 
Western  world  affected  by  Italy  during  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies. The  Renaissance  was  only  a  part  of  the  Renascence  of  Europe. 
The  Renaissance  was  a  revival  due  to  the  exhumation  of  classical  art 
and  learning;  it  was  but  one  factor  in  the  very  much  larger  and  more 
complicated  resurrection  of  European  capacity  and  vigour,  with  which  we 
are  dealing  in  this  chapter. 

699 


700  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

besieged  Vienna,  and  were  defeated  rather  by  the  weather  than 
by  the  defenders.  The  Habsburg  empire  of  Charles  V  paid 
the  Sultan  tribute.  It  was  not  until  the  battle  of  Lepanto  in 
1571,  the  battle  in  which  Cervantes,  the  author  of  Don  Quixote, 
lost  his  left  arm,  that  Christendom,  to  use  his  words,  "broke 
the  pride  of  the  Osmans  and  undeceived  the  world  which  had 
regarded  the  Turkish  fleet  as  invincible."  The  sole  region  of 
Christian  advance  was  Spain.  A  man  of  foresight  surveying 
the  world  in  the  early  sixteenth  century  might  well  have  con- 
cluded that  it  was  only  a  matter  of  a  few  generations  before 
the  whole  world  became  Mongolian — and  probably  Moslem. 
Just  as  to-day  most  people  seem  to  take  it  for  granted  that 
European  rule  and  a  sort  of  liberal  Christianity  are  destined 
to  spread  over  the  whole  world.  Few  people  seem  to  realize 
how  recent  a  thing  is  this  European  ascendancy.  It  was  only 
as  the  fifteenth  century  drew  to  its  close  that  any  indications 
of  the  real  vitality  of  Western  Europe  became  clearly  apparent. 

Our  history  is  now  approaching  our  own  times,  and  our  study 
becomes  more  and  more  a  study  of  the  existing  state  of  affairs. 
The  European  or  Europeanized  system  in  which  the  reader  is 
living,  is  the  same  system  that  we  see  developing  in  the 
crumpled-up,  Mongol-threatened  Europe  of  the  early  fifteenth 
century.  Its  problems  then  were  the  embryonic  form  of  the 
problems  of  to-day.  It,  is  impossible  to  discuss  that  time  with- 
out discussing  our  own  time.  We  become  political  in  spite  of 
ourselves.  "Politics  without  history  has  no  root,"  said  Sir 
J~.  R.  Seeley;  "history  without  politics  has  no  fruit." 

Let  us  try,  with  as  much  detachment  as  we  can  achieve,  to 
discover  what  the  forces  were  that  were  dividing  and  holding 
back  the  energies  of  Europe  during  this  tremendous  outbreak 
of  the  Mongol  peoples,  and  how  we  are  to  explain  the  accumu- 
lation of  mental  and  physical  energy  that  undoubtedly  went 
on  during  this  phase  of  apparent  retrocession,  and  which  broke 
out  so  impressively  at  its  close. 

Now,  just  as  in  the  Mesozoic  Age,  while  the  great  reptiles 
lorded  it  over  the  earth,  there  were  developing  in  odd  out-of- 
the-way  corners  those  hairy  mammals  and  feathered  birds  who 
were  finally  to  supersede  that  tremendous  fauna  altogether  by 
another  far  more  versatile  and  capable,  so  in  the  limited  terri- 
tories of  Western  Europe  of  the  Middle  Ages,  while  the  Mon- 
golian monarchies  dominated  the  world  from  the  Danube  to 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         701 


702  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  Pacific  and  from  the  Arctic  seas  to  Madras  and  Morocco 
and  the  Nile,  the  fundamental  lines  of  a  new  and  harder  and 
more  efficient  type  of  human  community  were  being  laid  down. 
This  type  of  community,  which  is  still  only  in  the  phase  of 
formation,  which  is  still  growing  and  experimental,  we  may 
perhaps  speak  of  as  the  "modern  state."  This  is,  we  must 
.recognize,  a  vague  expression,  but  we  shall  endeavour  to  get 
meaning  into  it  as  we  proceed.  We  have  noted  the  appearance 
of  its  main  root  ideas  in  the  Greek  republics  and  especially  in 
Athens,  in  the  great  Roman  republic,  in  Judaism,  in  Islam,  and 
in  the  story  of  Western  Catholicism.  Essentially  this  modern 
state,  as  we  see  it  growing  under  our  eyes  to-day,  is  a  tentative 
combination  of  two  apparently  contradictory  ideas,  the  idea  of 
a  community  of  faith  and  obedience,  such  as  the  earliest  civili- 
zations undoubtedly  were,  and  the  idea  of  a  community  of  will, 
such  as  were  the  primitive  political  groupings  of  the  Nordic 
and  Hunnish  peoples.  For  thousands  of  years  the  settled 
civilized  peoples,  who  were  originally  in  most  cases  dark-white 
Caucasians,  or  Dravidian  or  Southern  Mongolian  peoples,  seem 
to  have  developed  their  ideas  and  habits  along  the  line  of  wor- 
ship and  personal  subjection,  and  the  nomadic  peoples  theirs 
along  the  line  of  personal  self-reliance  and  self-assertion. 
Naturally  enough  under  the  circumstances  the  nomadic  peoples 
were  always  supplying  the  civilizations  with  fresh  rulers  and 
new  aristocracies.  That  is  the  rhythm  of  all  early  history.  It 
was  only  after  thousands  of  years  of  cyclic  changes  between 
refreshment  by  nomadic  conquest,  civilization,  decadence,  and 
fresh  conquest  that  the  present  process  of  a  mutual  blending  of 
"civilized"  and  "free"  tendencies  into  a  new  type  of  commu- 
nity, that  now  demands  our  attention  and  which  is  the  substance 
of  contemporary  history,  began. 

We  have  traced  in  this  history  the  slow  development  of  larger 
and  larger  "civilized"  human  communities  from  the  days  of 
the  primitive  Palaeolithic  family  tribe.  We  have  seen  how  the 
advantages  and  necessities  of  cultivation,  the  fear  of  tribal 
gods,  the  ideas  of  the  priest-king  and  the  god-king,  played  their 
part  in  consolidating  continually  larger  and  more  powerful 
societies  in  regions  of  maximum  fertility.  We  have  watched 
the  interplay  of  priest,  who  was  usually  native,  and  monarch, 
who  was  usually  a  conqueror,  in  these  early  civilizations,  the 
development  of  a  written  tradition  and  its  escape  from  priestly 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         703 

control,  and  the  appearance  of  novel  forces,  at  first  apparently 
incidental  and  secondary,  which  we  have  called  the  free  intelli- 
gence and  the  free  conscience  of  mankind.  We  have  seen  the 
rulers  of  the  primitive  civilizations  of  the  river  valleys  widen- 
ing their  area  and  extending  their  sway,  and  simultaneously 
over  the  less  fertile  areas  of  the  earth  we  have  seen  mere  tribal 
savagery  develop  into  a  more  and  more  united  and  politically 
competent  nomadism.  Steadily  and  divergently  mankind  pur- 
sued one  or  other  of  these  two  lines.  For  long  ages  all  the 
civilizations  grew  and  developed  along  monarchist  lines,  upon 
lines  of  absolute  monarchy,  and  in  every  monarchy  and  dynasty 
we  have  watched,  as  if  it  were  a  necessary  process,  efficiency 
and  energy  give  way  to  pomp,  indolence,  and  decay,  and  finally 
succumb  to  some  fresher  lineage  from  the  desert  or  the  steppe. 
The  story  of  the  early  cultivating  civilizations  and  their  temples 
and  courts  and  cities  bulks  large  in  human  history,  but  it  is 
well  to  remember  that  the  scene  of  that  story  was  never  more 
than  a  very  small  part  of  the  land  surface  of  the  globe.  Over 
the  greater  part  of  the  earth  until  quite  recently,  until  the  last 
two  thousand  years,  the  hardier,  less  numerous  tribal  peoples 
of  forest  and  parkland  and  the  nomadic  peoples  of  the  seasonal 
grasslands  maintained  and  developed  their  own  ways  of  life. 

The  primitive  civilizations  were,  we  may  say,  "communities 
of  obedience" ;  obedience  to  god-kings  or  kings  under  gods  was 
their  cement;  the  nomadic  tendency  on  the  other  hand  has 
always  been  towards  a  different  type  of  association  which  we 
shall  here  call  a  "community  of  will."  In  a  wandering,  fight- 
ing community  the  individual  must  be  at  once  self-reliant  and 
disciplined.  The  chiefs  of  such  communities  must  be  chiefs 
who  are  followed,  not  masters  who  compel.  This  community 
of  will  is  traceable  throughout  the  entire  history  of  mankind; 
everywhere  we  find  the  original  disposition  of  all  the  nomads 
alike,  Nordic,  Semitic,  or  Mongolian,  was  individually  more 
willing  and  more  erect  than  that  of  the  settled  folk.  The 
Nordic  peoples  came  into  Italy  .and  Greece  under  leader  kings ; 
they  did  not  bring  any  systematic  temple  cults  with  them,  they 
found  such  things  in  the  conquered  lands  and  adapted  as  they 
adopted  them.  The  Greeks  and  Latins  lapsed  very  easily  again 
into  republics,  and  so  did  the  Aryans  in  India.  There  was  a 
tradition  of  election  also  in  the  early  Frankish  and  German 
kingdoms,  though  the  decision  was  usually  taken  between  one 


704  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

or  other  members  of  a  royal  caste  or  family.  The  early  Caliphs 
were  elected,  the  Judges  of  Israel  and  the  ''kings"  of  Carthage 
and  Tyre  were  elected,  and  so  was  the  Great  Khan  of  the 
Mongols  until  Kublai  became  a  Chinese  monarch.  .  .  . 
Equally  constant  in  the  settled  lands  do  we  find  the  opposite 
idea,  the  idea  of  a  non-elective  divinity  in  kings  and  of  their 
natural  and  inherent  right  to  rule.  ...  As  our  history  has 
developed  we  have  noted  the  appearance  of  new  and  complicat- 
ing elements  in  the  story  of  human  societies ;  we  have  seen  that 
nomad  turned  go-between,  the  trader,  appear,  and  we  have 
noted  the  growing  importance  of  shipping  in  the  world.  It 
seems  as  inevitable  that  voyaging  should  make  men  free  in 
their  minds  as  that  settlement  within  a  narrow  horizon  should 
make  men  timid  and  servile.  .  .  .  But  in  spite  of  all  such 
complications,  the  broad  antagonism  between  the  method  of 
obedience  and  the  method  of  will  runs  through  history  down 
into  our  own  times.  To  this  day  their  reconciliation  is 
incomplete. 

Civilization  even  in  its  most  servile  forms  has  always  offered 
much  that  is  enormously  attractive,  convenient,  and  congenial 
to  mankind;  but  something  restless  and  untamed  in  our  race 
has  striven  continually  to  convert  civilization  from  its  original 
reliance  upon  unparticipating  obedience  into  a  community  of 
participating  wills.  And  to  the  lurking  nomadism  in  our  blood, 
and  particularly  in  the  blood  of  monarchs  and  aristocracies,  we 
must  ascribe  also  that  incessant  urgency  towards  a  wider  range 
that  forces  every  state  to  extend  its  boundaries  if  it  can,  and 
to  spread  its  interests  to  the  ends  of  the  earth.  The  power 
of  nomadic  restlessness  that  tends  to  bring  all  the  earth  under 
one  rule,  seems  to  be  identical  with  the  spirit  that  makes  most 
of  us  chafe  under  direction  and  restraint,  and  seek  to  partici- 
pate in  whatever  government  we  tolerate.  And  this  natural, 
this  temperamental  struggle  of  mankind  to  reconcile  civilization 
with  freedom  has  been  kept  alive  age  after  age  by  the  militarv 
and  political  impotence  of  every  "community  of  obedience" 
that  has  ever  existed.  Obedience,  once  men  are  broken  to  it, 
can  be  easily  captured  and  transferred ;  witness  the  passive  role 
of  Egypt,  Mesopotamia,  and  India,  the  original  and  typical 
lands  of  submission,  the  "cradles  of  civilization,"  as  they  have 
passed  from  one  lordship  to  another.  A  servile  civilization  is  a 
standing  invitation  to  predatory  free  men.  But  on  the  other 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         705 

hand  a  "community  of  will"  necessitates  a  fusion  of  intractable 
materials ;  it  is  a  far  harder  community  to  bring  about,  and  still 
more  difficult  to  maintain.  The  story  of  Alexander  the  Great 
displays  the  community  of  will  of  the  Macedonian  captains 
gradually  dissolving  before  his  demand  that  they  should  wor- 
ship him.  The  incident,  of  the  murder  of  Clitus  is  quite  typical 
of  the  struggle  between  the  free  and  the  servile  tradition  that 
went  on  whenever  a  new  conqueror  from  the  open  lands  and 
the  open  air  found  himself  installed  in  the  palace  of  an  ancient 
monarchy. 

In  the  case  of  the  Roman  Republic,  history  tells  of  the  first 
big  community  of  will  in  the  world's  history,  the  first  free  com- 
munity much  larger  than  a  city,  and  how  it  weakened  with 
growth  and  spent  itself  upon  success  until  at  last  it  gave  way 
to  a  monarchy  of  the  ancient  type,  and  decayed  swiftly  into 
one  of  the  feeblest  communities  of  servitude  that  ever  collapsed 
before  a  handful  of  invaders.  We  have  given  some  attention 
in  this  book  to  the  factors  in  that  decay,  because  they  are  of 
primary  importance  in  human  history.  One  of  the  most  evi- 
dent was  the  want  of  any  wide  organization  of  education  to 
base  the  ordinary  citizens'  minds  upon  the  idea  of  service  and 
obligation  to  the  republic,  to  keep  them  willing,  that  is;  an- 
other was  the  absence  of  any  medium  of  general  information 
to  keep  their  activities  in  harmony,  to  enable  them  to  will  as 
one  body.  The  community  of  will  is  limited  in  size  by  the 
limitations  set  upon  the  possibilities  of  a  community  of  knowl- 
edge. The  concentration  of  property  in  a  few  hands  and  the 
replacement  of  free  workers  by  slaves  were  rendered  possible 
by  the  decay  of  public  'spirit  and  the  confusion  of  the  public 
intelligence  that  resulted  from  these  limitations.  There  was, 
moreover,  no  efficient  religious  idea  behind  the  Roman  state; 
the  dark  Etruscan  liver-peering  cult  of  Rome  was  as  little 
adapted  to  the  political  needs  of  a  great  community  as  the  very 
similar  Shamanism  of  the  Mongols.  It  is  in  the  fact  that  both 
Christianity  and  Islam,  in  their  distinctive  ways,  did  at  least 
promise  to  supply,  for  the  first  time  in  human  experience,  this 
patent  gap  in  the  Roman  republican  system  as  well  as  in  the 
nomadic  system,  to  give  a  common  moral  education  for  a  mass 
of  people,  and  to  supply  them  with  a  common  history  of  the 
past  and  a  common  idea  of  a  human  purpose  and  destiny,  that 
their  enormous  historical  importance  lies.  Aristotle,  as  we  have 


706  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

noted,  had  set  a  limit  to  the  ideal  community  of  a  lew  thousand 
citizens,  because  he  could  not  conceive  how  a  larger  multitude 
could  be  held  together  by  a  common  idea.  He  had  had  no 
experience  of  any  sort  of  education  beyond  the  tutorial  methods 
of  his  time.  Greek  education  was  almost  purely  viva-voce  edu- 
cation; it  could  reach  therefore  only  to  a  limited  aristocracy. 
Both  the  Christian  church  and  Islam  demonstrated  the  un- 
soundness  of  Aristotle's  limitation.  We  may  think  they  did 
their  task  of  education  in  their  vast  fields  of  opportunity 
crudely  or  badly,  but  the  point  of  interest  to  us  is  that  they 
did  it  at  all.  Both  sustained  almost  world-wide  propagandas 
of  idea  and  inspiration.  Both  relied  successfully  upon  the 
power  of  the  written  word  to  link  great  multitudes  of  diverse 
men  together  in  common  enterprises.  By  the  eleventh  century, 
as  we  have  seen,  the  idea  of  Christendom  had  been  imposed  upon 
all  the  vast  warring  miscellany  of  the  smashed  and  pulverized 
Western  empire,  and  upon  Europe  far  beyond  its  limits,  as  a 
uniting  and  inspiring  idea.  It  had  made  a  shallow  but  effective 
community  of  will  over  an  unprecedented  area  and  out  of  an 
unprecedented  multitude  of  human  beings.  Only  one  other 
thing  at  all  like  this  had  ever  happened  to  any  great  section  of 
mankind  before,  and  that  was  the  idea  of  a  community  of  good 
behaviour  that  the  literati  had  spread  throughout  China.1 

The  Catholic  Church  provided  what  the  Roman  Republic 
had  lacked,  a  system  of  popular  teaching,  a  number  of  uni- 
versities and  methods  of  intellectual  inter-communication.  By 
this  achievement  it  opened  the  way  to  the  new  possibilities  of 
human  government  that  now  become  apparent  in  this  Outline, 
possibilities  that  are  still  being  apprehended  and  worked  out 
in  the  world  in  which  we  are  living.  Hitherto  the  government 
of  states  had  been  either  authoritative,  under  some  uncriticized 
and  unchallenged  combination  of  priest  and  monarch,  or  it 
had  been  a  democracy,  uneducated  and  uninformed,  degenerat- 
ing with  any  considerable  increase  of  size,  as  Rome  and  Athens 
did,  into  a  mere  rule  by  mob  and  politician.  But  by  the  thir- 
teenth century  the  first  intimations  had  already  dawned  of  an 
ideal  of  government  which  is  still  making  its  way  to  realiza- 
tion, the  modern  ideal,  the  ideal  of  a  world-wide  educational 
government,  in  which  the  ordinary  man  is  neither  the  slave 

*But  the  Jews  were  already  holding  their  community  together  by  sys- 
*ematic  education  at  least  as  early  as  the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era. 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         707 

of  an  absolute  monarch  nor  of  a  demagogue-ruled  state,  but  an 
informed,  inspired,  and  consulted  part  of  his  community.  It  is 
upon  the  word  educational  that  stress  must  be  laid,  and  upon 
the  idea  that  information  must  precede  consultation.  It  is  in 
the  practical  realization  of  this  idea  that  education  is  a  collec- 
tive function  and  not  a  private  affair  that  one  essential  distinc- 
tion of  the  "modern  state"  from  any  of  its  precursors  lies.  The 
modern  citizen,  men  are  coming  to  realize,  must  be  informed 
first  and  then  consulted.  Before  he  can  vote  he  must  hear  the 
evidence;  before  he  can  decide  he  must  know.  It  is  not  by 
setting  up  polling  booths,  but  by  setting  up  schools  and  making 
literature  and  knowledge  and  news  universally  accessible  that 
the  way  is  opened  from  servitude  and  confusion  to  that  will- 
ingly co-operative  state  which  is  the  modern  ideal.  Votes  in 
themselves  are  worthless  things.  Men  had  votes  in  Italy  in 
the  time  of  the  Gracchi.  Their  votes  did  not  help  them.  Until 
a  man  has  education,  a  vote  is  a  useless  and  dangerous  thing 
for  him  to  possess.  The  ideal  community  towards  which  we 
move  is  not  a  community  of  will  simply ;  it  is  a  community  of 
knowledge  and  will,  replacing  a  community  of  faith  and  obedi- 
ence. Education  is  the  adapter  which  will  make  the  nomadic 
spirit  of  freedom  and  self-reliance  compatible  with  the  co-opera- 
tions and  wealth  and  security  of  civilization. 

§2 

But  though  it  is  certain  that  the  Catholic  Church,  through 
its  propagandas,  its  popular  appeals,  its  schools  and  universities, 
opened  up  the  prospect  of  the  modern  educational  state  in 
Europe,  it  is  equally  certain  that  the  Catholic  Church  never 
intended  to  do  anything  of  the  sort.  It  did  not  send  out  knowl- 
edge with  its  blessing ;  it  let  it  loose  inadvertently.  It  was  not 
the  Roman  Republic  whose  heir  the  Church  esteemed  itself,  but 
the  Roman  Emperor.  Its  conception  of  education  was  not  re- 
lease, not  an  invitation  to  participate,  but  the  subjugation  of 
minds.  Two  of  the  greatest  educators  of  the  Middle  Ages 
were  indeed  not  churchmen  at  all,  but  monarchs  and  statesmen, 
Charlemagne  and  Alfred  the  Great  of  England,  who  made  use 
of  the  church  organization.  But  it  was  the  church  that  had 
provided  the  organization.  Church  and  monarchs  in  their 
mutual  grapple  for  power  were  both  calling  to  their  aid  the 


708  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

thoughts  of  the  common  man.  In  response  to  these  conflicting 
appeals  appeared  the  common  man,  the  unofficial  outside  inde- 
pendent man,  thinking  for  himself. 

Already  in  the  thirteenth  century  we  have  seen  Pope  Gregory 
IX  and  the  Emperor  Frederick  II  engaging  in  a  violent  public 
controversy.  Already  then  there  was  a  sense  that  a  new  arbi- 
trator greater  than  pope  or  monarchy  had  come  into  the  world, 
that  there  were  readers  and  a  public  opinion.  The  exodus  of 
the  popes  to  Avignon,  and  the  divisions  and  disorders  of  the 
Papacy  during  the  fourteenth  century,  stimulated  this  free 
judgment  upon  authority  throughout  Europe  enormously. 

At  first  the  current  criticism  upon  the  church  concerned  only 
moral  and  material  things.  The  wealth  and  luxury  of  the  higher 
clergy  and  the  heavy  papal  taxation  were  the  chief  grounds  of 
complaint.  And  the  earlier  attempts  to  restore  Christian  sim- 
plicity, the  foundation  of  the  Franciscans,  for  example,  were 
not  movements  of  separation,  but  movements  of  revival.  Only 
later  did  a  deeper  and  more  distinctive  criticism  develop  which 
attacked  the  central  fact  of  the  church's  teaching  and  the  justifi- 
cation of  priestly  importance ;  namely,  the  sacrifice  of  the  mass. 

We  have  sketched  in  broad  outlines  the  early  beginnings  of 
Christianity,  and  we  have  shown  how  rapidly  that  difficult  and 
austere  conception  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  which  wras  the  cen- 
tral idea  of  the  teachings  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  was  overlaid 
by  a  revival  of  the  ancient  sacrificial  idea,  a  doctrine  more  diffi- 
cult indeed  to  grasp,  but  easier  to  reconcile  with  the  habits  and 
dispositions  and  acquiescences  of  everyday  life  in  the  Near  East. 
We  have  noted  how  a  sort  of  theocrasia  went  on  between  Chris- 
tianity and  Judaism  and  the  cult  of  the  Serapeum  and  Mithra- 
ism  and  other  competing  cults^  by  which  the  Mithraist  Sunday, 
the  Jewish  idea  of  blood  as  a  religious  essential,  the  Alexan- 
drian importance  of  the  Mother  of  God,  the  shaven  and 
fasting  priest,  self-tormenting  asceticism,  and  many  other  mat- 
ters of  belief  and  ritual  and  practice,  became  grafted  upon  the 
developing  religion.  These  adaptations,  no  doubt,  made  the 
new  teaching  much  more  understandable  and  acceptable  in 
Egypt  and  Syria  and  the  like.  They  were  things  in  the  way 
of  thought  of  the  dark-white  Mediterranean  race;  they  were 
congenial  to  that  type.  But  as  we  have  shown  in  our  story  of 
Muhammad,  these  acquisitions  did  not  make  Christianity  more 
acceptable  to  the  Arab  nomads;  to  them  these  features  made  it 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         709 

disgusting.  And  so,  too,  the  robed  and  shaven  monk  and  nun 
and  priest  seem  to  have  roused  something  like  an  instinctive 
hostility  in  the  Nordic  barbarians  of  the  North  and  West.  We 
have  noted  the  peculiar  bias  of  the  early  Anglo-Saxons  and 
Northmen  against  the  monks  and  nuns.  They  seem  to  have 
felt  that  the  lives  and  habits  of  these  devotees  were  queer  and 
unnatural. 

The  clash  between  what  we  may  call  the  "dark-white"  factors 
and  the  newer  elements  in  Christianity  was  no  doubt  intensi- 
fied by  Pope  Gregory  VH's  imposition  of  celibacy  upon  the 
Catholic  priests  in  the  eleventh  century.  The  East  had  known 
religious  celibates  for  thousands  of  years ;  in  the  West  they  were 
regarded  with  scepticism  and  suspicion. 

And  now  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  as  the 
lay  mind  of  the  Nordic  peoples  began  to  acquire  learning,  to 
read  and  write  and  express  itself,  and  as  it  came  into  touch 
with  the  stimulating  activities  of  the  Arab  mind,  we  find  a 
much  more  formidable  criticism  of  Catholicism  beginning,  an 
intellectual  attack  upon  the  priest  as  priest,  and  upon  the  cere- 
mony of  the  mass  as  the  central  fact  of  the  religious  life, 
coupled  with  a  demand  for  a  return  to  the  personal  teachings 
of  Jesus  as  recorded  in  the  Gospels. 

We  have  already  mentioned  the  career  of  the  Englishman 
Wycliffe  (c.  1320-1384),  and  how  he  translated  the  Bible  into 
English  in  order  to  set  up  a  counter  authority  to  that  of  the 
Pope.  He  denounced  the  doctrines  of  the  church  about  the 
mass  as  disastrous  error,  and  particularly  the  teaching  that  the 
consecrated  bread  eaten  in  that  ceremony  becomes  in  some 
magical  way  the  actual  body  of  Christ.  We  will  not  pursue 
the  question  of  transubstantiation,  as  this  process  of  the  mystical 
change  of  the  elements  in  the  sacrament  is  called,  into  its 
intricacies.  These  are  matters  for  the  theological  specialist. 
But  it  will  be  obvious  that  any  doctrine,  such  as  the  Catholic 
doctrine,  which  makes  the  consecration  of  the  elements  in  the 
sacrament  a  miraculous  process  performed  by  the  priest,  and 
only  to  be  performed  by  the  priest,  and  which  makes  the  sacra- 
ment the  central  necessity  of  the  religious  system,  enhances  the 
importance  of  the  priestly  order  enormously.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  view,  which  was  the  typical  "Protestant"  view,  that 
this  sacrament  is  a  mere  eating  of  bread  and  drinking  of  wine 
as  a  personal  remembrance  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  does  away 


710  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

at  last  with  any  particular  need  for  a  consecrated  priest  at  all. 
Wycliffe  himself  did  not  go  to  this  extremity ;  he  was  a  priest, 
and  he  remained  a  priest  to  the  end  of  his  life,  he  held  that 
God  was  spiritually  if  not  substantially  present  in  the  conse- 
crated bread,  but  his  doctrine  raised  a  question  that  carried 
men  far  beyond  his  positions.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the 
historian,  the  struggle  against  Rome  that  Wycliffe  opened  be- 
came very  speedily  a  struggle  of  what  one  may  call  rational  or 
layman's  religion  making  its  appeal  to  the  free  intelligence  and 
the  free  conscience  in  mankind,  against  authoritative,  tradi- 
tional, ceremonial,  and  priestly  religion.  The  ultimate  tendency 
of  this  complicated  struggle  was  to  strip  Christianity  as  bare 
as  Islam  of  every  vestige  of  ancient  priestcraft,  to  revert  to 
the  Bible  documents  as  authority,  and  to  recover,  if  possible, 
the  primordial  teachings  of  Jesus.  Most  of  its  issues  are  still 
undecided  among  Christians  to  this  day. 

Wycliffe's  writings  had  nowhere  more  influence  than  in  Bo- 
hemia. About  1396  a  learned  Czech,  John  Huss,  delivered  a 
series  of  lectures  in  the  university  of  Prague  based  upon  the 
doctrines  of  the  great  Oxford  teacher.  Huss  became  rector  of 
the  university,  and  his  teachings  roused  the  church  to  excom- 
municate him  (1412).  This  was  at  the  time  of  the  Great 
Schism,  just  before  the  Council  of  Constance  (1414-1418) 
gathered  to  discuss  the  scandalous  disorder  of  the  church.  We 
have  already  told  how  the  schism  was  ended  by  the  election  of 
Martin  V.  The  council  aspired  to  reunite  Christendom  com- 
pletely. But  the  methods  by  which  it  sought  this  reunion  jar 
with  our  modern  consciences.  Wycliffe's  bones  were  condemned 
to  be  burnt.  Huss  was  decoyed  to  Constance  under  promise  of 
a  safe  conduct,  and  he  was  then  put  upon  his  trial  for  heresy. 
He  was  ordered  to  recant  certain  of  his  opinions.  He  replied 
that  he  could  not  recant  until  he  was  convinced  of  his  error. 
He  was  told  that  it  was  his  duty  to  recant  if  his  superiors 
required  it  of  him,  whether  he  was  convinced  or  not.  He  re- 
fused to  accept  this  view.  In  spite  of  the  Emperor's  safe  con- 
duct, he  was  burnt  alive  (1415),  a  martyr  not  for  any  specific 
doctrine,  but  for  the  free  intelligence  and  free  conscience  of 
mankind. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  put  the  issue  between  priest  and 
anti-priest  more  clearly  than  it  was  put  at  this  trial  of  John 
Huss,  nor  to  demonstrate  more  completely  the  evil  spirit  in 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         711 

priestcraft.  A  colleague  of  Huss,  Jerome  of  Prague,  was  burnt 
in  the  following  year. 

These  outrages  were  followed  by  an  insurrection  of  the 
Hussites  in  Bohemia  (1419),  the  first  of  a  series  of  religious 
wars  that  marked  the  breaking-up  of  Christendom.  In  1420 
the  Pope,  Martin  V,  issued  a  bull  proclaiming  a  crusade  "for 
the  destruction  of  the  Wycliffites,  Hussites,  and  all  other  heretics 
in  Bohemia,"  and  attracted  by  this  invitation  the  unemployed 
soldiers  of  fortune  and  all  the  drifting  blackguardism  of  Europe 
converged  upon  that  valiant  country.  They  found  in  Bohemia, 
under  its  great  leader  Ziska,  more  hardship  and  less  loot  than 
crusaders  were  disposed  to  face.  The  Hussites  were  conducting 
their  affairs  upon  extreme  democratic  lines,  and  the  whole  coun- 
try was  aflame  with  enthusiasm.  The  crusaders  beleaguered 
Prague,  but  failed  to  take  it,  and  they  experienced  a  series  of 
reverses  that  ended  in  their  retreat  from  Bohemia.  A  second 
crusade  (1421)  was  no  more  successful.  Two  other  crusades 
failed.  Then  unhappily  the  Hussites  fell  into  internal  dissen- 
sions. Encouraged  by  this,  a  fifth  crusade  (1431)  crossed  the 
frontier  under  Frederick,  Margrave  of  Brandenburg. 

The  army  of  these  crusaders,  according  to  the  lowest  esti- 
mates, consisted  of  90,000  infantry  and  40,000  horsemen.  At- 
tacking Bohemia  from  the  west,  they  first  laid  siege  to  the  town 
of  Tachov,  but  failing  to  capture  the  strongly  fortified  city,  they 
stormed  the  little  town  of  Most,  and  here,  as  well  as  in  the  sur- 
rounding country,  committed  the  most  horrible  atrocities  on  a 
population  a  large  part  of  which  was  entirely  innocent  of  any 
form  of  theology  whatever.  The  crusaders,  advancing  by  slow 
marches,  penetrated  further  into  Bohemia,  till  they  reached  the 
neighbourhood  of  the  town  of  Domazlice  (Tauss).  "It  was  at 
three  o'clock  on  August  14th,  1431,  that  the  crusaders,  who 
were  encamped  in  the  plain  between  Domazlice  and  Horsuv 
Tyn,  received  the  news  that  the  Hussites,  under  the  leadership 
of  Prokop  the  Great,  were  approaching.  Though  the  Bohemians 
were  still  four  miles  off,  the  rattle  of  their  war-wagons  and  the 
song,  'All  ye  warriors  of  God/  which  their  whole  host  was  chant- 
ing, could  already  be  heard."  The  enthusiasm  of  the  crusaders 
evaporated  with  astounding  rapidity.  Liitzow  l  describes  how 
the  papal  representative  and  the  Duke  of  Saxony  ascended  a 
convenient  hill  to  inspect  the  battlefield.  It  was,  they  discov- 

1Liitzow's  Bohemia. 


712  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ered,  not  going  to  be  a  battlefield.  The  German  camp  was  IE 
utter  confusion.  Horsemen  were  streaming  oil  in  every  direc- 
tion, and  the  clatter  of  empty  wagons  being  driven  off  almost 
drowned  the  sound  of  that  terrible  singing.  The  crusaders  were 
abandoning  even  their  loot.  Came  a  message  from  the  Mar- 
grave of  Brandenburg  advising  flight ;  there  was  no  holding  any 
of  their  troops.  They  were  dangerous  now  only  to  their  own 
side,  and  the  papal  representative  spent  an  unpleasant  night 
hiding  from  them  in  the  forest.  ...  So  ended  the  Bohemian 
crusade. 

In  1434  civil  war  again  broke  out  among  the  Hussites,  in 
which  the  extreme  and  most  valiant  section  was  defeated,  and 
in  1436  an  agreement  was  patched  up  between  the  Council  of 
Basle  and  the  moderate  Hussites,  in  which  the  Bohemian  church 
was  allowed  to  retain  certain  distinctions  from  the  general 
Catholic  practice,  which  held  good  until  the  German  Reforma- 
tion in  the  sixteenth  century. 

§  3 

The  split  among  the  Hussites  was  largely  due  to  the  drift  of 
the  extremer  section  towards  a  primitive  communism,  which 
alarmed  the  wealthier  and  more  influential  Czech  noblemen. 
Similar  tendencies  had  already  appeared  among  the  English 
Wycliffites.  They  seem  to  follow  naturally  enough  upon  the 
doctrines  of  equal  human  brotherhood  that  emerge  whenever 
there  is  an  attempt  to  reach  back  to  the  fundamentals  of 
Christianity. 

The  development  of  such  ideas  had  been  greatly  stimulated 
by  a  stupendous  misfortune  that  had  swept  the  world  and  laid 
bare  the  foundations  of  society,  a  pestilence  of  unheard-of  viru- 
lence. It  was  called  the  Black  Death,  and  it  came  nearer  to 
the  extirpation  of  mankind  than  any  other  evil  has  ever  done. 
It  was  far  more  deadly  than  the  plague  of  Pericles,  or  the 
plague  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  or  the  plague  waves  of  the  time  of 
Justinian  and  Gregory  the  Great  that  paved  the  way  for  the 
Lombards  in  Italy.  It  arose  in  South  Russia  or  Central  Asia, 
and  came  by  way  of  the  Crimea  and  a  Genoese  ship  to  Genoa 
and  Western  Europe.  It  passed  by  Armenia  to  Asia  Minor, 
Egypt,  and  North  Africa.  It  reached  England  in  1348.  Two- 
thirds  of  the  students  at  Oxford  died,  we  are  told;  it  is  esti- 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         713 

mated  that  between  a  quarter  and  a  half  of  the  whole  popula- 
tion of  England  perished  at  this  time.  Throughout  all  Europe 
there  was  as  great  a  mortality.  Hecker  estimates  the  total  as 
twenty-five  million  dead.  It  spread  eastward  to  China,  where, 
the  Chinese  records  say,  thirteen  million  people  perished.  In 
China  the  social  disorganization  led  to  a  neglect  of  the  river 
embankments,  and  as  a  consequence  great  floods  devastated  the 
crowded  agricultural  lands.1 

Never  was  there  so  clear  a  warning  to  mankind  to  seek  knowl- 
edge and  cease  from  bickering,  to  unite  against  the  dark  powers 
of  nature.  All  the  massacres  of  Hulagu  and  Timurlane  were 
as  nothing  to  this.  "Its  ravages,"  says  J.  R.  Green,  "were 
fiercest  in  the  greater  towns,  where  filthy  and  undrained  streets 
afforded  a  constant  haunt  to  leprosy  and  fever.  In  the  burial- 
ground  which  the  piety  of  Sir  Walter  Manny  purchased  for 
the  citizens  of  London,  a  spot  whose  site  was  afterwards  marked 
by  the  Charter  House,  more  than  fifty  thousand  corpses  are 
said  to  have  been  interred.  Thousands  of  people  perished  at 
Norwich,  while  in  Bristol  the  living  were  hardly  able  to  bury 
the  dead.  But  the  Black  Death  fell  on  the  villages  almost  as 
fiercely  as  on  the  towns.  More  than  one-half  of  the  priests  of 
Yorkshire  are  known  to  have  perished ;  in  the  diocese  of  Nor- 
wich two-thirds  of  the  parishes  changed  their  incumbents.  The 
whole  organization  of  labour  was  thrown  out  of  gear.  The 
scarcity  of  hands  made  it  difficult  for  the  minor  tenants  to  per- 
form the  services  due  for  their  lands,  and  only  a  temporary 
abandonment  of  half  the  rent  by  the  landowners  induced  the 
farmers  to  refrain  from  the  abandonment  of  their  farms.  For 
a  time  cultivation  became  impossible.  *The  sheep  and  cattle 
strayed  through  the  fields  and  corn,'  says  a  contemporary,  'and 
there  were  none  left  who  could  drive  them.'  ' 

It  was  from  these  distresses  that  the  peasant  wars  of  the 
fourteenth  century  sprang.  There  was  a  great  shortage  of 
labour  and  a  great  shortage  of  goods,  and  the  rich  abbots  and 
monastic  cultivators  who  owned  so  much  of  the  land,  and  the 
nobles  and  rich  merchants,  were  too  ignorant  of  economic  laws 

1  Dr.  C.  O.  Stallybrass  says  that  this  plague  reached  China  thirty  or 
forty  years  after  its  first  appearance  in  Europe.  Ibn  Batutaf  the  Arab 
traveller  who  was  in  China  froir  1342  to  1346,  first  met  with  it  on  his 
return  to  Damascus.  The  Black  Death  is  the  human  form  of  a  disease 
endemic  among  the  jerboas  and  other  small  rodents  in  the  districts  round 
the  head  of  the  Caspian  Sea. 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


to  understand  that  they  must  not  press  upon  the  toilers  in  this 
time  of  general  distress.  They  saw  their  property  deteriorating, 
their  lands  going  out  of  cultivation,  and 
they  made  violent  statutes  to  compel  men  to 
work  without  any  rise  in  wages,  and  to  pre- 
vent their  straying  in  search  of  better 
employment.  Naturally  enough  this  pro- 
voked "a  new  revolt  against  the  whole  sys- 
tem of  social  inequality  which  had  till  then 
passed  unquestioned  as  the  divine  order  of 
the  world.  The  cry  of  the  poor  found  a 
terrible  utterance  in  the  words  of  'a  mad 
priest  of  Kent/  as  the  courtly  Froissart 
calls  him,  who  for  twenty  years  (1360- 
1381)  found  audience  for  his  sermons,  in 
defiance  of  interdict  and  imprisonment,  in 
the  stout  yeomen  who  gathered  in  the  Kent- 
ish churchyards.  'Mad,'  as  the  landowners 
called  him,  it  was  in  the  preaching  of  John 
Ball  that  England  first  listened  to  a  declara- 
tion of  natural  equality  and  the  rights  of 
man.  'Good  people/  cried  the  preacher, 
'things  will  never  go  well  in  England  so 
long  as  goods  be  not  in  common,  and  so 
long  as  there  be  villeins  and  gentlemen.  By 
what  right  are  they  whom  we  call  lords 
greater  folk  than  we?  On  what  grounds 
have  they  deserved  it  ?  Why  do  they  hold 
us  in  serfage  ?  If  we  all  came  of  the  same 
father  and  mother,  of  Adam  and  Eve,  how 
can  they  say  or  prove  that  they  are  better 
than  we,  if  it  be  not  that  they  make  us  gain 
for  them  by  our  toil  what  they  spend  in 
their  pride  ?  They  are  clothed  in  velvet  and 
warm  in  their  furs  and  their  ermines,  while 
we  are  covered  with  rags.  They  have  wine 
and  spices  and  fair  bread;  and  we  oat-cake 
and  straw,  and  water  to  drink.  They  have  leisure  and  fine 
houses ;  we  have  pain  and  labour,  the  rain  and  the  wind  in  the 
fields.  And  yet  it  is  of  us  and  of  our  toil  that  these  men  hold 
their  state.7  A  spirit  fatal  to  the  whole  system  of  the  Middle 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         715 

Ages  breathed  in  the  popular  rhyme  which  condensed  the 
levelling  doctrine  of  John  Ball:  'When  Adam  delved  and  Eve 
span,  who  was  then  the  gentleman  ?' ? 

Wat  Tyler,  the  leader  of  the  English  insurgents,  was  assassi- 
nated hy  the  Mayor  of  London  in  the  presence  of  the  young  King 
Richard  II  (1381),  and  his  movement  collapsed.  The  commu- 
nist side  of  the  Hussite  movement  was  a  part  of  the  same  sys- 
tem of  disturbance.  A  little  earlier  than  the  English  outbreak 
had  occurred  the  French  " Jacquerie"  (1358),  in  which  the 
French  peasants  had  risen,  burnt  chateaux,  and  devastated  the 
countryside.  A  century  later  the  same  urgency  was  to  sweep 
Germany  into  a  series  of  bloody  Peasant  Wars.  These  began 
late  in  the  fifteenth  century.  Economic  and  religious  disturb- 
ance mingled  in  the  case  of  Germany  even  more  plainly  than 
in  England.  One  conspicuous  phase  of  these  German  troubles 
was  the  Anabaptist  outbreak.  The  sect  of  the  Anabaptists  ap- 
peared in  Wittenberg  in  1521  under  three  "prophets,"  and 
broke  out  into  insurrection  in  1525.  Between  1532  and  1535 
the  insurgents  held  the  town  of  Minister  in  Westphalia,  and 
did  their  utmost  to  realize  their  ideas  of  a  religious  communism. 
They  were  besieged  by  the  Bishop  of  Miinster,  and  under  the 
distresses  of  the  siege  a  sort  of  insanity  ran  rife  in  the  town; 
cannibalism  is  said  to  have  occurred,  and  a  certain  John  of 
Leyden  seized  power,  proclaimed  himself  the  successor  of  King 
David,  and  followed  that  monarch's  evil  example  by  practising 
polygamy.  After  the  surrender  of  the  city  the  victorious  bishop 
had  the  Anabaptist  leaders  tortured  very  horribly  and  executed 

aThe  seeds  of  conflict  which  grew  up  into  the  Peasants'  Revolt  of  1381 
were  sown  upon  ground  which  is  strangely  familiar  to  any  writer  in  1920. 
A  European  catastrophe  had  reduced  production  and  consequently  in- 
creased the  earnings  of  workers  and  traders.  Rural  wages  had  risen  by 
48  per  cent,  in  England,  when  an  unwise  executive  endeavoured  to  en- 
force in  the  Ordinance  and  Statute  of  Labourers  (1350-51)  a  return  to 
the  pre-plague  wages  and  prices  of  1346,  and  aimed  a  blow  in  the  Statute 
of  1378  against  labour  combinations.  The  villeins  were  driven  to  des- 
peration by  the  loss  of  their  recent  increase  of  comfort,  and  the  outbreak 
came,  as  Froissart  saw  it  from  the  angle  of  the  Court,  "all  through  the 
too  great  comfort  of  the  commonalty."  Other  ingredients  which  entered 
into  the  outbreak  were  the  resentment  felt  by  the  new  working  class  at 
the  restrictions  imposed  on  its  right  to  combine,  the  objection  of  the  lower 
clergy  to  papal  taxes,  and  a  frank  dislike  of  foreigners  and  landlords. 
There  was  no  touch  of  Wycliffe's  influence  in  the  rising.  It  was  at  its 
feeblest  in  Leicestershire,  and  it  murdered  one  of  the  only  other  Liberal 
churchmen  in  England. — P.  3. 


716  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

in  the  market-place,  their  mutilated  bodies  being  hung  in  cages 
from  a  church  tower  to  witness  to  all  the  world  that  decency 
and  order  were  now  restored  in  Minister.  .  .  . 

These  upheavals  of  the  common  labouring  men  of  the  West- 
ern European  countries  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries 
were  more  serious  and  sustained  than  anything  that  had  ever 
happened  in  history  before.  The  nearest  previous  approach  to 
them  were  certain  communistic  Muhammadan  movements  in 
Persia.  There  was  a  peasant  revolt  in  Normandy  about  A.D. 
1000,  and  there  were  revolts  of  peasants  (Bagaudse)  in  the 
later  Roman  Empire,  but  these  were  not  nearly  so  formidable. 
They  show  a  new  spirit  growing  in  human  affairs,  a  spirit  alto- 
gether different  from  the  unquestioning  apathy  of  the  serfs  and 
peasants  in  the  original  regions  of  civilization  or  from  the 
anarchist  hopelessness  of  the  serf  and  slave  labour  of  the  Roman 
capitalists.  All  these  early  insurrections  of  the  workers  that 
we  have  mentioned  were  suppressed  with  much  cruelty,  but  the 
movement  itself  was  never  completely  stamped  out.  From  that 
time  to  this  there  has  been  a  spirit  of  revolt  in  the  lower  levels 
of  the  pyramid  of  civilization.  There  have  been  phases  of  in- 
surrection, phases  of  repression,  phases  of  compromise  and  com- 
parative pacification ;  but  from  that  time  until  this,  the  struggle 
has  never  wholly  ceased.  We  shall  see  it  flaring  out  during  the 
French  Revolution  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  insur- 
gent again  in  the  middle  and  at  the  opening  of  the  last  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  achieving  vast  proportions  in 
the  world  of  to-day.  The  socialist  movement  of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  only  one  version  of  that  continuing  revolt. 

In  many  countries,  in  France  and  Germany  and  Russia,  for 
example,  this  labour  movement  has  assumed  at  times  an  attitude 
hostile  to  Christianity,  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  this 
steady  and,  on  the  whole,  growing  pressure  of  the  common  man 
in  the  West  against  a  life  of  toil  and  subservience  is  closely 
associated  with  Christian  teaching.  The  church  and  the  Chris- 
tian missionary  may  not  have  intended  to  spread  equalitarian 
doctrines,  but  behind  the  church  was  the  unquenchable  per- 
sonality of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  and  even  in  spite  of  himself  the 
Christian  preacher  brought  the  seeds  of  freedom  and  responsi- 
bility with  him,  and  sooner  or  later  they  shot  up  where  he  had 
been. 

This  steady  and  growing  upheaval  of  "Labour,"  its  develop- 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         717 

ment  of  a  consciousness  of  itself  as  a  class  and  of  a  definite 
claim  upon  the  world  at  large,  quite  as  much  as  the  presence 
of  schools  and  universities,  quite  as  much  as  abundant  printed 
books  and  a  developing  and  expanding  process  of  scientific  re- 
search, mark  off  our  present  type  of  civilization,  the  "modern 
civilization,"  from  any  pre-existing  state  of  human  society,  and 
mark  it,  for  all  its  incidental  successes,  as  a  thing  unfinished 
and  transitory.  It  is  an  embryo  or  it  is  something  doomed  to 
die.  It  may  be  able  to  solve  this  complex  problem  of  co-ordi- 
nated toil  and  happiness,  and  so  adjust  itself  to  the  needs  of 
the  human  soul,  o>r  it  may  fail  and  end  in  a  catastrophe  as  the 
Roman  system  did.  It  may  be  the  opening  phase  of  some  more 
balanced  and  satisfying  order  of  society,  or  it  may  be  a  system 
destined  to  disruption  and  replacement  by  some  differently  con- 
ceived method  of  human  association.  Like  its  predecessor,  our 
present  civilization  may  be  no  more  than  one  of  those  crops 
farmers  sow  to  improve  their  land  by  the  fixation  of  nitrogen 
from  the  air;  it  may  have  grown  only  that,  accumulating  cer- 
tain traditions,  it  may  be  ploughed  into  the  soil  again  for  better 
things  to  follow.  Such  questions  as  these  are  the  practical 
realities  of  history,  and  in  all  that  follows  we  shall  find  them 
becoming  clearer  and  more  important,  until  in  our  last  chapter 
we  shall  end,  as  all  our  days  and  years  end,  with  a  recapitula- 
tion of  our  hopes  and  fears — and  a  note  of  interrogation. 


§4 

The  development  of  free  discussion  in  Europe  during  this  age 
of  fermentation  was  enormously  stimulated  by  the  appearance 
of  printed  books.  It  was  the  introduction  of  paper  from  the 
East  that  made  practicable  the  long  latent  method  of  printing. 
It  is  still  difficult  to  assign  the  honour  of  priority  in  the  use 
of  the  simple  expedient  of  printing  for  multiplying  books.  It 
is  a  trivial  question  that  has  been  preposterously  debated.  Ap- 
parently the  glory,  such  as  it  is,  belongs  to  Holland.  In  Haar- 
lem, one  Coster  was  printing  from  movable  type  somewhen 
before  1446.  Gutenberg  was  printing  at  Mainz  about  the  same 
time.  There  were  printers  in  Italy  by  1465,  and  Caxton  set 
up  his  press  in  Westminster  in  1477.  But  long  before  this 
time  there  had  been  a  partial  use  of  printing.  Manuscripts  as 


718  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

early  as  the  twelfth  century  display  initial  letters  that  may 
have  been  printed  from  wooden  stamps. 

Far  more  important  is  the  question  of  the  manufacture  of 
paper.  It  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  paper  made  the  re- 
vival of  Europe  possible.  Paper  originated  in  China,  where  its 
use  probably  goes  back  to  the  second  century  B.C.  In  751  the 
Chinese  made  an  attack  upon  the  Arab  Moslems  in  Samarkand ; 
they  were  repulsed,  and  among  the  prisoners  taken  from  them 
were  some  skilled  paper-makers,  from  whom  the  art  was  learnt. 
Arabic  paper  manuscripts  from  the  ninth  century  onward  still 
exist.  The  manufacture  entered  Christendom  either  through 
Greece  or  by  the  capture  of  Moorish  paper-mills  during  the 
Christian  reconquest  of  Spain.  But  under  the  Christian  Span- 
ish the  product  deteriorated  sadly.  Good  paper  was  not  made 
in  Christian  Europe  until  near  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
and  then  it  was  Italy  which  led  the  world.  Only  by  the  four- 
teenth century  did  the  manufacture  reach  Germany,  and  not 
until  the  end  of  that  century  was  it  abundant  and  cheap  enough 
for  the  printing  of  books  to  be  a  practicable  business  proposi- 
tion. Thereupon  printing  followed  naturally  and  necessarily, 
and  the  intellectual  life  of  the  world  entered  upon  a  new  and  far 
more  vigorous  phase.  It  ceased  to  be  a  little  trickle  from  mind 
to  mind ;  it  became  a  broad  flood,  in  which  thousands  and  pres- 
ently scores  and  hundreds  of  thousands  of  minds  participated. 

One  immediate  result  of  this  achievement  of  printing  was 
the  appearance  of  an  abundance  of  Bibles  in  the  world.  An- 
other was  a  cheapening  of  school-books.  The  knowledge  of 
reading  spread  swiftly.  There  was  not  only  a  great  increase  of 
books  in  the  world,  but  the  books  that  were  now  made  were 
plainer  to  read  and  so  easier  to  understand.  Instead  of  toiling 
at  a  crabbed  text  and  then  thinking  over  its  significance,  readers 
now  could  think  unimpeded  as  they  read.  With  this  increase 
in  the  facility  of  reading,  the  reading  public  grew.  The  book 
ceased  to  be  a  highly  decorated  toy  or  a  scholar's  mystery.  Peo- 
ple began  to  write  books  to  be  read  as  well  as  looked  at  by 
ordinary  people.  With  the  fourteenth  century  the  real  history 
of  the  European  literatures  begins.  We  find  a  rapid  replace- 
ment of  local  dialects  by  standard  Italian,  standard  English, 
standard  French,  standard  Spanish,  and,  later,  standard  Ger- 
man. These  languages  became  literary  languages  in  their  sev- 
eral countries ;  they  were  tried  over,  polished  by  use,  and  made 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         719 

exact  and  vigorous.      They  became  at  last  as  capable  of  the 
burden  of  philosophical  discussion  as  Greek  or  Latin. 


Here  we  devote  a  section  to  certain  elementary  statements 
about  the  movement  in  men's  religious  ideas  during  the  fifteenth 
and  sixteenth  centuries.  They  are  a  necessary  introduction 
to  the  political  history  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies that  follows. 

We  have  to  distinguish  clearly  between  two  entirely  different 
systems  of  opposition  to  the  Catholic  church.  They  intermingled 
very  confusingly.  The  church  was  losing  its  hold  upon  the 
consciences  of  princes  and  rich  and  able  people;  it  was  also 
losing  the  faith  and  confidence  of  common  people.  The  effect 
of  its  decline  of  spiritual  power  upon  the  former  class  was  to 
make  them  resent  its  interference,  its  moral  restrictions,  its 
claims  to  overlordship,  its  claim  to  tax,  and  to  dissolve  allegi- 
ances. They  ceased  to  respect  its  power  and  its  property.  This 
insubordination  of  princes  and  rulers  was  going  on  throughout 
the  Middle  Ages,  but  it  was  only  when  in  the  sixteenth  century 
the  church  began  to  side  openly  with  its  old  antagonist  the 
Emperor,  when  it  offered  him  its  support  and  accepted  his  help 
in  its  campaign  against  heresy,  that  princes  began  to  think 
seriously  of  breaking  away  from  the  Roman  communion  and 
setting  up  fragments  of  a  church.  And  they  would  never  have 
done  so  if  they  had  not  perceived  that  the  hold  of  the  church 
upon  the  masses  of  mankind  had  relaxed. 

The  revolt  of  the  princes  was  essentially  an  irreligious  revolt 
against  the  world-rule  of  the  church.  The  Emperor  Frederick 
II,  with  his  epistles  to  his  fellow  princes,  was  its  forerunner. 
The  revolt  of  the  people  against  the  church,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  as  essentially  religious.  They  objected  not  to  the  church's 
power,  but  to  its  weaknesses.  They  wanted  a  deeply  righteous 
and  fearless  church  to  help  them  and  organize  them  against  the 
wickedness  of  powerful  men.  Their  movements  against  the 
church,  within  it  and  without,  were  movements  not  for  release 
from  a  religious  control,  but  for  a  fuller  and  more  abundant 
religious  control.  They  did  not  want  less  religious  control,  but 
more — but  they  wanted  to  be  assured  that  it  was  religious.  They 
objected  to  the  Pope  not  because  he  was  the  religious  head  of 


720  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  world,  but  because  he  was  not;  because  he  was  a  wealthy 
earthly  prince  when  he  ought  to  have  been  their  spiritual  leader. 

The  contest  in  Europe  from  the  fourteenth  century  onward 
therefore  was  a  three-cornered  contest.  The  princes  wanted  to 
use  the  popular  forces  against  the  Pope,  but  not  to  let  those 
forces  grow  too  powerful  for  their  own  power  and  glory.  For 
a  long  time  the  church  went  from  prince  to  prince  for  an  ally 
without  realizing  that  the  lost  ally  it  needed  to  recover  was  popu: 
lar  veneration. 

Because  of  this  triple  aspect  of  the  mental  and  moral  conflicts 
that  were  going  on  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  and  sixteenth 
centuries,  the  series  of  ensuing  changes,  those  changes  that  are 
known  collectively  in  history  as  the  Reformation,  took  on  a 
threefold  aspect.  There  was  the  Reformation  according  to  the 
princes,  who  wanted  to  stop  the  flow  of  money  to  Rome  and  to 
seize  the  moral  authority,  the  educational  power,  and  the  mate- 
rial possessions  of  the  church  within  their  dominions.  There 
was  the  Reformation  according  to  the  people,  who  sought  to 
make  Christianity  a  power  against  unrighteousness,  and  particu- 
larly against  the  unrighteousness  of  the  rich  and  powerful.  And 
finally  there  was  the  Reformation  within  the  church,  of  which 
St.  Francis  of  Assisi  was  the  precursor,  which  sought  to  restore 
the  goodness  of  the  church  and,  through  its  goodness,  to  restore 
its  power. 

The  Reformation  according  to  the  princes  took  the  form  of  a 
replacement  of  the  Pope  by  the  prince  as  the  head  of  the  re- 
ligion and  the  controller  of  the  consciences  of  his  people.  The 
princes  had  no  idea  and  no  intention  of  letting  free  the  judg- 
ments of  their  subjects  more  particularly  with  the  object-lessons 
of  the  Hussites  and  the  Anabaptists  before  their  eyes;  they 
sought  to  establish  national  churches  dependent  upon  the  throne. 
As  England,  Scotland,  Sweden,  Norway,  Denmark,  North  Ger- 
many, and  Bohemia  broke  away  from  the  Roman  communion, 
the  princes  and  other  ministers  showed  the  utmost  solicitude 
to  keep  the  movement  well  under  control.  Just  as  much  refor- 
mation as  would  sever  the  link  with  Rome  they  permitted ;  any- 
thing beyond  that,  any  dangerous  break  towards  the  primitive 
teachings  of  Jesus  or  the  crude  direct  interpretation  of  the 
Bible,  they  resisted.  The  Established  Church  of  England  is 
one  of  the  most  typical  and  successful  of  the  resulting  com- 
promises. It  is  still  sacramental  and  sacerdotal ;  but  its  organi- 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         721 

zation  centres  in  the  Court  and  the  Lord  Chancellor,  and  though 
subversive  views  may,  and  do,  break  out  in  the  lower  and  less 
prosperous  ranks  of  its  priesthood,  it  is  impossible  for  them  to 
struggle  up  to  any  position  of  influence  and  authority. 

The  Reformation  according  to  the  common  man  was  very 
different  in  spirit  from  the  Princely  Reformation.  We  have 
already  told  something  of  the  popular  attempts  at  Reformation 
in  Bohemia  and  Germany.  The  wide  spiritual  upheavals  of 
the  time  were  at  once  more  honest,  more  confused,  more  endur- 
ing, and  less  immediately  successful  than  the  reforms  of  the 
princes.  Very  few  religious-spirited  men  had  the  daring  to 
break  away  or  the  effrontery  to  confess  that  they  had  broken 
away  from  all  authoritative  teaching,  and  that  they  were  now 
relying  entirely  upon  their  own  minds  and  consciences.  That 
required  a  very  high  intellectual  courage.  The  general  drift 
of  the  common  man  in  this  period  in  Europe  was  to  set  up 
his  new  acquisition,  the  Bible,  as  a  counter  authority  to  the 
church.  This  was  particularly  the  case  with  the  great  leader 
of  German  Protestanism,  Martin  Luther  (1483-1546).  All 
over  Germany,  and  indeed  all  over  Western  Europe,  there  were 
now  men  spelling  over  the  black-letter  pages  of  the  newly 
translated  and  printed  Bible,  over  the  Book  of  Leviticus  and 
the  Song  of  Solomon  and  the  Revelation  of  St.  John  the  Divine 
— strange  and  perplexing  books — quite  as  much  as  over  the 
simple  and  inspiring  record  of  Jesus  in  the  Gospels.  [Naturally 
they  produced  strange  views  and  grotesque  interpretations.  It 
is  surprising  that  they  were  not  stranger  and  grotesquer.  But 
the  human  reason  is  an  obstinate  thing,  and  will  criticize  and 
select  in  spite  of  its  own  resolutions.  The  bulk  of  these  new 
Bible  students  took  what  their  consciences  approved  from  the 
Bible  and  ignored  its  riddles  and  contradictions.  All  over 
Europe,  wherever  the  new  Protestant  churches  of  the  princes 
were  set  up,  a  living  and  very  active  residuum  of  Protestants 
remained  who  declined  to  have  their  religion  made  over  for 
them  in  this  fashion.  These  were  the  Nonconformists,  a  medley 
of  sects,  having  nothing  in  common  but  their  resistance  to  au- 
thoritative religion,  whether  of  the  Pop<e  or  the  State.1  Most,  but 
not  all  of  these  Nonconformists  held  to  the  Bible  as  a  divinely 
inspired  and  authoritative  guide.  This  was  a  strategic  rather 

*But  Noncomforraity  was  stamped  out  in  Germany.  See  §  HB  of  this 
chapter. 


722 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


than  an  abiding  position,  and  the  modern  drift  of  Nonconform- 
ity has  been  onward  away  from  this  original  Bibliolatry  towards 
a  mitigated  and  sentimentalized  recognition  of  the  bare  teach- 
ings of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Beyond  the  range  of  Noncon- 
formity, beyond  the  range  of  professed  Christianity  at  all,  there 
is  also  now  a  great  and  growing  mass  of  equalitarian  belief  and 
altruistic  impulse  in  the  modern  civilizations,  which  certainly 
owes,  as  we  have  already  asserted,  its  spirit  to  Christianity, 
which  began  to  appear  in  Europe  as  the  church  lost  its  grip  upon 
the  general  mind. 

Let  us  say  a  word  now  of  the  third  phase  of  the  Reformation 
process,  the  Reformation  within  the  church.  This  was  already 
beginning  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth  centuries  with  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  Black  and 
Grey  Friars  (Chap,  xxxii, 
§  13).  In  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, and  when  it  was  most 
needed,  came  a  fresh  im- 
petus of  the  same  kind.  This 
was  the  foundation  of  the  So- 
ciety of  the  Jesuits  by  Inigo 
Lopez  de  Recalde,  better 
known  to  the  world  of  to-day 
as  St.  Ignatius  of  Loyola. 

Ignatius  began  his  career 
as  a  very  tough  and  gallant 
young  Spaniard.  He  was 
clever  and  dexterous  and  in- 
spired by  a  passion  for 
pluck,  hardihood,  and  rather  showy  glory.  His  love  affairs 
were  free  and  picturesque.  In  1521  the  French  took  the 
town  of  Pampeluna  in  Spain  from  the  Emperor  Charles  V, 
and  Ignatius  was  one  of  the  defenders.  His  legs  were  smashed 
by  a  cannon-ball,  and  he  was  taken  prisoner.  One  leg  was  badly 
set  and  had  to  be  broken  again,  and  these  painful  and  complex 
operations  nearly  cost  him  his  life.  He  received  the  last  sacra- 
ments. In  the  night,  thereafter,  he  began  to  mend,  and  pres- 
ently he  was  convalescent  and  facing  the  prospect  of  a  life  in 
which  he  would  perhaps  always  be  a  cripple.  His  thoughts 
turned  to  the  adventure  of  religion.  Sometimes  he  would  think 
of  a  certain  great  lady,  and  how,  in  spite  of  his  broken  state, 


Lotpla. 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         723 

he  might  yet  win  her  admiration  by  some  amazing  deed;  and 
sometimes  he  would  think  of  being  in  some  especial  and  per- 
sonal way  the  Knight  of  Christ.  In  the  midst  of  these  con- 
fusions, one  night  as  he  lay  awake,  he  tells  us,  a  new  great 
lady  claimed  his  attention ;  he  had  a  vision  of  the  Blessed  Virgin 
Mary  carrying  the  Infant  Christ  in  her  arms.  "Immediately 
a  loathing  seized  him  for  the  former  deeds  of  his  life."  He 
resolved  to  give  up  all  further  thoughts  of  earthly  women,  and 
to  lead  a  life  of  absolute  chastity  and  devotion  to  the  Mother 
of  God.  He  projected  great  pilgrimages  and  a  monastic  life. 

His  final  method  of  taking  his  vows  marks  him  the  country- 
man of  Don  Quixote.  He  had  regained  his  strength,  and  he 
was  riding  out  into  the  world  rather  aimlessly,  a  penniless  sol- 
dier of  fortune  with  little  but  his  arms  and  the  mule  on  which 
he  rode,  when  he  fell  into  company  with  a  Moor.  They  went 
on  together  and  talked,  and  presently  disputed  about  religion. 
The  Moor  was  the  better  educated  man;  he  had  the  best  of 
the  argument,  he  said  offensive  things  about  the  Virgin  Mary 
that  were  difficult  to  answer,  and  he  parted  triumphantly  from 
Ignatius.  The  young  Knight  of  our  Lady  was  boiling  with 
shame  and  indignation.  He  hesitated  whether  he  should  go 
after  the  Moor  and  kill  him  or  pursue  the  pilgrimage  he  had 
in  mind.  At  a  fork  in  the  road  he  left  things  to  his  mule, 
which  spared  the  Moor.  He  came  to  the  Benedictine  Abbey 
of  Manresa  near  Montserrat,  and  here  he  imitated  that  peerless 
hero  of  the  mediaeval  romance,  Amadis  de  Gaul,  and  kept  an 
all-night  vigil  before  the  Altar  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  He  pre- 
sented his  mule  to  the  abbey,  he  gave  his  worldly  clothes  to  a 
beggar,  he  laid  his  sword  and  dagger  upon  the  altar,  and  clothed 
himself  in  a  rough  sackcloth  garment  and  hempen  shoes.  He 
then  took  himself  to  a  neighbouring  hospice  and  gave  himself 
up  to  scourgings  and  austerities.  For  a  whole  week  he  fasted 
absolutely.  Thence  he  went  on  a  pilgrimage  to  the  Holy  Land. 

For  some  years  he  wandered,  consumed  with  the  idea  of 
founding  a  new  order  of  religious  knighthood,  but  not  knowing 
clearly  how  to  set  about  this  enterprise.  He  became  more  and 
more  aware  of  his  own  illiteracy,  and  the  Inquisition,  which 
was  beginning  to  take  an  interest  in  his  proceedings,  forbade 
him  to  attempt  to  teach  others  until  he  had  spent  at  least  four 
years  in  study.  So  much  cruelty  and  intolerance  is  laid  at  the 
door  of  the  Inquisition  that  it  is  pleasant  to  record  that  in  its 


724  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

handling  of  this  heady,  imaginative  young  enthusiast  it  showed 
itself  both  sympathetic  and  sane.  It  recognized  his  vigour 
and  possible  uses;  it  saw  the  dangers  of  his  ignorance.  He 
studied  at  Salamanca  and  Paris,  among  other  places.  He  was 
ordained  a  priest  in  1538,  and  a  year  later  his  long-dreamt-of 
order  was  founded  under  the  military  title  of  the  aCompany 
of  Jesus."  Like  the  Salvation  Army  of  modern  England,  it 
made  the  most  direct  attempt  to  bring  the  generous  tradition 
of  military  organization  and  discipline  to  the  service  of  religion. 

This  Ignatius  of  Loyola  who  founded  the  order  of  Jesuits  was 
a  man  of  forty-seven ;  he  was  a  very  different  man,  much  wiser 
and  steadier,  than  the  rather  absurd  young  man  who  had  aped 
Amadis  de  Gaul  and  kept  vigil  in  the  abbey  of  Manresa ;  and 
the  missionary  and  educational  organization  he  now  created 
and  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Pope  was  one  of  the  most 
powerful  instruments  the  church  had  ever  handled.  These 
men  gave  themselves  freely  and  wholly  to  be  used  by  the  church. 
It  was  the  Order  of  the  Jesuits  which  carried  Christianity  to 
China  again  after  the  downfall  of  the  Ming  Dynasty,  and 
Jesuits  were  the  chief  Christian  missionaries  in  India  and 
North  America.  To  their  civilizing  work  among  the  Indians  in 
South  America  we  shall  presently  allude.  But  their  main 
achievement  lay  in  raising  the  standard  of  Catholic  education. 
Their  schools  became  and  remained  for  a  long  time  the  best 
schools  in  Christendom.  Says  Lord  Verulam  (=  Sir  Francis 
Bacon)  :  "As  for  the  pedagogic  part  .  .  .  consult  the  schools 
of  the  Jesuits,  for  nothing  better  has  been  put  in  practice." 
They  raised  the  level  of  intelligence,  they  quickened  the  con- 
science of  all  Catholic  Europe,  they  stimulated  Protestant 
Europe  to  competitive  educational  efforts.  .  .  .  Some  day  it 
may  be  we  shall  see  a  new  order  of  Jesuits,  vowed  not  /to  the 
service  of  the  Pope,  but  to  the  service  of  mankind. 

And  concurrently  with  this  great  wave  of  educational  effort, 
the  tone  and  quality  of  the  church  was  also  greatly  improved 
by  the  clarification  of  doctrine  and  the  reforms  in  organization 
and  discipline  that  were  made  by  the  Council  of  Trent.  This 
council  met  intermittently  either  at  Trent  or  Bologna  between 
the  years  1545  and  1563,  and  its  work  was  at  least  as  impor- 
tant as  the  energy  of  the  Jesuits  in  arresting  the  crimes  and 
blunders  that  were  causing  state  after  state  to  fall  away  from 
the  Roman  communion.  The  change  wrought  by  the  Reforma- 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION          725 

tion  within  the  Church  of  Rome  was  as  great  as  the  change 
wrought  in  the  Protestant  churches  that  detached  themselves 
from  the  mother  body.  There  are  henceforth  no  more  open 
scandals  or  schisms  to  record.  But  if  anything,  there  has  been 
an  intensification  of  doctrinal  narrowness,  and  such  phases  of 
imaginative  vigour  as  are  represented  by  Gregory  the  Great, 
or  by  the  group  of  Popes  associated  with  Gregory  VII  and 
Urban  II,  or  by  the  group  that  began  with  Innocent  III,  no 
longer  enliven  the  sober  and  pedestrian  narrative.  The  world 
war  of  1914-1918  was  a  unique  opportunity  for  the  Papacy; 
the  occasion  was  manifest  for  some  clear  strong  voice  proclaim- 
ing the  universal  obligation  to  righteousness,  the  brotherhood 
of  men,  the  claims  of  human  welfare  over  patriotic  passion. 
!N"o  such  moral  lead  was  given.  The  Papacy  seemed  to  be 
balancing  its  traditional  reliance  upon  the  faithful  Habsburgs 
against  its  quarrel  with  republican  France. 

§6 

The  reader  must  not  suppose  that  the  destructive  criticism 
of  the  Catholic  Church  and  of  Catholic  Christianity,  and  the 
printing  and  study  of  the  Bible,  were  the  only  or  even  the  most 
important  of  the  intellectual  activities  of  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries.  That  was  merely  the  popular  and  most  con- 
spicuous aspect  of  the  intellectual  revival  of  the  time.  Behind 
this  conspicuous  and  popular  awakening  to  thought  and  dis- 
cussion, other  less  immediately  striking  but  ultimately  more  im- 
portant mental  developments  were  in  progress.  Of  the  trend 
of  these  developments  we  must  now  give  some  brief  indications. 
They  had  begun  long  before  books  were  printed,  but  it  was 
printing  that  released  them  from  obscurity. 

We  have  already  told  something  of  the  first  appearance  of 
the  free  intelligence,  the  spirit  of  inquiry  and  plain  statement, 
in  human  affairs.  One  name  is  central  in  the  record  of  that 
first  attempt  at  systematic  knowledge,  the  name  of  Aristotle. 
We  have  noted  also  the  brief  phase  of  scientific  work  at.  Alex- 
andria. From  that  time  onward  the  complicated  economic  and 
political  and  religious  conflicts  of  Europe  and  Western  Asia 
impeded  further  intellectual  progress.  These  regions,  as  we 
have  seen,  fell  for  long  ages  under  the  sway  of  the  Oriental 
type  of  monarchy  and  of  Oriental  religious  traditions.  Rome 


726  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tried  and  abandoned  a  slave  system  of  industry.  The  first 
great  capitalistic  system  developed  and  fell  into  chaos  through 
its  own  inherent  rottenness.  Europe  relapsed  into  universal 
insecurity.  The  Semite  rose  against  the  Aryan,  and  replaced 
Hellenic  civilization  throughout  Western  Asia  and  Egypt  by  an 
Arabic  culture.  All  Western  Asia  and  half  of  Europe  fell 
under  Mongolian  rule.  It  is  only  in  the  twelfth  and  thirteenth 
centuries  that  we  find  the  Nordic  intelligence  struggling  through 
again  to  expression. 

We  then  find  in  the  growing  universities  of  Paris,  Oxford, 
and  Bologna  an  increasing  amount  of  philosophical  discussion 
going  on.  In  form  it  is  chiefly  a  discussion  of  logical  ques- 
tions. As  the  basis  of  this  discussion  we  find  part  of  the  teach- 
ings of  Aristotle,  not  the  whole  mass  of  writings  he  left  be- 
hind him,  but  his  logic  only.  Later  on  his  work  became  better 
known  through  the  Latin  translations  of  the  Arabic  edition 
annotated  by  Averroes.  Except  for  these  translations  of  Aris- 
totle, and  they  were  abominably  bad  translations,  very  little 
of  the  Greek  philosophical  literature  was  read  in  Western 
Europe  until  the  fifteenth  century.  The  creative  Plato — as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  scientific  Aristotle — was  almost  unknown. 
Europe  had  the  Greek  criticism  without  the  Greek  impulse. 
Some  neo-Platonic  writers  were  known,  but  neo-Platonism  had 
much  the  same  relation  to  Plato  that  Christian  Science  has  to 
Christ. 

It  has  been  the  practice  of  recent  writers  to  decry  the  phil- 
osophical discussion  of  the  mediaeval  "schoolmen"  as  tedious 
and  futile.  It  was  nothing  of  the  sort.  It  had  to  retain  a 
severely  technical  form  because  the  dignitaries  of  the  church, 
ignorant  and  intolerant,  were  on  the  watch  for  heresy.  It 
lacked  the  sweet  clearness,  therefore,  of  fearless  thought.  It 
often  hinted  what  it  dared  not  say.  But  it  dealt  with  funda- 
mentally important  things,  it  was  a  long  and  necessary  struggle 
to  clear  up  and  correct  certain  inherent  defects  of  the  human 
mind,  and  many  people  to-day  blunder  dangerously  through 
their  neglect  of  the  issues  the  schoolmen  discussed. 

There  is  a  natural  tendency  in  the  human  mind  to  exaggerate 
the  differences  and  resemblances  upon  which  classification  is 
based,  to  suppose  that  things  called  by  different  names  are  alto- 
gether different,  and  that  things  called  by  the  same  name  are 
practically  identical.  This  tendency  to  exaggerate  classification 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         727 

produces  a  thousand  evils  and  injustices.  In  the  sphere  of 
race  or  nationality,  for  example,  a  "European"  will  often  treat 
an  "Asiatic"  almost  as  if  he  were  a  different  animal,  while 
he  will  be  disposed  to  regard  another  "European"  as  necessarily 
as  virtuous  and  charming  as  himself.  He  will,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  take  sides  with  Europeans  against  Asiatics.  But,  as  the 
reader  of  this  history  must  realize,  there  is  no  such  difference 
as  the  opposition  of  these  names  implies.  It  is  a  phantom  dif- 
ference created  by  two  names.  .  .  . 

The  main  mediaeval  controversy  was  between  the  "Realists" 
and  the  "Nominalists,"  and  it  is  necessary  to  warm  the  reader 
that  the  word  "Realist"  in  mediaeval  discussion  has  a  meaning 
almost  diametrically  opposed  to  "Realist"  as  it  is  used  in  the 
jargon  of  modern  criticism.  The  modern  "Realist"  is  one  who 
insists  on  materialist  details;  the  mediaeval  "Realist"  was  far 
nearer  what  nowadays  we  should  call  an  Idealist,  and  his  con- 
tempt for  incidental  detail  was  profound.  The  Realists  outdid 
the  vulgar  tendency  to  exaggerate  the  significance  of  class. 
They  held  that  there  was  something  in  a  name,  in  a  common 
noun  that  is,  that  was  essentially  real.  For  example^  they 
held  there  was  a  typical  "European,"  an  ideal  European,  who 
was  far  more  real  than  any  individual  European.  Every 
European  was,  as  it  were,  a  failure,  a  departure,  a  flawed  speci- 
men of  this  profounder  reality.  On  the  other  hand  the  Nom- 
inalist held  that  the  only  realities  in  the  case  were  the  individual 
Europeans,  that  the  name  "European"  was  merely  a  name  and 
nothing  more  than  a  name  applied  to  all  these  instances. 

Nothing  is  quite  so  difficult  as  the  compression  of  philo- 
sophical controversies,  which  are  by  their  nature  voluminous  and 
various  and  tinted  by  the  mental  colours  of  a  variety  of  minds. 
With  the  difference  of  Realist  and  Nominalist  stated  baldly, 
as  we  have  stated  it  here,  the  modern  reader  unaccustomed  to 
philosophical  discussion  may  be  disposed  to  leap  at  once  to  the 
side  of  the  Nominalist.  But  the  matter  is  not  so  simple  that 
it  can  be  covered  by  one  instance,  and  here  we  have  purposely 
chosen  an  extreme  instance.  Names  and  classifications  differ 
in  their  value  and  reality.  While  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that 
there  can  be  much  depth  of  class  difference  between  men  called 
Thomas  and  men  called  William,  or  that  there  is  an  ideal  and 
quintessential  Thomas  or  William,  yet  on  the  other  hand  there 
may  be  much  profounder  differences  between  a  white  man  and 


728  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

a  Hottentot,  and  still  more  between  Homo  sapiens  and  Homo 
iieanderthalensis.  While  again  the  distinction  between  the  class 
of  pets  and  the  class  of  useful  animals  is  dependent  upon  very 
slight  differences  of  habit  and  application,  the  difference  of  a 
cat  and  dog  is  so  profound  that  the  microscope  can  trace  it  in 
a  drop  of  blood  or  a  single  hair.  When  this  aspect  of  the 
question  is  considered,  it  becomes  understandable  how  Nomi- 
nalism had  ultimately  to  abandon  the  idea  that  names  were  as 
insignificant  as  labels,  and  how,  out  of  a  revised  and  amended 
Nominalism,  there  grew  up  that  systematic  attempt  to  find  the 
true — the  most  significant  and  fruitful— classification  of  things 
and  substances  which  is  called  Scientific  Research. 

And  it  will  be  almost  as  evident  that  while  the  tendency  of 
Realism,  which  is  the  natural  tendency  of  every  untutored  mind> 
was  towards  dogma,  harsh  divisions,  harsh  judgments,  and  un- 
compromising attitudes,  the  tendency  of  earlier  and  later  Nom- 
inalism was  towards  qualified  statements,  towards  an  examina- 
tion of  individual  instances,  and  towards  inquiry  and  experi- 
ment and  scepticism. 

So  while  in  the  market-place  and  the  ways  of  the  common 
life  men  were  questioning  the  morals  and  righteousness  of  the 
clergy,  the  good  faith  and  propriety  of  their  celibacy,  and  the 
justice  of  papal  taxation;  while  in  theological  circles  their 
minds  were  set  upon  the  question  of  transubstantiation,  the 
question  of  the  divinity  or  not  of  the  bread  and  wine  in  the  mass, 
in  studies  and  lecture-rooms  a  wider-reaching  criticism  of  the 
methods  of  ordinary  Catholic  teaching  was  in  progress.  We 
cannot  attempt  here  to  gauge  the  significance  in  this  process  of 
such  names  as  Peter  Abelard  (1079-1142),  Albertus  Magnus 
(1193-1280),  and  Thomas  Aquinas  (1225-1274).  These  men 
sought  to  reconstruct  Catholicism  on  a  sounder  system  of  reason- 
ing. They  turned  towards  Nominalism.  Chief  among  their 
critics  and  successors  were  Duns  Scotus  (  ?-1308),  an  Oxford 
Franciscan  and,  to  judge  by  his  sedulous  thought  and  deliber- 
ate subtleties,  a  Scotchman,  and  Occam,  an  Englishman  (  ?- 
1347).  Both  these  latter,  like  Averroes  (see  Chap,  xxxi.,  §  8), 
made  a  definite  distinction  between  theological  and  philosophical 
truth;  they  placed  theology  on  a  pinnacle,  but  they  placed  it 
where  it  could  no  longer  obstruct  research;  Duns  Scotus  de- 
clared that  it  was  impossible  to  prove  by  reasoning  the  exist- 
ence of  God  or  of  the  Trinity  or  the  credibility  of  the 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         729 

Act  of  Creation;  Occam  was  still  more  insistent  upon  this 
separation — which  manifestly  released  scientific  inquiry  from 
dogmatic  control.  A  later  generation,  benefiting  by  the  free- 
doms towards  which  these  pioneers  worked,  and  knowing  not 
the  sources  of  its  freedom,  had  the  ingratitude  to  use  the  name 
of  Scotus  a^  a  term  for  stupidity,  and  so  we  have  our  English 
word  "Dunce."  Says  Professor  Pringle  Pattison,1  "Occam, 
who  is  still  a  Scholastic,  gives  us  the  Scholastic  justification 
of  the  spirit  which  had  already  taken  hold  upon  Roger  Bacon, 
and  which  was  to  enter  upon  its  rights  in  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries." 

Standing  apart  by  himself  because  of  his  distinctive  genius 
is  this  Roger  Bacon  (about  1210  to  about  1293),  who  was  also 
English.  He  was  a  Franciscan  of  Oxford,  and  a  very  typical 
Englishman  indeed,  irritable,  hasty,  honest,  and  shrewd.  He 
was  two  centuries  ahead  of  his  world.  Says  H.  O.  Taylor  of 
him2  : 

"The  career  of  Bacon  was  an  intellectual  tragedy,  conform- 
ing to  the  old  principles  of  tragic  art :  that  the  hero's  character 
shall  be  large  and  noble,  but  not  flawless,  inasmuch  as  the  fatal 
consummation  must  issue  from  character,  and  not  happen 
through  chance.  He  died  an  old  man,  as  in  his  youth,  so  in 
his  age,  a  devotee  of  tangible  knowledge.  His  pursuit  of  a 
knowledge  which  was  not  altogether  learning  had  been  ob- 
structed by  the  Order  of  which  he  was  an  unhappy  and  rebel- 
lious member;  quite  as  fatally  his  achievement  was  deformed 
from  within  by  the  principles  which  he  accepted  from  his  time. 
But  he  was  responsible  for  his  acceptance  of  current  opinions ; 
and  as  his  views  roused  the  distrust  of  his  brother  Friars,  his 
intractable  temper  drew  their  hostility  on  his  head.  Persuasive- 
ness and  tact  were  needed  by  one  who  would  impress  such  novel 
views  as  his  upon  his  fellows,  or,  in  the  thirteenth  century,  es- 
cape persecution  for  their  divulgence.  Bacon  attacked  dead  and 
living  worthies,  tactlessly,  fatuously,  and  unfairly.  Of  his  life 
scarcely  anything  is  known,  save  from  his  allusions  to  him- 
self and  others ;  and  these  are  insufficient  for  the  construction 
of  even  a  slight  consecutive  narrative.  Born;  studied  at  Ox- 
ford ;  went  to  Paris,  studied,  experimented ;  is  at  Oxford  again, 
and  a  Franciscan;  studies,  teaches,  becomes  suspect  to  his 

1  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,   article    "Scholasticism." 

2  The  Medieval  Mind,  by  Henry  Osbowi  Taylor. 


730  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Order,  is  sent  back  to  Paris,  kept  under  surveillance,  receives 
a  letter  from  the  Pope,  writes,  writes,  writes — his  three  best- 
known  works ;  is  again  in  trouble,  confined  for  many  years, 
released,  and  dead,  so  very  dead,  body  and  fame  alike,  until 
partly  unearthed  after  five  centuries." 

The  bulk  of  these  athree  best-known  works"  is  a  hptly  phrased 
and  sometimes  quite  abusive,  but  entirely  just  attack  on  the 
ignorance  of  the  times,  combined  with  a  wealth  of  suggestions 
for  the  increase  of  knowledge.  In  his  passionate  insistence  upon 
the  need  of  experiment  and  of  collecting  knowledge,  the  spirit 
of  Aristotle  lives  again  in  him.  "Experiment,  experiment," 
that  is  the  burthen  of  Roger  Bacon.  Yet  of  Aristotle  himself 
Roger  Bacon  fell  foul.  He  fell  foul  of  him  because  men,  in- 
stead of  facing  facts  boldly,  sat  in  rooms  and  pored  over  the 
bad  Latin  translations  which  were  then  all  that  was  available 
of  the  master.  "If  I  had  my  way,"  he  wrote,  in  his  intem- 
perate fashion,  "I  should  burn  all  the  books  of  Aristotle,  for  the 
study  of  them  can  only  lead  to  a  loss  of  time,  produce  error,  and 
increase  ignorance,"  a  sentiment  that  Aristotle  would  probably 
have  echoed  could  he  have  returned  to  a  world  in  which  his 
works  were  not  so  much  read  as  worshipped — and  that,  as 
Roger  Bacon  showed,  in  these  most  abominable  translations. 

Throughout  his  books,  a  little  disguised  by  the  necessity  of 
seeming  to  square  it  all  with  orthodoxy  for  feur  of  the  prison 
and  worse,  Roger  Bacon  shouted  to  mankind,  "Cease  to  be 
ruled  by  dogmas  and  authorities;  look  at  the  world!"  Four 
chief  sources  of  ignorance  he  denounced ;  respect  for  authority, 
custom,  the  sense  of  the  ignorant  crowd,  and  the  vain  proud 
unteachableness  of  our  dispositions.  Overcome  but  these,  and 
a  world  of  power  would  open  to  men: — 

"Machines  for  navigating  are  possible  without  rowers,  so  that 
great  ships  suited  to  river  or  ocean,  guided  by  one  man,  may  be 
borne  with  greater  speed  than  if  they  were  full  of  men.  Like- 
wise cars  may  be  made  so  that  without  a  draught  animal  they 
may  be  moved  cum  impetu  incestimabili,  as  we  deem  the  scythed 
chariots  to  have  been  from  which  antiquity  fought.  And  flying 
machines  are  possible,  so  that  a  man  may  sit  in  the  middle 
turning  some  device  by  which  artificial  wings  may  beat  the  air 
in  the  manner  of  a  flying  bird." 

Occam,  Roger  Bacon,  these  are  the  early  precursors  of  a  great 
movement  in  Europe  away  from  "Realism"  towards  reality, 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         731 

For  a  time  the  older  influences  fought  against  the  naturalism  of 
the  new  Nominalists.  In  1339  Occam's  books  were  put  under  a 
ban  and  Nominalism  solemnly  condemned.  As  late  as  1473  an 
attempt,  belated  and  unsuccessful,  was  made  to  bind  teachers 
of  Paris  by  an  oath  to  teach  Realism.  It  was  only  in  the  six- 
teenth century  with  the  printing  of  books  and  the  increase  of 
intelligence  that  the  movement  from  absolutism  towards  experi- 
ment became  massive,  and  that  one  investigator  began  to  co- 
operate with  another. 

Throughout  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries  experi- 
menting with  material  things  was  on  the  increase,  items  of 
knowledge  were  being  won  by  men,  but  there  was  no  inter- 
related advance.  The  work  was  done  in  a  detached,  furtive, 
and  inglorious  manner.  A  tradition  of  isolated  investigation 
came  into  Europe  from  the  Arabs,  and  a  considerable  amount 
of  private  and  secretive  research  was  carried  on  by  the  alche- 
mists, for  whom  modern  writers  are  a  little  too  apt  with  their 
contempt.  These  alchemists  were  in  close  touch  with  the  glass 
and  metal  workers  and  with  the  herbalists  and  medicine-makers 
of  the  times;  they  pried  into  many  secrets  of  nature,  but  they 
were  obsessed  by  "practical"  ideas ;  they  sought  not  knowledge, 
but  power;  they  wanted  to  find  out  how  to  manufacture  gold 
from  cheaper  materials,  how  to  make  men  immortal  by  the 
elixir  of  life,  and  such-like  vulgar  dreams.  Incidentally  in 
their  researches  they  learnt  much  about  poisons,  dyes,  metal- 
lurgy, and  the  like;  they  discovered  various  refractory  sub- 
stances, and  worked  their  way  towards  clear  glass  and  so  to 
lenses  and  optical  instruments;  but  as  scientific  men  tell  us 
continually,  and  as  "practical"  men  still  refuse  to  learn,  it  is 
only  when  knowledge  is  sought  for  her  own  sake  that  she  gives 
rich  and  unexpected  gifts  in  any  abundance  to  her  servants. 
The  world  of  to-day  is  still  much  more  disposed  to  spend  monej 
on  technical  research  than  on  pure  science.  Half  the  men  in 
our  scientific  laboratories  still  dream  of  patents  and  secret 
processes.  We  live  to-day  largely  in  the  age  of  alchemists,  for 
all  our  sneers  at  their  memory.  The  "business  man"  of  to-day 
still  thinks  of  research  as  a  sort  of  alchemy. 

Closely  associated  with  the  alchemists  were  the  astrologers, 
who  were  also  a  "practical"  race.  They  studied  the  stars — 
to  tell  fortunes.  They  lacked  that  broader  faith  and  under- 
standing which  induces  men  simply  to  study  the  stars. 


732  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Not  until  the  fifteenth  century  did  the  ideas  which  Roger 
Bacon  first  expressed  begin  to  produce  their  first-fruits  in  new 
knowledge  and  a  widening  outlook.  Then  suddenly,  as  the 
sixteenth  century  dawned,  and  as  the  world  recovered  from  the 
storm  of  social  trouble  that  had  followed  the  pestilences  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  Western  Europe  broke  out  into  a  galaxy 
of  names  that  outshine  the  utmost  scientific  reputations  of  the 
best  age  of  Greece.  Nearly  every  nation  contributed,  the 
reader  will  note,  for  science  knows  no  nationality. 

One  of  the  earliest  and  most  splendid  in  this  constellation 
is  the  Florentine,  Leonardo  da  Vinci  (1452-1519),  a  man 
with  an  almost  miraculous  vision  for  reality.  He  was  a  nat- 
uralist, an  anatomist,  an  engineer,  as  well  as  a  very  great  artist. 
He  was  the  first  modern  to  realize  the  true  nature  of  fossils,1 
he  made  note-books  of  observations  that  still  amaze  us,  he  was 
convinced  of  the  practicability  of  mechanical  fiight.  Another 
great  name  is  that  of  Copernicus,  a  Pole  (1473-1543),  who 
made  the  first  clear  analysis  of  the  movements  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  and  showed  that  the  earth  moves  round  the  sun.  Tycho 
Brahe  (1546-1601),  a  Dane  working  at  the  university  of 
Prague,  rejected  this  latter  belief,  but  his  observations  of  celes- 
tial movements  were  of  the  utmost  value  to  his  successors, 
and  especially  to  the  German,  Kepler  (1571-1630).  Galileo 
Galilei  (1564-1642)  was  the  founder  of  the  science  of  dy- 
namics. Before  his  time  it  was  believed  that  a  weight  a  hun- 
dred times  greater  than  another  would  fall  a  hundred  times 
as  fast.  Galileo  denied  this.  Instead  of  arguing  about  it  like 
a  scholar  and  a  gentleman,  he  put  it  to  the  coarse  test  of  experi- 
ment by  dropping  two  unequal  weights  from  an  upper  gallery 
of  the  leaning  tower  of  Pisa — to  the  horror  of  all  erudite  men. 
He  made  what  was  almost  the  first  telescope,  and  he  developed 
the  astronomical  views  of  Copernicus;  but  the  church,  still 
struggling  gallantly  against  the  light,  decided  that  to  believe  that 
the  earth  was  smaller  and  inferior  to  the  sun  made  man  and 
Christianity  of  no  account,  and  diminished  the  importance  of 
the  Pope;  so  Galileo,  under  threats  of  dire  punishment,  when 
he  was  an  old  man  of  sixty-nine,  was  made  to  recant  this  view 
and  put  the  earth  back  in  its  place  as  the  immovable  centre  of 
the  universe.  He  knelt  before  ten  cardinals  in  scarlet,  an 
assembly  august  enough  to  overawe  truth  itself,  while  he 
1  Cp.  Chap.  II,  §  1,  towards  the  end. 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         733 

amended  the  creation  he  had  disarranged.  The  story  has  it 
that  as  he  rose  from  his  knees,  after  repeating  his  recantation, 
he  muttered,  "Eppur  si  Muove" — "it  moves  nevertheless." 

Newton  (1642-1727)  was  born  in  the  year  of  Galileo's 
death.  By  his  discovery  of  the  law  of  gravitation  he  completed 
the  clear  vision  of  the  starry  universe  that  we  have  to-day. 
But  Newton  carries  us  into  the  eighteenth  century.  He  carries 
us  too  far  for  the  present  chapter.  Among  the  earlier  names, 
that  of  Dr.  Gilhert  (1540-1603),  of  Colchester,  is  pre-eminent. 
Roger  Bacon  had  preached  experiment,  Gilhert  was  one  of  the 
first  to  practise  it.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  his  work, 
which  was  chiefly  upon  magnetism,  helped  to  form  the  ideas  of 
Francis  Bacon,  Lord  Yerulam  (1561-1626),  Lord  Chancellor 
to  James  I  of  England.  This  Francis  Bacon  has  been  called 
the  "Father  of  Experimental  Philosophy,"  but  of  his  share  in 
the  development  of  scientific  work  far  too  much  has  been  made.1 
He  was,  says  Sir  R.  A.  Gregory,  "not  the  founder  but  the 
apostle"  of  the  scientific  method.  His  greatest  service  to  sci- 
ence was  a  fantastic  book,  The  New  Atlantis.  "In  his  New 
Atlantis,  Francis  Bacon  planned  in  somewhat  fanciful  lan- 
guage a  palace  of  invention,  a  great  temple  of  science,  where  the 
pursuit  of  knowledge  in  all  its  branches  was  to  be  organized 
on  principles  of  the  highest  efficiency." 

From  this  Utopian  dream  arose  the  Royal  Society  of  Lon- 
don, which  received  a  Royal  Charter  from  Charles  II  of  Eng- 
land in  1662.  The  essential  use  and  virtue  of  this  society  was 
and  is  publication.  Its  formation  marks  a  definite  step  from 
isolated  inquiry  towards  co-operative  work,  from  the  secret  and 
solitary  investigations  of  the  alchemist  to  the  frank  report  and 
open  discussion  which  is  the  life  of  the  modern  scientific  process. 
For  the  true  scientific  method  is  this:  to  trust  no  statements 
without  verification,  to  test  all  things  as  rigorously  as  possible, 
to  keep  no  secrets,  to  attempt  no  monopolies,  to  give  out  one's 
best  modestly  and  plainly,  serving  no  other  end  but  knowledge. 

The  long-slumbering  science  of  anatomy  was  revived  by  Har- 
vey (1578-1657),  who  demonstrated  the  circulation  of  the 
blood.  .  .  .  Presently  the  Dutchman,  Leeuwenhoek  (1632- 
1723)  brought  the  first  crude  microscope  to  bear  upon  the  hid- 
den minutiae  of  life. 

These  are  but  some  of  the  brightest  stars  amidst  that  in- 

*See  Gregory's  Discovery,  chap.  vi. 


734  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

creasing  multitude  of  men  who  have  from  the  fifteenth  century 
to  our  own  time,  with  more  and  more  collective  energy  and 
vigour,  lit  up  our  vision  of  the  universe,  and  increased  our 
power  over  the  conditions  of  our  lives. 


We  have  dealt  thus  fully  with  the  recrudescence  of  scientific 
studies  in  the  Middle  Ages  because  of  its  ultimate  importance 
in  human  affairs.  In  the  long  run,  Koger  Bacon  is  of  more 
significance  to  mankind  than  any  monarch  of  his  time.  But  the 
contemporary  world,  for  the  most  part,  knew  nothing  of  this 
smouldering  activity  in  studies  and  lecture-rooms  and  alchemist's 
laboratories  that  was  presently  to  alter  all  the  conditions  of 
life.  The  church  did  indeed  take  notice  of  what  was  afoot,  but 
only  because  of  the  disregard  of  her  conclusive  decisions.  She 
had  decided  that  the  earth  was  the  very  centre  of  God's  creation, 
and  that  the  Pope  was  the  divinely  appointed  ruler  of  the  earth. 
Men's  ideas  on  these  essential  points,  she  insisted,  must  not  be 
disturbed  by  any  contrary  teaching.  So  soon,  however,  as  she 
had  compelled  Galileo  to  say  that  the  world  did  not  move  she 
was  satisfied ;  she  does  not  seem  to  have  realized  how  ominous  it 
was  for  her  that,  after  all,  the  earth  did  move. 

Very  great  social  as  well  as  intellectual  developments  were 
in  progress  in  Western  Europe  throughout  this  period  of  the 
later  Middle  Ages.  But  the  human  mind  apprehends  events  far 
more  vividly  than  changes ;  and  men  for  the  most  part,  then  as 
now,  kept  on  in  their  own  traditions  in  spite  of  the  shifting 
scene  about  them. 

In  an  outline  such  as  this  it  is  impossible  to  crowd  in  the 
clustering  events  of  history  that  do  not  clearly  show  the  main 
process  of  human  development,  however  bright  and  picturesque 
they  may  be.  We  have  to  record  the  steady  growth  of  towns 
and  cities,  the  reviving  power  of  trade  and  money,  the  gradual 
re-establishment  of  law  and  custom,  the  extension  of  security, 
the  supersession  of  private  warfare  that  went  on  in  Western 
Europe  in  the  period  between  the  first  crusade  and  the  six- 
teenth century.  Of  much  that  looms  large  in  our  national 
histories  we  cannot  tell  anything.  We  have  no  space  for  the 
story  of  the  repeated  attempts  of  the  English  kings  to  conquer 
Scotland  and  set  themselves  up  as  kings  of  France,  nor  of  how 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION        735 

the  Norman  English  established  themselves  insecurely  in  Ire- 
land (twelfth  century),  and  how  Wales  was  linked  to  the  Eng- 
lish crown  (1282).  All  through  the  Middle  Ages  the  struggle  of 
England  with  Scotland  and  France  was  in  progress ;  there  were 
times  when  it  seemed  that  Scotland  was  finally  subjugated  and 
when  the  English  king  held  far  more  land  in  France  than  its 
titular  sovereign.  In  the  English  histories  this  struggle  with 
France  is  too  often  represented  as  a  single-handed  and  almost 
successful  attempt  to  conquer  France.  In  reality  it  was  a  joint 
enterprise  undertaken  in  concert  first  with  the  Flemings  and 
Bavarians  and  afterwards  with  the  powerful  French  vassal  state 
of  Burgundy  to  conquer  and  divide  the  patrimony  of  Hugh 
Capet.  Of  the  English  rout  by  the  Scotch  at  Bannockburn 
(1314),  and  of  William  Wallace,  and  Kobert  the  Bruce,  the 
Scottish  national  heroes,  of  the  battles  of  Crecy  (1346)  and 
Poitiers  (1356)  and  Agincourt  (1415)  in  France,  which  shine 
like  stars  in  the  English  imagination,  little  battles  in  which 
sturdy  bowmen  through  some  sunny  hours  made  a  great  havoc 
among  French  knights  in  armour,  of  the  Black  Prince 
and  Henry  V  of  England,  and  of  how  a  peasant  girl,  Joan 
of  Arc,  the  Maid  of  Orleans,  drove  the  English  out  of  her 
country  again  (1429-1430),  this  history  relates  nothing. 
For  every  country  has  such  cherished  national  events.  They 
are  the  ornamental  tapestry  of  history,  and  no  part  of  the 
building.  Rajputana  or  Poland,  Russia,  Spain,  Persia,  and 
China  can  all  match  or  outdo  the  utmost  romance  of  western 
Europe,  with  equally  adventurous  knights  and  equally  valiant 
princesses  and  equally  stout  fights  against  the  odds.  Nor  can  we 
tell  how  Louis  XI  of  France  (1461-1483),  the  son  of  Joan  of 
Arc's  Charles  VII,  brought  Burgundy  to  heel  and  laid  the 
foundations  of  a  centralized  French  monarchy.  It  signifies 
more  that  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries,  gunpowder, 
that  Mongol  gift,  came  to  Europe  so  that  the  kings  (Louis  XI 
included)  and  the  law,  relying  upon  the  support  of  the  growing 
towns,  were  able  to  batter  down  the  castles  of  the  half-inde- 
pendent robber  knights  and  barons  of  the  earlier  Middle  Ages 
and  consolidate  a  more  centralized  power.  The  fighting  nobles 
and  knights  of  the  barbaric  period  disappear  slowly  from  his- 
tory during  these  centuries ;  the  Crusades  consumed  them,  such 
dynastic  wars  as  the  English  Wars  of  the  Roses  killed  them  off, 
the  arrows  from  the  English  long-bow  pierced  them  and  stuck 


736  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

out  a  yard  behind,  infantry  so  armed  swept  them  from  the 
stricken  field ;  they  became  reconciled  to  trade  and  changed  their 
nature.  They  disappeared  in  everything  but  a  titular  sense 
from  the  west  and  south  of  Europe  before  they  disappeared  from 
Germany.  The  knight  in  Germany  remained  a  professional 
fighting  man  into  the  sixteenth  century. 

Between  the  eleventh  and  the  fifteenth  centuries  in  western 
Europe,  and  particularly  in  France  and  England,  there  sprang 
up  like  flowers  a  multitude  of  very  distinctive  and  beautiful 
buildings,  cathedrals,  abbeys,  and  the  like,  the  Gothic  architec- 
ture. This  lovely  efflorescence  marks  the  appearance  of  a  body 
of  craftsmen  closely  linked  in  its  beginnings  to  the  church.  In 
Italy  and  Spain,  too,  the  world  was  beginning  to  build  freely 
and  beautifully  again.  At  first  it  was  the  wealth  of  the  church 
that  provided  most  of  these  buildings;  then  kings  and  merchants 
also  began  to  build. 

From  the  twelfth  century  onward,  with  the  increase  of  trade, 
there  was  a  great  revival  of  town  life  throughout  Europe. 
Prominent  among  these  towns  were  Venice,  with  its  dependents 
Ragusa  and  Corfu,  Genoa,  Verona,  Bologna,  Pisa,  Florence, 
Naples,  Milan,  Marseilles,  Lisbon,  Barcelona,  Narbonne,  Tours, 
Orleans,  Bordeaux,  Paris,  Ghent,  Bruges.  Boulogne,  London, 
Oxford,  Cambridge,  Southampton,  Dover,  Antwerp,  Hamburg, 
Bremen,  Cologne,  Mayence,  Nuremberg,  Munich,  Leipzig,  Mag- 
deburg, Breslau,  Stettin,  Dantzig,  Konigsberg,  Riga,  Pskof, 
Novgorod,  Wisby,  and  Bergen. 

"A  West  German  town,  between  1400  and  1500,1  embodied 
all  the  achievements  of  progress  at  that  time,  although  from  a 
modern  standpoint  much  seems  wanting.  .  .  .  The  streets  were 
mostly  narrow  and  irregularly  built,  the  houses  chiefly  of 
wood,  while  almost  every  burgher  kept  his  cattle  in  the  house, 
and  the  herd  of  swine  which  was  driven  every  morning  by  the 
town  herdsman  to  the  pasture-ground  formed  an  inevitable  part 
of  city  life.2  In  Frankfort-on-Main  it  was  unlawful  after  1481 
to  keep  swine  in  the  Altstadt,  but  in  the  Neustadt  and  in  Sach- 
senhausen  this  custom  remained  as  a  matter  of  course.  It  was 
only  in  1645,  after  a  corresponding  attempt  in  1556  had  failed, 
that  the  swine-pens  in  the  inner  town  were  pulled  down  at 

1  From  Dr.  Tille  in  Helmolt's  History  of  the  World. 

2  Charles  Dickens  in  his  American  Notes  mentions  swine  in  Broadway, 
New  York,  in  the  middle  nineteenth  century. 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         737 

Leipzig.  The  rich  burghers,  who  occasionally  took  part  in  the 
great  trading  companies,  were  conspicuously  wealthy  landown- 
ers, and  had  extensive  courtyards  with  large  barns  inside  the 
town  walls.  The  most  opulent  of  them  owned  those  splendid 
patrician  houses  which  we  still  admire  even  to-day.  But  even 
in  the  older  towns  most  houses  of  the  fifteenth  century  have 
disappeared ;  only  here  and  there  a  building  with  open  timber- 
work  and  overhanging  storeys,  as  in  Bacharach  or  Miltenburg, 
reminds  us  of  the  style  of  architecture  then  customary  in  the 
houses  of  burghers.  The  great  bulk  of  the  inferior  population, 
who  lived  on  mendicancy,  or  got  a  livelihood  by  the  exercise  of 
the  inferior  industries,  inhabited  squalid  hovels  outside  the 
town;  the  town  wall  was  often  the  only  support  for  these 
wretched  buildings.  The  internal  fittings  of  the  houses,  even 
amongst  the  wealthy  population,  were  very  defective  according 
to  modern  ideas ;  the  Gothic  style  was  as  little  suitable  for  the 
petty  details  of  objects  of  luxury  as  it  was  splendidly  adapted 
for  the  building  of  churches  and  town  halls.  The  influence 
of  the  Renaissance  added  much  to  the  comfort  of  the  house. 

"The  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  century  saw  the  building  of 
numerous  Gothic  town  churches  and  town  halls  throughout  Eu- 
rope which  still  in  many  cases  serve  their  original  purpose. 
The  power  and  prosperity  of  the  towns  find  their  best  expres- 
sion in  these  and  in  the  fortifications,  with  their  strong  towers 
and  gateways.  Every  picture  of  a  town  of  the  sixteenth  or 
later  centuries  shows  conspicuously  these  latter  erections  for 
the  protection  and  honour  of  the  town.  The  town  did  many 
things  which  in  our  time  are  done  by  the  State.  Social  prob- 
lems were  taken  up  by  town  administration  or  the  corresponding 
municipal  organization.  The  regulation  of  trade  was  the  con- 
cern of  the  guilds  in  agreement  with  the  council,  the  care  of 
the  poor  belonged  to  the  church,  while  the  council  looked  after 
the  protection  of  the  town  walls  and  the  very  necessary  fire 
brigades.  The  council,  mindful  of  its  social  duties,  superin- 
tended the  filling  of  the  municipal  granaries,  in  order  to  have 
supplies  in  years  of  scarcity.  Such  store-houses  were  erected 
in  almost  every  town  during  the  fifteenth  century.  Tariffs 
of  prices  for  the  sale  of  all  wares,  high  enough  to  enable  every 
artisan  to  make  a  good  livelihood,  and  to  give  the  purchaser  a 
guarantee  for  the  quality  of  the  wares,  were  maintained.  The 
town  was  also  the  chief  capitalist;  as  a  seller  of  annuities  on 


738 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         739 

lives  and  inheritances  it  was  a  banker  and  enjoyed  unlimited 
credit.  In  return  it  obtained  means  for  the  construction  of 
fortifications  or  for  such  occasions  as  the  acquisition  of  sover- 
eign rights  from  the  hand  of  an  impecunious  prince." 

For  the  most  part  these  European  towns  were  independent 
or  quasi-independent  aristocratic  republics.  Most  admitted  a 
vague  overlordship  on  the  part  of  the  church,  or  of  the  emperor 
or  of  a  king.  Others  were  parts  of  kingdoms,  or  even  the 
capitals  of  dukes  or  kings.  In  such  cases  their  internal  free- 
dom was  maintained  by  a  royal  or  imperial  charter.  In  Eng- 
land the  Royal  City  of  Westminster  on  the  Thames  stood  cheek 
by  jowl  with  the  walled  city  of  London,  into  which  the  King 
came  only  with  ceremony  and  permission.  The  entirely  free 
Venetian  republic  ruled  an  empire  of  dependent  islands  and 
trading  ports,  rather  after  the  fashion  of  the  Athenian  republic. 
Genoa  also  stood  alone.  The  Germanic  towns  of  the  Baltic 
and  North  Sea  from  Riga  to  Middelburg  in  Holland,  Dort- 
mund, and  Cologne  were  loosely  allied  in  a  confederation,  the 
confederation  of  the  Hansa  towns,  under  the  leadership  of 
Hamburg,  Bremen,  and  Lubeck,  a  confederation  which  was  still 
more  loosely  attached  to  the  empire.  This  confederation,  which 
included  over  seventy  towns  in  all,  and  which  had  depots  in 
Novgorod,  Bergen,  London,  and  Bruges,  did  much  to  keep  the 
northern  seas  clean  of  piracy,  that  curse  of  the  Mediterranean 
and  of  the  Eastern  seas.  The  Eastern  Empire  throughout  its 
last  phase,  from  the  Ottoman  conquest  of  its  European  hinter- 
land in  the  fourteenth  and  early  fifteenth  century  until  its  fall 
in  1453,  was  practically  only  the  trading  town  of  Constanti- 
nople, a  town  state  like  Genoa  or  Venice,  except  that  it  was  en- 
cumbered by  a  corrupt  imperial  court. 

The  fullest  and  most  splendid  developments  of  this  city  life 
of  the  later  Middle  Ages  occurred  in  Italy.  After  the  end  of 
the  Hohenstaufen  line  in  the  thirteenth  century,  the  hold  of 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire  upon  North  and  Central  Italy  weak- 
ened, although,  as  we  shall  tell,  German  Emperors  were  still 
crowned  as  kings  and  emperors  in  Italy  up  to  the  time  of 
Charles  V  (circ.  1530).  There  arose  a  number  of  quasi-inde- 
pendent city  states  to  the  north  of  Rome,  the  papal  capital. 
South  Italy  and  Sicily,  however,  remained  under  foreign  domin- 
ion. Genoa  and  her  rival,  Venice,  were  the  great  trading  sea- 
ports of  this  time;  their  noble  palaces,  their  lordly  paintings, 


740  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

still  win  our  admiration.  Milan,  at  the  foot  of  the  St.  Gothard 
pass,  revived  to  wealth  and  power.  Inland  was  Florence,  a 
trading  and  financial  centre  which,  under  the  almost  monarchi- 
cal rule  of  the  Medici  family  in  the  fifteenth  century,  enjoyed  a 
second  "Periclean  age."  But  already  before  the  time  of  these 
cultivated  Medici  "bosses,"  Florence  had  produced  much  beau- 
tiful art.  Giotto's  tower  (Giotto,  born  1266,  died  1337)  and 
the  Duomo  (by  Brunellesco,  born  1377,  died  1446)  already  ex- 
isted. Towards  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century  Florence  be- 
came the  centre  of  the  rediscovery,  restoration,  and  imitation 
of  antique  art  (the  "Renaissance"  in  its  narrower  sense). 
Artistic  productions,  unlike  philosophical  thought  and  scientific 
discovery,  are  the  ornaments  and  expression  rather  than  the  cre- 
ative substance  of  history,  and  here  we  cannot  attempt  to  trace 
the  development  of  the  art  of  Filippo  Lippi,  Botticelli,  Dona- 
tello  (died  1466),  Leonardo  da  Vinci  (died  1519),  Michel- 
angelo (1475-1564),  and  Raphael  (died  1520).  Of  the  sci- 
entific speculation  of  Leonardo  we  have  already  had  occasion 
to  speak. 

§8 

In  1453,  as  we  have  related,  Constantinople  fell.  Through- 
out the  next  century  the  Turkish  pressure  upon  Europe  was 
heavy  and  continuous.  The  boundary  line  between  Mongol 
and  Aryan,  which  had  lain  somewhere  east  of  the  Pamirs  in 
the  days  of  Pericles,  had  receded  now  to  Hungary.  Constanti- 
nople had  long  been  a  mere  island  of  Christians  in  a  Turk- 
mled  Balkan  peninsula.  Its  fall  did  much  to  interrupt  the 
trade  with  the  East. 

Of  the  two  rival  cities  of  the  Mediterranean,  Venice  was 
generally  on  much  better  terms  with  the  Turks  than  Genoa. 
Every  intelligent  Genoese  sailor  fretted  at  the  trading  monopoly 
of  Venice,  and  tried  to  invent  some  way  of  getting  through  it 
or  round  it.  And  there  were  now  new  peoples  taking  to  the  sea 
trade,  and  disposed  to  look  for  new  ways  to  the  old  markets  be- 
cause the  ancient  routes  were  closed  to  them.  The  Portuguese, 
for  example,  were  developing  an  Atlantic  coasting  trade.  The 
Atlantic  was  waking  up  again  after  a  vast  period  of  neglect 
that  dated  from  the  Roman  murder  of  Carthage.  It  is  rather 
a  delicate  matter  to  decide  whether  the  western  European  was 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         741 

pushing  out  into  the  Atlantic  or  whether  he  was  being  pushed 
out  into  it  by  the  Turk,  who  lorded  it  in  the  Mediterranean  until 
the  Battle  of  Lepanto  (1571).  The  Venetian  and  Genoese 
ships  were  creeping  round  to  Antwerp,  and  the  Hansa  town 
seamen  were  coming  south  and  extending  their  range.  And 
there  were  considerable  developments  of  seamanship  and  ship- 
building in  progress.  The  Mediterranean  is  a  sea  for  galleys 
and  coasting.  But  upon  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the  North 
Sea  winds  are  more  prevalent,  seas  run  higher,  the  shore  is 
often  a  danger  rather  than  a  refuge.  The  high  seas  called 
for  the  sailing  ship,  and  in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries 
it  appears  keeping  its  course  by  the  compass  and  the  stars. 

By  the  thirteenth  century  the  Hansa  merchants  were  already 
sailing  regularly  from  Bergen  across  the  grey  cold  seas  to  the 
Northmen  in  Iceland.  In  Iceland  men  knew  of  Greenland,  and 
adventurous  voyagers  had  long  ago  found  a  further  land  be- 
yond, Vinland,  where  the  climate  was  pleasant  and  where  men 
could  settle  if  they  chose  to  cut  themselves  off  from  the  rest  of 
human  kind.  This  Vinland  was  either  Nova  Scotia  or,  what 
is  more  probable,  New  England. 

All  over  Europe  in  the  fifteenth  century  merchants  and 
sailors  were  speculating  about  new  ways  to  the  East.  The  Por- 
tuguese, unaware  that  Pharaoh  Necho  had  solved  the  problem 
ages  ago,  were  asking  whether  it  was  not  possible  to  go  round 
to  India  by  the  coast  of  Africa.  Their  ships  followed  in  the 
course  that  Hanno  took  to  Cape  Verde  (1445).  They  put 
out  to  sea  to  the  west  and  found  the  Canary  Isles,  Madeira,  and 
the  Azores.1  That  was  a  fairly  long  stride  across  the  Atlantic. 
In  1486  a  Portuguese,  Diaz,  reported  that  he  had  rounded 
the  south  of  Africa.  .  .  . 

A  certain  Genoese,  Christopher  Columbus,  began  to  think 
more  and  more  of  what  is  to  us  a  very  obvious  and  natural  en- 
terprise, but  which  strained  the  imagination  of  the  fifteenth 
century  to  the  utmost,  a  voyage  due  west  across  the  Atlantic. 
At  that  time  nobody  knew  of  the  existence  of  America  as  a 
separate  continent.  Columbus  knew  that  the  world  was  a 
sphere,  but  he  underestimated  its  size;  the  travels  of  Marco 
Polo  had  given  him  an  exaggerated  idea  of  the  extent  of  Asia, 

1  In  these  maritime  adventures  in  the  eastern  Atlantic  and  the  west 
African  coast  the  Portuguese  were  preceded  in  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth, 
and  early  fifteenth  centuries  by  Normans,  Catalonians,  and  Genoese. 


742  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  he  supposed  therefore  that  Japan,  with  its  reputation  for 
a  great  wealth  of  gold,  lay  across  the  Atlantic  in  about  the 
position  of  Mexico.  He  had  made  various  voyages  in  the  At- 
lantic; he  had  been  to  Iceland  and  perhaps  heard  of  Vinland, 
which  must  have  greatly  encouraged  these  ideas  of  his,  and  this 
project  of  sailing  into  the  sunset  became  the  ruling  purpose 
of  his  life.  He  was  a  penniless  man,  some  accounts  say  he  was 
a  bankrupt,  and  his  only  way  of  securing  a  ship  was  to  get 
someone  to  entrust  him  with  a  command.  He  went  first  to 
King  John  II  of  Portugal,  who  listened  to  him,  made  difficul- 
ties, and  then  arranged  for  an  expedition  to  start  without  his 
knowledge,  a  purely  Portuguese  expedition.  This  highly  dip- 
lomatic attempt  to  steal  a  march  on  an  original  man  failed,  as  it 
deserved  to  fail;  the  crew  became  mutinous,  the  captain  lost 
heart  and  returned  (1483).  Columbus  then  went  to  the  Court 
of  Spain. 

At  first  he  could  get  no  ship  and  no  powers.  Spain  was 
assailing  Granada,  the  last  foothold  of  the  Moslems  in  western 
Europe.  Most  of  Spain  had  been  recovered  by  the  Christians 
between  the  eleventh  and  the  thirteenth  century ;  then  had  come 
a  pause;  and  now  all  Spain,  united  by  the  marriage  of  Ferdi- 
nand of  Aragon  and  Isabella  of  Castile,  was  setting  itself  to 
the  completion  of  the  Christian  conquest.  Despairing  of  Span- 
ish help,  Columbus  sent  his  brother  Bartholomew  to  Henry 
VII  of  England,  but  the  adventure  did  not  attract  that  canny 
monarch.  Finally  in  1492  Granada  fell,  and  then,  helped  by 
some  merchants  of  the  town  of  Palos,  Columbus  got  his  ships, 
three  ships,  of  which  only  one,  the  Santa  Maria,  of  100  tons 
burthen,  was  decked.  The  two  other  were  open  boats  of  half 
that  tonnage. 

The  little  expedition — it  numbered  altogether  eighty-eight 
men! — went  south  to  the  Canaries,  and  then  stood  out  across 
the  unknown  seas,  in  beautiful  weather  and  with  a  helpful  wind. 

The  story  of  that  momentous  voyage  of  two  months  and  nine 
days  must  be  read  in  detail  to  be  appreciated.  The  crew  was 
full  of  doubts  and  fears;  they  might,  they  feared,  sail  on  for 
ever.  They  were  comforted  by  seeing  some  birds,  and  later  on 
by  finding  a  pole  worked  with  tools,  and  a  branch  with  strange 
berries.  At  ten  o'clock,  on  the  night  of  October  llth,  1492, 
Columbus  saw  a  light  ahead ;  the  next  morning  land  was  sighted, 
and,  while  the  day  was  still  young,  Columbus  landed  on  the 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         7*3 

shores  of  the  new  world,  richly  apparelled  and  bearing  the  royal 
banner  of  Spain.  .  .  . 

Early  in  1493  Columbus  returned  to  Europe.  He  brought 
gold,  cotton,  strange  beasts  and  birds,  and  two  wild-eyed  painted 
Indians  to  be  baptized.  He  had  not  found  Japan,  it  was 
thought,  but  India.  The  islands  he  had  found  were  called  there- 
fore the  West  Indies.  The  same  year  he  sailed  again  with  a 
great  expedition  of  seventeen  ships  and  fifteen  thousand  men, 
with  the  express  permission  of  the  Pope  to  take  possession  of 
these  new  lands  for  the  Spanish  crown.  .  .  . 

We  cannot  tell  of  his  experiences  as  Governor  of  this  Spanish 
colony,  nor  how  he  was  superseded  and  put  in  chains.  In  a 
little  while  a  swarm  of  Spanish  adventurers  were  exploring  the 
new  lands.  But  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  Columbus  died 
ignorant  of  the  fact  that  he  had  discovered  a  new  continent. 
He  believed  to  the  day  of  his  death  that  he  had  sailed  round 
the  world  to  Asia. 

The  news  of  his  discoveries  caused  a  great  excitement  through- 
out western  Europe.  It  spurred  the  Portuguese  to  fresh  at- 
tempts to  reach  India  by  the  South  African  route.  In  1497, 
Vasco  da  Gama  sailed  from  Lisbon  to  Zanzibar,  and  thence, 
with  an  Arab  pilot,  he  struck  across  the  Indian  Ocean  to  Cali- 
cut in  India.  In  1515  there  were  Portuguese  ships  in  Java 
and  the  Moluccas.  In  1519  a  Portuguese  sailor,  Magellan,  in 
the  employment  of  the  Spanish  King,  coasted  to  the  south  of 
South  America,  passed  through  the  dark  and  forbidding  "Strait 
of  Magellan,"  and  so  came  into  the  Pacific  Ocean,  which  had 
already  been  sighted  by  Spanish  explorers  who  had  crossed  the 
Isthmus  of  Panama. 

Magellan's  expedition  continued  across  the  Pacific  Ocean 
westward.  This  was  a  far  more  heroic  voyage  than  that  of 
Columbus;  for  eight  and  ninety  days  Magellan  sailed  unflinch- 
ingly over  that  vast,  empty  ocean,  sighting  nothing  but  two 
little  desert  islands.  The  crews  were  rotten  with  scurvy ;  there 
was  little  water  and  that  bad,  and  putrid  biscuit  to  eat.  Kats 
were  hunted  eagerly;  cowhide  was  gnawed  and  sawdust  de- 
voured to  stay  the  pangs  of  hunger.  In  this  state  the  expedi- 
tion reached  the  Ladrones.  They  discovered  the  Philippines, 
and  here  Magellan  was  killed  in  a  fight  with  the  natives.  Sev- 
eral other  captains  were  murdered.  Five  ships  had  started  with 
Magellan  in  August  1519  and  two  hundred  and  eighty  men; 


744  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

in  July  1522  the  Vittoria,  with  a  remnant  of  one  and  thirty 
men  aboard,  returned  up  the  Atlantic  to  her  anchorage  near  the 
Mole  of  Seville,  in  the  river  Guadalquivir — the  first  ship  that 
ever  circumnavigated  this  planet. 

The  English  and  French  and  Dutch  and  the  sailors  of  the 
Hansa  towns  came  rather  later  into  this  new  adventure  of  ex- 
ploration. They  had  not  the  same  keen  interest  in  the  eastern 
trade.  And  when  they  did  come  in,  their  first  efforts  were 
directed  to  sailing  round  the  north  of  America  as  Magellan 
had  sailed  round  the  south,  and  to  sailing  round  the  north 
of  Asia  as  Vasco  da  Gama  had  sailed  round  the  south  of  Africa. 
Both  these  enterprises  were  doomed  to  failure  by  the  nature  of 
things.  Both  in  America  and  the  East,  Spain  and  Portugal 
had  half  a  century's  start  of  England  and  Erance  and  Holland. 
And  Germany  never  started.  The  King  of  Spain  was  Emperor 
of  Germany  in  those  crucial  years,  and  the  Pope  had  given  the 
monopoly  of  America  to  Spain,  and  not  simply  to  Spain,  but 
to  the  kingdom  of  Castile.  This  must  have  restrained  both 
Germany  and  Holland  at  first  from  American  adventures.  The 
Hansa  towns  were  quasi-independent ;  they  had  no  monarch  be- 
hind them  to  support  them,  and  no  unity  among  themselves  for 
so  big  an  enterprise  as  oceanic  exploration.  It  was  the  mis- 
fortune of  Germany,  and  perhaps  of  the  world,  that,  as  we  will 
presently  tell,  a  storm  of  warfare  exhausted  her  when  all  the 
Western  powers  were  going  to  this  newly  opened  school  of  trade 
and  administration  upon  the  high  seas. 

Slowly  throughout  the  sixteenth  century  the  immense  good 
fortune  of  Castile  unfolded  itself  befor6  the  dazzled  eyes  of 
Europe.  She  had  found  a  new  world,  abounding  in  gold  and 
silver  and  wonderful  possibilities  of  settlement.  It  was  all 
hers,  because  the  Pope  had  said  so.  The  Court  of  Rome,  in 
an  access  of  magnificence,  had  divided  this  new  world  of 
strange  lands  which  was  now  opening  out  to  the  European  im- 
agination, between  the  Spanish,  who  were  to  have  everything 
west  of  a  line  370  leagues  west  of  the  Cape  Verde  islands,  and 
the  Portuguese,  to  whom  everything  east  of  this  line  was  given. 

At  first  the  only  people  encountered  by  the  Spaniards  in 
America  were  savages  of  a  Mongoloid  type.  Many  of  these 
savages  were  cannibals.  It  is  a  misfortune  for  science  that 
the  first  Europeans  to  reach  America  were  these  rather  incurious 
Spaniards,  without  any  scientific  passion,  thirsty  for  gold,  and 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         745 


746  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

full  of  the  blind  bigotry  of  a  recent  religious  war.  They  made 
few  intelligent  observations  of  the  native  methods  and  ideas  of 
these  primordial  people.  They  slaughtered  them,  they  robbed 
them,  they  enslaved  them,  and  baptized  them;  but  they  made 
small  note  of  the  customs  and  motives  that  changed  and  van- 
ished under  their  assault.  They  were  as  destructive  and  reck- 
less as  the  British  in  Tasmania,  who  shot  the  last  Palaeolithic 
men  at  sight,  and  put  out  poisoned  meat  for  them  to  find. 

Great  areas  of  the  American  interior  were  prairie  land, 
whose  nomadic  tribes  subsisted  upon  vast  herds  of  the  now  prac- 
tically extinct  bison.  In  their  manner  of  life,  in  their  painted 
garments  and  their  free  use  of  paint,  in  their  general  physical 
characters,  these  prairie  Indians  showed  remarkable  resem- 
blances to  the  Later  Paleolithic  men  of  the  Solutrian  age  in 
Europe.  But  they  had  no  horses.  They  seem  to  have  made  no 
very  great  advance  from  that  primordial  state,  which  was  prob- 
ably the  state  in  which  their  ancestors  had  reached  America. 
They  had,  however,  a  knowledge  of  metals,  and  most  notably 
a  free  use  of  native  copper,  but  no  knowledge  of  iron.  As  the 
Spaniards  penetrated  into  the  continent,  they  found  and  they 
attacked,  plundered,  and  destroyed  two  separate  civilized  sys- 
tems that  had  developed  in  America,  perhaps  quite  independ- 
ently of  the  civilized  systems  of  the  old  world.  One  of  them 
was  the  Aztec  civilization  of  Mexico;  the  other,  that  of  Peru. 
They  had  probably  arisen  out  of  the  heliolithic  sub-civilization 
that  had  drifted  in  canoes  across  the  Pacific,  island  by  island, 
step  by  step,  age  after  age,  from  its  region  of  origin  round  and 
about  the  Mediterranean.  We  have  already  noted  one  or 
two  points  of  interest  in  these  unique  developments.  Along 
their  own  lines  these  civilized  peoples  of  America  had  reached 
to  a  state  of  affairs  roughly  parallel  with  the  culture  of  pre- 
dynastic  Egypt  or  the  early  Sumerian  cities.  Before  the  Az- 
tecs and  the  Peruvians  there  had  been  still  earlier  civilized 
beginnings  which  had  either  been  destroyed  by  their  successors, 
or  which  had  failed  and  relapsed  of  their  own  accord. 

The  Aztecs  seem  to  have  been  a  conquering,  less  civilized 
people,  dominating  a  more  civilized  community,  as  the  Aryans 
dominated  Greece  and  North  India.  Their  religion  was  a 
primitive,  complex,  and  cruel  system,  in  which  human  sacrifices 
and  ceremonial  cannibalism  played  a  large  part.  Their  minds 
were  haunted  by  the  idea  of  sin  and  the  need  for  bloody 
propitiations. 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         747 

The  Aztec  civilization  was  destroyed  by  an  expedition  under 
Cortez.  He  had  eleven  ships,  four  hundred  Europeans,  two 
hundred  Indians,  sixteen  horses,  and  fourteen  guns.  But  in 
Yucatan  he  picked  up  a  stray  Spaniard  who  had  been  a  captive 
with  the  Indians  for  some  years,  and  who  had  more  or  less 
learnt  various  Indian  languages,  and  knew  that  the  Aztec  rule 
was  deeply  resented  by  many  of  its  subjects.  It  was  in  alliance 
with  these  that  Cortez  advanced  over  the  mountains  into  the 
valley  of  Mexico  (1519).  How  he  entered  Mexico,  how  its 
monarch,  Montezuma,  was  killed  by  his  own  people  for  favour- 
ing the  Spaniards,  how  Cortez  was  besieged  in  Mexico,  and 
escaped  with  the  loss  of  his  guns  and  horses,  and  how  after  a 
terrible  retreat  to  the  coast  he  was  able  to  return  and  subju- 
gate the  whole  land,  is  a  romantic  and  picturesque  story  which 
we  cannot  even  attempt  to  tell  here.  The  population  of  Mexico 
to  this  day  is  largely  of  native  blood,  but  Spanish  has  replaced 
the  native  languages,  and  such  culture  as  exists  is  Catholic  and 
Spanish. 

The  still  more  curious  Peruvian  state  fell  a  victim  to  another 
adventurer,  Pizarro.  He  sailed  from  the  Isthmus  of  Panama 
in  1530,  with  an  expedition  of  a  hundred  and  sixty-eight 
Spaniards.  Like  Cortez  in  Mexico,  he  availed  himself  of  the 
native  dissensions  to  secure  possession  of  the  doomed  state. 
Like  Cortez,  too,  who  had  made  a  captive  and  tool  of  Monte- 
zuma, he  seized  the  Inca  of  Peru  by  treachery,  and  attempted 
to  rule  in  his  name.  Here  again  we  cannot  do  justice  to  the 
tangle  of  subsequent  events,  the  ill-planned  insurrections  of 
the  natives,  the  arrival  of  Spanish  reinforcements  from  Mexico, 
and  the  reduction  of  the  state  to  a  Spanish  province.  Nor  can 
we  tell  much  more  of  the  swift  spread  of  Spanish  adventurers 
over  the  rest  of  America,  outside  the  Portuguese  reservation 
r>f  Brazil.  To  begin  with,  each  story  is  nearly  always  a  story 
of  adventurers  and  of  cruelty  and  loot.  The  Spaniards  ill- 
treated  the  natives,  they  quarrelled  among  themselves,  the  law 
and  order  of  Spain  were  months  and  years  away  from  them; 
it  was  only  very  slowly  that  the  phase  of  violence  and  conquest 
passed  into  a  phase  of  government  and  settlement.  But  long 
before  there  was  much  order  in  America,  a  steady  stream  of 
gold  and  silver  began  to  flow  across  the  Atlantic  to  the  Spanish 
government  and  people. 

After  the  first  violent  treasure  hunt  came  plantation  and  the 


748 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


working  of  mines.  With  that  arose  the  earliest  labour  difficulty 
in  the  new  world.  At  first  the  Indians  were  enslaved  with 
much  brutality  and  injustice ;  but  to  the  honour  of  the  Spaniards 
this  did  not  go  uncriticized.  The  natives  found  champions,  and 


-MEXICO   and,  PERU 


very  valiant  champions,  in  the  Dominican  Order  and  in  a 
secular  priest,  Las  Casas,  who  was  for  a  time  a  planter  and 
slave-owner  in  Cuba  until  his  conscience  smote  him.  An  im- 
portation of  negro  slaves  from  West  Africa  also  began  quite 
early  in  the  sixteenth  century.  After  some  retrogression, 
Mexico,  Brazil,  and  Spanish  South  America  began  to  develop 
into  great  slave-holding,  wealth-producing  lands.  .  .  . 

We  cannot  tell  here,  as  we  would  like  to  do,  of  the  fine  civi- 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         749 

lizing  work  done  in  South  America,  and  more  especially  among 
the  natives,  by  the  Franciscans,  and  presently  by  the  Jesuits, 
who  came  into  America  in  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury (after  1549).  .  .  . 

So  it  was  that  Spain  rose  to  a  temporary  power  and  promi- 
nence in  the  world's  affairs.  It  was  a  very  sudden  and  very 
memorable  rise.  From  the  eleventh  century  this  infertile  and 
corrugated  peninsula  had  been  divided  against  itself,  its  Chris- 
tian population  had  sustained  a  perpetual  conflict  with  the 
Moors;  then  by  what  seems  like  an  accident  it  achieved  unity 
just  in  time  to  reap  the  first  harvest  of  benefit  from  the  discov- 
ery of  America.  Before  that  time  Spain  had  always  been  a 
poor  country ;  it  is  a  poor  country  to-day,  almost  its  only  wealth 
lies  in  its  mines.  For  a  century,  however,  through  its  monop- 
oly of  the  gold  and  silver  of  America,  it  dominated  the  world. 
The  east  and  centre  of  Europe  were  still  overshadowed  by  the 
Turk  and  Mongol ;  the  discovery  of  America  was  itself  a  conse- 
quence of  the  Turkish  conquests ;  very  largely  through  the  Mon- 
golian inventions  of  compass  and  paper,  and  under  the  stimulus 
of  travel  in  Asia  and  of  the  growing  knowledge  of  eastern 
Asiatic  wealth  and  civilization,  came  this  astonishing  blazing  up 
of  the  mental,  physical,  and  social  energies  of  the  "Atlantic 
fringe."  For  close  in  the  wake  of  Portugal  and  Spain  came 
France  and  England,  and  presently  Holland,  each  in  its  turn 
taking  up  the  role  of  expansion  and  empire  overseas.  The  cen- 
tre of  interest  for  European  history  which  once  lay  in  the  Levant 
shifts  now  from  the  Alps  and  the  Mediterranean  Sea  to  the 
Atlantic.  For  some  centuries  the  Turkish  Empire  and  Central 
Asia  and  China  are  relatively  neglected  by  the  limelight  of  the 
European  historian.  Nevertheless,  these  central  regions  of  the 
world  remain  central,  and  their  welfare  and  participation  is 
necessary  to  the  permanent  peace  of  mankind. 

§  9 

And  now  let  us  consider  the  political  consequences  of  this 
vast  release  and  expansion  of  European  ideas  in  tlie  fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries  with  the  new  development  of  science, 
the  exploration  of  the  world,  the  great  dissemination  of  knowl- 
edge through  paper  and  printing,  and  the  spread  of  a  new  crav- 
ing for  freedom  and  equality.  How  was  it  affecting  the  men- 


750  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tality  of  the  courts  and  kings  that  directed  the  formal  affairs 
of  mankind?  We  have  already  shown  how  the  hold  of  the 
Catholic  church  upon  the  consciences  of  men  was  weakening  at 
this  time.  Only  the  Spaniards,  fresh  from  a  long  and  finally 
successful  religious  war  against  Islam,  had  any  great  enthusiasm 
left  for  the  church.  The  Turkish  conquests  and  the  expansion 
of  the  known  world  robbed  the  Roman  Empire  of  its  former 
prestige  of  universality.  The  old  mental  and  moral  framework 
of  Europe  was  breaking  up.  What  was  happening  to  the  dukes, 
princes,  and  kings  of  the  old  dispensation  during  this  age  of 
change  ? 

In  England,  as  we  shall  tell  later,  very  subtle  and  interesting 
tendencies  were  leading  towards  a  new  method  in  government, 
the  method  of  parliament,  that  was  to  spread  later  on  over 
nearly  all  the  world.  But  of  these  tendencies  the  world  at  large 
was  as  yet  practically  unconscious  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

Few  monarchs  have  left  us  intimate  diaries ;  to  be  a  monarch 
and  to  be  frank  are  incompatible  feats;  monarchy  is  itself 
necessarily  a  pose.  The  historian  is  obliged  to  speculate  about 
the  contents  of  the  head  that  wears  a  crown  as  best  he  can.  No 
doubt  regal  psychology  has  varied  with  the  ages.  We  have, 
however,  the  writings  of  a  very  able  man  of  this  period  who  set 
himself  to  study  and  expound  the  arts  of  kingcraft  as  they 
were  understood  in  the  later  fifteenth  century.  This  was  the 
celebrated  Florentine,  Niccolo  Machiavelli  (1469-1527).  He 
was  of  good  birth  and  reasonable  fortune,  and  he  had  entered  the 
public  employment  of  the  republic  by  the  time  he  was  twenty- 
five.  For  eighteen  years  he  was  in  the  Florentine  diplomatic 
service;  he  was  engaged  upon  a  number  of  embassies,  and  in 
1500  he  was  sent  to  France  to  deal  with  the  French  king. 
From  1502  to  1512  he  was  the  right-hand  man  of  the  gonfalonier 
(the  life  president)  of  Florence,  Soderini.  Machiavelli  re- 
organized the  Florentine  army,  wrote  speeches  for  the  gon- 
falonier, was  indeed  the  ruling  intelligence  in  Florentine 
affairs.  When  Soderini,  who  had  leant  upon  the  French, 
was  overthrown  by  the  Medici  family  whom  the  Spanish  sup- 
ported, Machiavelli,  though  he  tried  to  transfer  his  services  to 
the  victors,  was  tortured  on  the  rack  and  expelled.  He  took 
up  his  quarters  in  a  villa  near  San  Casciano,  twelve  miles  or 
so  from  Florence,  and  there  entertained  himself  partly  by 
collecting  and  writing  salacious  stories  to  a  friend  in  Rome, 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         751 

and  partly  by  writing  books  about  Italian  politics  in  which  he 
could  no  longer  play  a  part.  Just  as  we  owe  Marco  Polo's 
book  of  travels  to  his  imprisonment,  so  we  owe  Machiavelli's 
Prince,  his  Florentine  History,  and  The  Art  of  War  to  his 
downfall  and  the  boredom  of  San  Casciano. 

The  enduring  value  of  these  books  lies  in  the  clear  idea  they 
give  us  of  the  quality  and  limitations  of  the  ruling  minds  of  this 
age.  Their  atmosphere  was  his  atmosphere.  If  he  brought  an 
exceptionally  keen  intelligence  to  their  business,  that  merely 
throws  it  into  a  brighter  light. 

His  susceptible  mind  had  been  greatly  impressed  by  the  cun- 
ning, cruelty,  audacity,  and  ambition  of  Caasar  Borgia,  the 
Duke  of  Valentino,  in  whose  camp  he  had  spent  some  months 
as  an  envoy.  In  his  Prince  he  idealized  this  dazzling  person. 
Csesar  Borgia  (1476-1507),  the  reader  must  understand,  was 
the  son  of  Pope  Alexander  VI,  Rodrigo  Borgia  (1492-1503). 
The  reader  will  perhaps  be  startled  at  the  idea  of  a  Pope  having 
a  son,  but  this,  we  must  remember,  was  a  pre-reformation  Pope. 
The  Papacy  at  this  time  was  in  a  mood  of  moral  relaxation,  and 
though  Alexander  was,  as  a  priest,  pledged  to  live  unmarried, 
this  did  not  hinder  him  from  living  openly  with  a  sort  of 
unmarried  wife,  and  devoting  the  resources  of  Christendom  to 
the  advancement  of  his  family.  Caesar  was  a  youth  of  spirit 
even  for  the  times  in  which  he  lived ;  he  had  early  caused  his 
elder  brother  to  be  murdered,  and  also  the  husband  of  his  sister, 
Lucrezia.  He  had  indeed  betrayed  and  murdered  a  number  of 
people.  With  his  father's  assistance  he  had  become  duke  of  a 
wide  area  of  Central  Italy  when  Machiavelli  visited  him.  He 
had  shown  little  or  no  military  ability,  but  considerable  dex- 
terity and  administrative  power.  His  magnificence  was  of  the 
most  temporary  sort.  When  presently  his  father  died,  it  col- 
lapsed like  a  pricked  bladder.  Its  unsoundness  was  not  evident 
to  Machiavelli.  Our  chief  interest  in  Caesar  Borgia  is  that  he 
realized  Machiavelli's  highest  ideals  of  a  superb  and  successful 
prince. 

Much  has  been  written  to  show  that  Machiavelli  had  wide 
and  noble  intentions  behind  his  political  writings,  but  all  such 
attempts  to  ennoble  him  will  leave  the  sceptical  reader,  who  in- 
sists on  reading  the  lines  instead  of  reading  imaginary  things 
between  the  lines  of  Machiavelli's  work,  cold  towards  him.  This 
man  manifestly  had  no  belief  in  any  righteousness  at  all,  no 


752  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

belief  in  a  God  ruling  over  the  world  or  in  a  God  in  men's 
hearts,  no  understanding  of  the  power  of  conscience  in  men. 
Not  for  him  were  Utopian  visions  of  world-wide  human  order, 
or  attempts  to  realize  the  City  of  God.  Such  things  he  did  not 
want.  It  seemed  to  him  that  to  get  power,  to  gratify  one's 
desires  and  sensibilities  and  hates,  to  swagger  triumphantly  in 
the  world,  must  be  the  crown  of  human  desire.  Only  a  prince 
could  fully  realize  such  a  life.  Some  streak  of  timidity  or 
his  sense  of  the  poorness  of  his  personal  claims  had  evidently 
made  him  abandon  such  dreams  for  himself;  but  at  least  he 
might  hope  to  serve  a  prince,  to  live  close  to  the  glory,  to  share 
the  plunder  and  the  lust  and  the  gratified  malice.  He  might 
even  make  himself  indispensable !  He  set  himself,  theref ore,  to 
become  an  "expert"  in  prince-craft.  He  assisted  Soderini  to 
fail.  When  he  was  racked  and  rejected  by  the  Medicis,  and 
had  no  further  hopes  of  being  even  a  successful  court  parasite, 
he  wrote  these  handbooks  of  cunning  to  show  what  a  clever 
servant  some  prince  had  lost.  His  ruling  thought,  his  great 
contribution  to  political  literature,  was  that  the  moral  obliga- 
tions upon  ordinary  men  cannot  bind  princes. 

There  is  a  disposition  to  ascribe  the  virtue  of  patriotism  to 
Machiavelli  because  he  suggested  that  Italy,  which  was  weak 
and  divided — she  had  been  invaded  by  the  Turks  and  saved 
from  conquest  only  by  the  death  of  the  Sultan  Muhammad,  and 
she  was  being  fought  over  by  the  French  and  Spanish  as  though 
she  was  something  inanimate — might  be  united  and  strong ;  but 
he  saw  in  that  possibility  only  a  great  opportunity  for  a  prince. 
And  he  advocated  a  national  army  only  because  he  saw  the 
Italian  method  of  carrying  on  war  by  hiring  bands  of  foreign 
mercenaries  was  a  hopeless  one.  At  any  time  such  troops  might 
go  over  to  a  better  paymaster  or  decide  to  plunder  the  state 
they  protected.  He  had  been  deeply  impressed  by  the  victories 
of  the  Swiss  over  the  Milanese,  but  he  never  fathomed  the 
secret  of  the  free  spirit  that  made  those  victories  possible.  The 
Florentine  militia  he  created  was  a  complete  failure.  He  was 
a  man  born  blind  to  the  qualities  that  make  peoples  free  and 
nations  great. 

Yet  this  morally  blind  man  was  living  in  a  little  world  of 
morally  blind  men.  It  is  clear  that  his  style  of  thought  was 
the  style  of  thought  of  the  court  of  his  time.  Behind  the  princes 
of  the  new  states  that  had  grown  up  out  of  the  wreckage  of 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION        753 

the  empire  and  the  failure  of  the  Church,  there  were  every- 
where chancellors  and  secretaries  and  trusted  ministers  of  the 
Machiavellian  type.  Cromwell,  for  instance,  the  minister  of 
Henry  VIII  of  England  after  his  breach  with  Rome,  regarded 
Machiavelli's  Prince  as  the  quintessence  of  political  wisdom. 


Tha,  Everlasting 
League,  1291 

frontiers  oftha  Confad 


When  the  princes  were  themselves  sufficiently  clever  they,  too, 
were  Machiavellian.  They  were  scheming  to  outdo  one'  an- 
other, to  rob  weaker  contemporaries,  to  destroy  rivals,  so  that 
they  might  for  a  brief  interval  swagger.  They  had  little  or 
no  vision  of  any  scheme  of  human  destinies  greater  than  this 
game  they  played  against  one  another. 


§  10 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  this  Swiss  infantry  which  had 
so  impressed  Machiavelli  was  no  part  of  the  princely  system 
of  Europe.  At  the  very  centre  of  the  European  system  there 
had  arisen  a  little  confederation  of  free  states,  the  Swiss  Con- 


754  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

federation,  which  after  some  centuries  of  nominal  adhesion  to 
the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  became  frankly  republican  in  1499. 
As  early  as  the  thirteenth  century,  the  peasant  farmers  of  three 
valleys  round  about  the  Lake  of  Lucerne  took  it  into  their 
heads  that  they  would  dispense  with  an  overlord  and  manage 
their  own  affairs  in  their  own  fashion.  Their  chief  trouble 
came  from  the  claims  of  a  noble  family  of  the  Aar  valley,  the 
Habsburg  family.  In  1245  the  men  of  Schwyz  burnt  the  castle 
of  New  Habsburg  which  had  been  set  up  near  Lucerne  to  over 
awe  them ;  its  ruins  are  still  to  be  seen  there. 

This  Habsburg  family  was  a  growing  and  acquisitive  one; 
it  had  lands  and  possessions  throughout  Germany;  and  in  1273, 
after  the  extinction  of  the  Hohenstaufen  house,  Rudolf  of 
Habsburg  was  elected  Emperor  of  Germany,  a  distinction  that 
became  at  last  practically  hereditary  in  his  family.  None  the 
less,  the  men  of  Uri,  Schwyz,  and  Unterwalden  did  not  mean 
to  be  ruled  by  any  Habsburg;  they  formed  an  Everlasting 
League  in  1291,  and  they  held  their  own  among  the  mountains 
from  that  time  onward  to  this  day,  first  as  free  members  of 
the  empire  and  then  as  an  absolutely  independent  confedera- 
tion. Of  the  heroic  legend  of  William  Tell  we  have  no  space 
to  tell  here,  nor  have  we  room  in  which  to  trace  the  gradual 
extension  of  the  confederation  to  its  present  boundaries. 
Romansh,  Italian,  and  French-speaking  valleys  were  presently 
added  to  this  valiant  little  republican  group.  The  red  cross 
flag  of  Geneva  has  become  the  symbol  of  international  humanity 
in  the  midst  of  warfare.  The  bright  and  thriving  cities  of 
Switzerland  have  been  a  refuge  for  free  men  from  a  score  of 
tyrannies. 

§    llA 

Most  of  the  figures  that  stand  out  in  history,  do  so  through 
some  exceptional  personal  quality,  good  or  bad,  that  makes 
them  more  significant  than  their  fellows.  But  there  was  born 
at  Ghent  in  Belgium  in  1500  a  man  of  commonplace  abilities 
and  melancholy  temperament,  the  son  of  a  mentally  defective 
mother  who  had  been  married  for  reasons  of  state,  who  was, 
through  no  fault  of  his  own,  to  become  the  focus  of  the  accumu- 
lating stresses  of  Europe.  The  historian  must  give  him  a  quite 
unmerited  and  accidental  prominence  side  by- side  with  such 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION        755 

marked  individualities  as  Alexander  and  Charlemagne  and 
Frederick  II.  This  was  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  For  a  time 
he  had  an  air  of  being  the  greatest  monarch  in  Europe  since 
Charlemagne.  Both  he  and  his  illusory  greatness  were  the 
results  of  the  matrimonial  statecraft  of  his  grandfather,  the 
Emperor  Maximilian  I  (born  1459,  died  1519). 

Some  families  have  fought,  others  have  intrigued  their  way 
to  world  power ;  the  Habsburg  married  their  way.  Maximilian 
began  his  career  with  the  inheritance  of  the  Habsburgs,  Aus- 
tria, Styria,  part  of  Alsace  and  other  districts;  he  married — 
the  lady's  name  scarcely  matters  to  us — the  Netherlands  and 
Burgundy.  Most  of  Burgundy  slipped  from  him  after  his  first 
wife's  death,  but  the  Netherlands  he  held.  Then  he  tried  un- 
successfully to  marry  Brittany.  He  became  Emperor  in  suc- 
cession to  his  father,  Frederick  III,  in  1493,  and  married  the 
duchy  of  Milan.  Finally  he  married  his  son  to  the  weak- 
minded  daughter  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  the  Ferdinand 
and  Isabella  of  Columbus,  who  not  only  reigned  over  a  freshly 
united  Spain,  and  over  Sardinia  and  the  kingdom  of  the  two 
Sicilies,  but  by  virtuue  of  the  papal  gifts  to  Castile,  over 
all  America  west  of  Brazil.  So  it  was  that  Charles,  his  grand- 
son, inherited  most  of  the  American  continent  and  between  a 
third  and  a  half  of  what  the  Turks  had  left  of  Europe.  The 
father  of  Charles  died  in  1506,  and  Maximilian  did  his  best 
to  secure  his  grandson's  election  to  the  imperial  throne. 

Charles  succeeded  to  the  Netherlands  in  1506;  he  became 
practically  king  of  the  Spanish  dominions,  his  mother  being 
imbecile,  when  his  grandfather  Ferdinand  died  in  1516;  and 
his  grandfather  Maximilian  dying  in  1519,  he  was  in  1520 
elected  Emperor  at  the  still  comparatively  tender  age  of 
twenty. 

His  election  as  Emperor  was  opposed  by  the  young  and  bril- 
liant French  King,  Francis  I,  who  had  succeeded  to  the  French 
throne  in  1515  at  the  age  of  twenty-one.  The  candidature  of 
Francis  was  supported  by  Leo  X  (1513),  who  also  requires 
from  us  the  epithet  brilliant.  It  was  indeed  an  age  of  brilliant 
monarchs.  It  was  the  age  of  Baber  in  India  (1526-1530) 
and  Suleiman  in  Turkey  (1520).  Both  Leo  and  Francis 
dreaded  the  concentration  of  so  much  power  in  the  hands  of 
one  man  as  the  election  of  Charles  threatened.  The  only  other 
monarch  who  seemed  to  matter  in  Europe  was  Henry  VIII, 


756 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         757 


who  had  become  King  of  England  in  1509  at  the  age  of 
eighteen.  He  also  offered  himself  as  a  candidate  for  the  empire, 
and  the  imaginative  English  reader  may  amuse  himself  by 
working  out  the  possible  consequences  of  such  an  election. 
There  was  much  scope  for  diplomacy  in  this  triangle  of  kings. 
Charles  on  his  way  from  Spain  to  Germany  visited  England 
and  secured  the  support  of  Henry  against  Francis  by  bribing 
his  minister,  Cardinal  Wolsey.  Henry  also  made  a  great  parade 
of  friendship  with  Francis,  there  was  feasting,  tournaments, 
and  such-like  antiquated  gallantries  in  France,  in  a  courtly 
picnic  known  to  historians  as  the  Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold 
(1520).  Knighthood  was 
becoming  a  picturesque  af- 
fectation in  the  sixteenth 
c  e  n  t  u  r  y.  The  Emperor 
Maximilian  I  is  still  called 
"the  last  of  the  knights"  by 
German  historians. 

The  election  of  Charles 
was  secured,  it  is  to  be  noted, 
by  a  vast  amount  of  bribery. 
He  had  as  his  chief  sup- 
porters and  creditors  the 
great  German  business 
house  of  the  Fuggers.  That 
large  treatment  of  .money 
and  credit  which  we  call 
finance,  which  had  gone  out 
of  European  political  life  with  the  collapse  of  the  Roman 
Empire,  was  now  coming  back  to  power.  This  appearance 
of  the  Fuggers,  whose  houses  and  palaces  outshone  those  of 
the  emperors,  marks  the  upward  movement  of  forces  that  had 
begun  two  or  three  centuries  earlier  in  Cahors  in  France  and 
in  Florence  and  other  Italian  towns.  Money,  public  debts, 
and  social  unrest  and  discontent  re-enter  upon  the  miniature 
stage  of  this  Outline.  Charles  V  was  not  so  much  a  Habsburg 
as  a  Fugger  emperor. 

For  a  time  this  fair,  not  very  intelligent-looking  young  man 
with  the  thick  upper  lip  and  long,  clumsy  chin — features  which 
still  afflict  his  descendants — was  largely  a  puppet  in  the  hands 
of  his  ministers.  Able  servants  after  the  order  of  Machiavelli 


Lttthcr 

(after 


758  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

guided  him  at  first  in  the  arts  of  kingship.  Then  in  a  slow  but 
effectual  way  he  began  to  assert  himself.  He  was  confronted 
at  the  very  outset  of  his  reign  in  Germany  with  the  perplexing 
dissensions  of  Christendom.  The  revolt  against  the  papal  rule 
which  had  been  going  on  since  the  days  of  Huss  and  Wycliffe 
had  been  recently  exasperated  by  a  new  and  unusually  cynical 
selling  of  indulgences  to  raise  money  for  the  completion  of 
St.  Peter's  at  Rome.  A  monk  named  Luther,  who  had  been 
consecrated  as  a  priest,  who  had  taken  to  reading  the  Bible,  and 
who,  while  visiting  Rome  on  the  business  of  his  order,  had  been 
much  shocked  by  the  levity  and  worldly  splendour  of  the 
Papacy,  had  come  forward  against  these  papal  expedients  at 
Wittenberg  (1517),  offering  disputation  and  propounding  cer- 
tain theses.  An  important  controversy  ensued.  At  first  Luther 
carried  on  this  controversy  in  Latin,  but  presently  took  to  Ger- 
man, and  speedily  had  the  people  in  a  ferment.  Charles  found 
this  dispute  raging  when  he  came  from  Spain  to  Germany.  He 
summoned  an  assembly  or  "diet"  of  the  empire  at  Worms  on 
the  Rhine.  To  this,  Luther,  who  had  been  asked  to  recant  his 
views  by  Pope  Leo  X,  and  who  had  refused  to  do  so,  was  sum- 
moned. He  came,  and,  entirely  in  the  spirit  of  Huss,  refused 
to  recant  unless  he  was  convinced  of  his  error  by  logical  argu- 
ment or  the  authority  of  Scripture.  But  his  protectors  among 
the  princes  were  too  powerful  for  him  to  suffer  the  fate  of  John 
Huss. 

Here  was  a  perplexing  situation  for  the  young  Emperor. 
There  is  reason  to  suppose  that  he  was  inclined  at  first  to  sup- 
port Luther  against  the  Pope.  Leo  X  had  opposed  the  election 
of  Charles,  and  was  friendly  with  his  rival,  Francis  I.  But 
Charles  V  was  not  a  good  Machiavellian,  and  he  had  acquired 
in  Spain  a  considerable  religious  sincerity.  He  decided  against 
Luther.  Many  of  the  German  princes,  and  especially  the  Elec- 
tor of  Saxony,  sided  with  the  reformer.  Luther  went  into 
hiding  under  the  protection  of  the  Saxon  Elector,  and  Charles 
found  himself  in  the  presence  of  the  opening  rift  that  was  to 
split  Christendom  into  two  contending  camps. 

Close  upon  these  disturbances,  and  probably  connected  with 
them,  came  a  widespread  peasants'  revolt  throughout  Germany. 
This  outbreak  frightened  Luther  very  effectually.  He  was 
shocked  by  its  excesses,  and  from  that  time  forth  the  Reforma- 
tion he  advocated  ceased  to  be  a  Reformation  according  to  the 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         759 


people  and  became  a  Reformation  according  to  the  princes.  He 
lost  his  confidence  in  that  free  judgment  for  which  he  had  stood 
up  so  manfully. 

Meanwhile  Charles  realized  that  his  great  empire  was  in  very 
serious  danger  both  from  the  west  and  from  the  east.  On  the 
west  of  him  was  his  spirited  rival,  Francis  I ;  to  the  east  was 
the  Turk  in  Hungary,  in  alliance  with  Francis  and  clamouring 

for    certain    arrears    of    tribute  __ 

from    the   Austrian    dominions. 

Charles  had  the  money  and  army 

of  Spain  at  his  disposal,  but  it 

was  extremely  difficult  to  get  any 

effective  support  in  money  from 

Germany.     His  grandfather  had 

developed  a  German  infantry  on 

the    Swiss    model,    very    much 

upon    the    lines    expounded    in 

Machiavelli's  Art   of    War,  but 

these  troops  had  to  be  paid  and 

his  imperial  subsidies  had  to  be 

supplemented  by  unsecured  borrowings,  which  were  finally  to 

bring  his  supporters,  the  Fuggers,  to  ruin. 

On  the  whole,  Charles,  in  alliance  with  Henry  VIII,  was 
successful  against  Francis  I  and  the  Turk.  Their  chief  battle- 
field was  north  Italy;  the  generalship  was  dull  on  both  sides; 
their  advances  and  retreats  depended  chiefly  on  the  arrival  of 
reinforcements.  The  German  army  invaded  France,  failed  to 
take  Marseilles,  fell  back  into  Italy,  lost  Milan,  and  was  be- 
sieged in  Pavia.  Francis  I  made  a  long  and  unsuccessful  siege 
of  Pavia,  was  caught  by  fresh  German  forces,  defeated, 
wounded,  and  taken  prisoner.  He  sent  back  a  message  to  his 
queen  that  all  was  "lost  but  honour,"  made  a  humiliating  peace, 
and  broke  it  as  soon  as  he  was  liberated,  so  that  even  the  salvage 
of  honour  was  but  temporary.  Henry  VIII  and  the  Pope,  in 
obedience  to  the  rules  of  Machiavellian  strategy,  now  went  over 
to  the  side  of  France  in  order  to  prevent  Charles  becoming  too 
powerful.  The  German  troops  in  Milan,  under  the  Constable 
of  Bourbon,  being  unpaid,  forced  rather  than  followed  their 
commander  into  a  raid  upon  Rome.  They  stormed  the  city  and 
pillaged  it  (1527).  The  Pope  took  refuge  in  the  Castle  of  St. 
Angelo  while  the  looting  and  slaughter  went  on.  He  bought 


760  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

off  the  German  troops  at  last  by  the  payment  of  four  hundred 
thousand  ducats.  Ten  years  of  such  stupid  and  confused  fight- 
ing impoverished  all  Europe  and  left  the  Emperor  in  possession 
of  Milan.  In  1530  he  was  crowned' by  the  Pope — he  was  the 
last  German  Emperor  to  be  crowned  by  the  Pope — at  Bologna. 
One  thinks  of  the  rather  dull-looking  blonde  face,  with  its  long 
lip  and  chin,  bearing  the  solemn  expression  of  one  who  endures 
a  doubtful  though  probably  honourable  ceremony. 

Meanwhile  the  Turks  were  making  great  headway  in  Hun- 
gary. They  had  defeated  and  killed  the  King  of  Hungary  in 
1526,  they  held  Buda-Pesth,  and  in  1529,  as  we  have  already 
noted,  Suleiman  the  Magnificent  very  nearly  took  Vienna.  The 
Emperor  was  greatly  concerned  by  these  advances,  and  did  his 
utmost  to  drive  back  the  Turks,  but  he  found  the  greatest  diffi- 
culty in  getting  the  German  princes  to  unite  even  with  this 
formidable  enemy  upon  their  very  borders.  Francis  I  remained 
implacable  for  a  time,  and  there  was  a  new  French  war ;  but  in 
1538  Charles  won  his  rival  over  to  a  more  friendly  attitude  by 
ravaging  the  south  of  France.  Francis  and  Charles  then  formed 
an  alliance  against  the  Turk,  but  the  Protestant  princes,  the 
German  princes  who  were  resolved  to  break  away  from  Rome, 

had  formed  a  league,  the  Schmal- 
kaldic  League  (named  after  the 
little  town  of  Schmalkalden  in 
Hesse,  at  which  its  constitution 
was  arranged),  against  the  Em- 
peror, and  in  the  place  of  a  great 
campaign  to  recover  Hungary  for 
Christendom  Charles  had  to  turn 
his  mind  to  the  gathering  internal 
struggle  in  Germany.  Of  that 
struggle  he  saw  only  the  opening 
war.  It  was  a  struggle,  a  san- 
.qruinary  irrational  bickering  of 
princes  for  ascendancy,  now  flaming  into  war  and  destruction, 
now  sinking  back  to  intrigues  and  diplomacies ;  it  was  a  snake's 
sack  of  Machiavellian  policies,  that  was  to  go  on  writhing 
incurably  right  into  the  nineteenth  century,  and  to  waste  and 
desolate  Central  Europe  again  and  again. 

The  Emperor  never  seems  to  have  grasped  the  true  forces  at 
work  in  these  gathering  troubles,  He  was  for  his  time  and  sta- 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         761 

tion  an  exceptionally  worthy  man,  and  lie  seems  to  have  taken, 
the  religious  dissensions  that  were  tearing  Europe  into  warring 
fragments  as  genuine  theological  differences.  He  gathered  diets 
and  councils  in  futile  attempts  at  reconciliation.  Formulae  and 
confessions  were  tried  over.  The  student  of  German  history 
must  struggle  with  the  details  of  the  Religious  Peace  of  Nurem- 
berg, the  settlement  at  the  diet  of  Ratisbon,  the  Interim  of  Augs- 
burg, and  the  like.  Here  we  do 
but  mention  them  as  details  in  the 
worried  life  of  this  culminating 
emperor.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
hardly  one  of  the  multifarious 
princes  and  rulers  in  Europe 
seems  to  have  been  acting  in  good 
faith.  The  wide-spread  religious 
trouble  of  the  world,  the  desire 
of  the  common  people  for  truth 
and  social  righteousness,  the 
spreading  knowledge  of  the  time, 
all  those  things  were  merely  coun- 
ters in  the  imaginations  of  princely  diplomacy.  Henry  VIII 
of  England,  who  had  begun  his  career  with  a  book  written 
against  heresy,  and  who  had  been  rewarded  by  the  Pope  with 
the  title  of  "Defender  of  the  Faith,"  being  anxious  to  divorce 
his  first  wife  in  favour  of  an  animated  young  lady  named  Anne 
Boleyn,1  and  wishing  also  to  turn  against  the  Emperor  in 
favour  of  Francis  I  and  to  loot  the  vast  wealth  of  the  church 
in  England,  joined  the  company  of  Protestant  princes  in  1530. 
Sweden,  Denmark,  and  Norway  had  already  gone  over  to  the 
Protestant  side.  f 

The  German  religious  war  began  in  1546,  a  few  months  after 
the  death  of  Martin  Luther.  We  need  not  trouble  about  the 
incidents  of  the  campaign.  The  Protestant  Saxon  army  was 
badly  beaten  at  Lochau.  By  something  very  like  a  breach  of 
faith  Philip  of  Hesse,  the  Emperor's  chief  remaining  antag- 
onist, was  caught  and  imprisoned,  and  the  Turks  were  bought 
off  by  the  payment  of  an  annual  tribute.  In  1547,  to  the  great 
relief  of  the  Emperor,  Francis  I  died.  So  by  1547  Charles 

1  But  he  had  a  better  reason  for  doing  this  in  the  fact  that  there  was 
no  heir  to  the  throne.  The  Wars  of  the  Roses,  a  bitter  dynastic  war, 
were  still  very  vivid  in  the  minds  of  English  people. — F.  H.  H, 


762  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

got  to  a  kind  of  settlement,  and  made  his  last  efforts  to  effect 
peace  where  there  was  no  peace.  In  1552  all  Germany  was  at 
war  again,  only  a  precipitate  flight  from  Innsbruck  saved 
Charles  from  capture,  and  in  1552,  with  the  treaty  of  Passau, 
came  another  unstable  equilibrium.  Charles  was  now  utterly 
weary  of  the  cares  and  splendours  of  empire ;  he  had  never  had 
a  very  sound  constitution,  he  was  naturally  indolent,  and  he 
was  suffering  greatly  from  gout.  He  abdicated.  He  made 
over  all  his  sovereign  rights  in  Germany  to  his  brother  Ferdi- 
nand, and  Spain  and  the  Netherlands  he  resigned  to  his  son 
Philip.  He  then  retired  to  a  monastery  at  Yuste,  among  the 
oak  and  chestnut  forests  in  the  hills  to  the  north  of  the  Tagus 
valley,  and  there  he  died  in  1558. 

Much  has  been  written  in  a  sentimental  vein  of  this  retire- 
ment, this  renunciation  of  the  world  by  this  tired  majestic 
Titan,  world-weary,  seeking  in  an  austere  solitude  his  peace 
with  God.  But  his  retreat  was  neither  solitary  nor  austere; 
he  had  with  him  nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  attendants;  his 
establishment  had  all  the  indulgences  without  the  fatigues  of  a 
court,  and  Philip  II  was  a  dutiful  son  to  whom  his  father's 
advice  was  a  command.  As  for  his  austerities,  let  Prescott 
witness :  "In  the  almost  daily  correspondence  between  Quixada, 
or  Gaztelu,  and  the  Secretary  of  State  at  Valladolid,  there  is 
scarcely  a  letter  that  does  not  turn  more  or  less  on  the  Emperor's 
eating  or  his  illness.  The  one  seems  naturally  to  follow,  like 
a  running  commentary,  on  the  other.  It  is  rare  that  such 
topics  have  formed  the  burden  of  communications  with  the 
department  of  state.  It  must  have  been  no  easy  matter  for 
the  secretary  to  preserve  his  gravity  in  the  perusal  of  despatches 
in  which  politics  and  gastronomy  were  so  strangely  mixed 
together.  The  courier  from  Valladolid  to  Lisbon  was  ordered 
to  make  a  detour,  so  as  to  take  Jarandilla  in  his  route,  and 
bring  supplies  for  the  royal  table.  On  Thursdays  he  was  to 
bring  fish  to  serve  for  the  jour  maigre  that  was  to  follow.  The 
trout  in  the  neighbourhood  Charles  thought  too  small;  so 
athers,  of  a  larger  size,  were  to  be  sent  from  Valladolid.  Fish 
of  every  kind  was  to  his  taste,  as,  indeed,  was  anything  that 
in  its  nature  or  habits  at  all  approached  to  fish.  Eels,  frogs, 
oysters,  occupied  an  important  place  in  the  royal  -bill  of  fare. 
Potted  fish,  especially  anchovies,  found  great  favour  with  him ; 
and  he  regretted  that  he  had  not  brought  a  better  supply  of 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         763 

these  from  the  Low  Countries.  On  an  eel-pasty  he  particularly 
doted."  .  .  .* 

In  1554  Charles  had  obtained  a  hull  from  Pope  Julius  III 
granting  him  a  dispensation  from  fasting,  and  allowing  him  to 
break  his  fast  early  in  the  morning  even  when  he  was  to  take 
the  sacrament. 

"That  Charles  was  not  altogether  unmindful  of  his  wearing 
apparel  in  Yuste,  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  his  ward- 
robe contained  no  less  than  sixteen  robes  of  silk  and  velvet, 
lined  with  ermine,  or  eider  down,  or  the  soft  hair  of  the  Bar- 
bary  goat.  As  to  the  furniture  and  upholstery  of  his  apart- 
ments, how  little  reliance  is  to  be  placed  on  the  reports  so  care- 
lessly circulated  about  these  may  be  gathered  from  a  single 
glance  at  the  inventory  of  his  effects,  prepared  by  Quixada 
and  Gaztelu  soon  after  their  master's  death.  Among  the  items 
we  find  carpets  from  Turkey  and  Alcarez,  canopies  of  velvet 
and  other  stuffs,  hangings  of  fine  black  cloth,  which  since  his 
mother's  death  he  had  always  chosen  for  his  own  bedroom; 
while  the  remaining  apartments  were  provided  with  no  less 
than  twenty-five  suits  of  tapestry,  from  the  looms  of  Elanders, 
richly  embroidered  with  figures  of  animals  and  with  land- 
scapes." .  .  .  "Among  the  different  pieces  of  plate  we  find 
some  of  pure  gold,  and  others  especially  noted  for  their  curious 
workmanship ;  and  as  this  was  an  age  in  which  the  art  of  work- 
ing the  precious  metals  was  carried  to  the  highest  perfection, 
we  cannot  doubt  that  some  of  the  finest  specimens  had  come 
into  the  Emperor's  possession.  The  whole  amount  of  plate  was 
estimated  at  between  twelve  and  thirteen  thousand  ounces  in 
weight."  .  .  .2 

Charles  had  never  acquired  the  habit  of  reading,  but  he 
would  be  read  aloud  to  at  meals  after  the  fashion  of  Charle- 
magne, and  would  make  what  one  narrator  describes  as  a 
"sweet  and  heavenly  commentary."  He  also  amused  himself 
with  technical  toys,  by  listening  to  music  or  sermons,  and  by 
attending  to  the  imperial  business  that  still  came  drifting  in 
to  him.  The  death  of  the  Empress,  to  whom  he  was  greatly 
attached,  had  turned  his  mind  towards  religion,  which  in  his 
case  took  a  punctilious  and  ceremonial  form;  every  Friday  in 
Lent  he  scourged  himself  with  the  rest  of  the  monks  with  such 

1Prescott's  Appendix  to  Robertson's  History  of  Chwles  V. 
*  Prescott. 


764.  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

good  will  as  to  draw  blood.  These  exercises  and  the  gout 
released  a  bigotry  in  Charles  that  had  been  hitherto  restrained 
by  considerations  of  policy.  The  appearance  of  Protestant 
teaching  close  at  hand  in  Valladolid  roused  him  to  fury.  "Tell 
the  grand  inquisitor  and  his  council  from  me  to  be  at  their 
posts,  and  to  lay  the  axe  at  the  root  of  the  evil  before  it  spreads 
further."  .  .  .  He  expressed  a  doubt  whether  it  would  not 
be  well,  in  so  black  an  affair,  to  dispense  with  the  ordinary 
course  of  justice,  and  to  show  no  mercy;  "lest  the  criminal, 
if  pardoned,  should  have  the  opportunity  of  repeating  his 
crime."  He  recommended,  as  an  example,  his  own  mode  of 
proceeding  in  the  Netherlands,  "where  all  who  remained 
obstinate  in  their  errors  were  burned  alive,  and  those  who  were 
admitted  to  penitence  were  beheaded." 

Among  the  chief  pleasures  of  the  Catholic  monarch  between 
meals  during  this  time  of  retirement  were  funeral  services. 
He  not  only  attended  every  actual  funeral  that  was  celebrated 
at  Yuste,  but  he  had  services  conducted  for  the  absent  dead, 
he  held  a  funeral  service  in  memory  of  his  wife  on  the  anni- 
versary of  her  death,  and  finally  he  celebrated  his  own  obsequies. 
"The  chapel  was  hung  with  black,  and  the  blaze  of  hundreds  of 
wax-lights  was  scarcely  sufficient  to  dispel  the  darkness.  The 
brethren  in  their  conventual  dress,  and  all  the  Emperor's 
household  clad  in  deep  mourning,  gathered  round  a  huge 
catafalque,  shrouded  also  in  black,  which  had  been  raised  in 
the  centre  of  the  chapel.  The  service  for  the  burial  of  the 
dead  was  then  performed;  and,  amidst  the  dismal  wail  of  the 
monks,  the  prayers  ascended  for  the  departed  spirit,  that  it 
might  be  received  into  the  mansions  of  the  blessed.  The  sor- 
rowful attendants  were  melted  to  tears,  as  the  image  of  their 
master's  death  was  presented  to  their  minds — or  they  were 
touched,  it  may  be,  with  compassion  by  this  pitiable  display 
of  weakness.  Charles,  muffled  in  a  dark  mantle,  and  bearing 
a  lighted  candle  in  his  hand,  mingled  with  his  household,  the 
spectator  of  his  own  obsequies;  and  the  doleful  ceremony  was 
concluded  by  his  placing  the  taper  in  the  hands  of  the  priest, 
in  sign  of  his  surrendering:  up  his  soul  to  the  Almighty." 

Other  accounts  make  Charles  wear  a  shroud  and  lie  in  the 
coffin,  remaining  there  alone  until  the  last  mourner  had  left 
the  chapel. 

Within  two  months  of  this  masquerade  he  was  dead.     And 


RENASCENCE  OF  WESTERN  CIVILIZATION         765 

the  greatness  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  died  with  him.  The 
Holy  Roman  Empire  struggled  on  indeed  to  the  days  of  Napo- 
leon, but  as  an  invalid  and  dying  thing. 


Ferdinand,  the  brother  of  Charles  V,  took  over  his  aban- 
doned work  and  met  the  German  princes  at  the  diet  of  Augs- 
burg in  1555.  Again  there  was  an  attempt  to  establish  a 
religious  peace.  Nothing  could  better  show  the  quality  of  that 
attempted  settlement  and  the  blindness  of  the  princes  and 
statesmen  concerned  in  it,  to  the  deeper  and  broader  processes 
of  the  time,  than  the  form  that  settlement  took.  The  recogni- 
tion of  religious  freedom  was  to  apply  to  the  states  and  not 
to  individual  citizens;  cujus  regio  ejus  religio,  "the  confession 
of  the  subject  was  to  be  dependent  on  that  of  the  territorial 
lord." 

§  He 

We  have  given  as  much  attention  as  we  have  done  to  the 
writings  of  Machiavelli  and  to  the  personality  of  Charles  V 
because  they  throw  a  flood  of  light  upon  the  antagonisms  of  the 
next  period  in  our  history.  This  present  chapter  has  told  the 
story  of  a  vast  expansion  of  human  horizons  and  of  a  great 
increase  and  distribution  of  knowledge,  we  have  seen  the  con- 
science of  common  men  awakening  and  intimations  of  a  new 
and  profounder  social  justice  spreading  throughout  the  general 
body  of  the  Western  civilization.  But  this  process  of  light  and 
thought  was  leaving  courts  and  the  political  life  of  the  world 
untouched.  There  is  little  in  Machiavelli  that  might  not  have 
been  written  by  some  clever  secretary  in  the  court  of  Chosroes 
I  or  Shi  Hwang-ti — or  even  of  Sargon  lor  Pepi.  While  the 
world  in  everything  else  was  moving  forward,  in  political  ideas, 
in  ideas  about  the  relationship  of  state  to  state  and  of  sovereign 
to  citizen,  it  was  standing  still.  Nay,  it  was  falling  back.  For 
the  great  idea  of  the  Catholic  Church  as  the  world  city  of  God 
had  been  destroyed  in  men's  minds  by  the  church  itself,  and 
the  dream  of  a  world  imperialism  had,  in  the  person  of  Charles 
V,  been  carried  in  effigy  through  Europe  to  limbo.  Politically 


766  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  world  seemed  falling  back  towards  personal  monarchy  of 
the  Assyrian  or  Macedonian  pattern. 

It  is  not  that  the  newly  awakened  intellectual  energies  of 
western  European  men  were  too  absorbed  in  theological  re- 
statement, in  scientific  investigations,  in  exploration  and  mer- 
cantile development,  to  give  a  thought  to  the  claims  and 
responsibilities  of  rulers.  Not  only  were  common  men  drawing 
ideas  of  a  theocratic  or  republican  or  communistic  character 
from  the  now  accessible  Bible,  but  the  renewed  study  of  the 
Greek  classics  was  bringing  the  creative  and  fertilizing  spirit 
of  Plato  to  bear  upon  the  Western  mind.  In  England  Sir 
Thomas  More  produced  a  quaint  imitation  of  Plato's  Republic 
in  his  Utopia,  setting  out  a  sort  of  autocratic  communism.  In 
Naples,  a  century  later,  a  certain  friar  Campanella  was  equally 
bold  in  his  City  of  the  Sun.  But  such  discussions  were  having 
no  immediate  effect  upon  political  arrangements.  Compared 
with  the  massiveness  of  the  task,  these  books  do  indeed  seem 
poetical  and  scholarly  and  flimsy.  (Yet  later  on  the  Utopia 
was  to  bear  fruit  in  the  English  Poor  Laws.)  The  intellectual 
and  moral  development  of  the  Western  mind  and  this  drift 
towards  Machiavellian  monarchy  in  Europe  were  for  a  time 
going  on  concurrently  in  the  same  world,  but  they  were  going 
on  almost  independently.  The  statesmen  still  schemed  and 
manoeuvred  as  if  nothing  grew  but  the  power  of  wary  and 
fortunate  kings.  It  was  only  in  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries  that  these  two  streams  of  tendency,  the  stream  of 
general  ideas  and  the  drift  of  traditional  and  egoistic  mon- 
archical diplomacy,  interfered  and  came  into  conflict 


XXXV 

PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS 

1.  Princes  and  Foreign  Policy.  §  2.  The  Dutch  Republic. 
§  3.  The  English  Republic.  §  4.  The  Break-up  and  Disor- 
der of  Germany.  §  5.  The  Splendours  of  Grand  Monarchy 
in  Europe.  §  6.  The  Growth  of  the  Idea  of  Great  Powers. 
§  7.  The  Crowned  Republic  of  Poland  and  Its  Fate.  §  8. 
The  First  Scramble  for  Empire  Overseas.  §  9.  Britain 
Dominates  India.  §  10.  Russia's  Ride  to  the  Pacific. 
§  11.  What  Gibbon  Thought  of  the  World  in  1780.  §  12. 
The  Social  Truce  Draws  to  an  End. 


IN  the  preceding  chapter  we  have  traced  the  beginnings  of 
a  new  civilization,  the  civilization  of  the  "modern"  type 
which  becomes  at  the  present  time  world-wide.  It  is  still 
a  vast  unformed  thing,  still  only  in  the  opening  phases  of 
growth  and  development  to-day.  We  have  seen  the  mediaeval 
ideas  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire  and  of  the  Roman  Church, 
as  forms  of  universal  law  and  order,  fade  in  its  dawn.  They 
fade  out,  as  if  it  were  necessary  in  order  that  these 
ideas  of  one  law  and  one  order  for  all  men  should  be 
redrawn  on  world-wide  lines.  And  while  in  nearly  every 
other  field  of  human  interest  there  was  advance,  the  effacement 
of  these  general  political  ideas  of  the  Church  and  Empire  led 
back  for  a  time  in  things  political  towards  merely  personal 
monarchy  and  monarchist  nationalism  of  the  Macedonian  type. 
There  came  an  interregnum,  as  it  were,  in  the  consolidation 
of  human  affairs,  a  phase  of  the  type  the  Chinese  annalists 
would  call  an  "Age  of  Confusion."  This  interregnum  has 
lasted  as  long  as  that  between  the  fall  of  the  Western  Empire 
and  the  crowning  of  Charlemagne  in  Rome.  We  are  living 
in  it  to-day.  It  may  be  drawing  to  its  close;  we  cannot  tell 
yet.  The  old  leading  ideas  had  broken  down,  a  medley  of 

767 


768  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

new  and  untried  projects  and  suggestions  perplexed  men's 
minds  and  actions,  and  meanwhile  the  world  at  large  had  to 
fall  back  for  leadership  upon  the  ancient  tradition  of  an  indi- 
vidual prince.  There  was  no  new  way  clearly  apparent  for  men 
to  follow,  and  the  prince  was  there. 

All  over  the  world  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century  saw 
monarchy  prevailing  and  tending  towards  absolutism.  Ger- 
many and  Italy  were  patchworks  of  autocratic  princely  do- 
minions, Spain  was  practically  autocratic,  the  throne  had  never 
been  so  powerful  in  England,  and  as  the  seventeenth  century 
drew  on,  the  French  monarchy  gradually  became  the  greatest 
and  most  consolidated  power  in  Europe.  The  phases  and 
fluctuations  of  its  ascent  we  cannot  record  here. 

At  every  court  there  were  groups  of  ministers  and  secretaries 
who  played  a  Machiavellian  game  against  their  foreign  rivals. 
Foreign  policy  is  the  natural  employment  of  courts  and  mon- 
archies. Foreign  offices  are,  so  to  speak,  the  leading  characters 
in  all  the  histories  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries. 
They  kept  Europe  in  a  fever  of  wars.  And  wars  were  becoming 
expensive.  Armies  were  no  longer  untrained  levies,  no  longer 
assemblies  of  feudal  knights  who  brought  their  own  horses  and 
weapons  and  retainers  with  them;  they  needed  more  and  more 
artillery;  they  consisted  of  paid  troops  who  insisted  on  their 
pay ;  they  were  professional  and  slow  and  elaborate,  conducting 
long  sieges,  necessitating  elaborate  fortifications.  War  expendi- 
ture increased  everywhere  and  called  for  more  and  more  taxa- 
tion. And  here  it  was  that  these  monarchies  of  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries  came  into  conflict  with  new  and 
shapeless  forces  of  freedom  in  the  community.  In  practice  the 
princes  found  they  were  not  masters  of  their  subjects'  lives 
or  property.  They  found  an  inconvenient  resistance  to  the 
taxation  that  was  necessary  if  their  diplomatic  aggressions  and 
alliances  were  to  continue.  Finance  became  an  unpleasant 
spectre  in  every  council  chamber.  In  theory  the  monarch  owned 
his  country.  James  I  of  England  (1603)  declared  that  "As  it 
is  atheism  and  blasphemy  to  dispute  what  God  can  do;  so  it 
is  presumption  and  high  contempt  in  a  subject  to  dispute  what 
a  king  can  do,  or  say  that  a  king  cannot  do  this  or  that."  In 
practice,  however,  he  found,  and  his  son  Charles  I  (1625)  was 
to  find  still  more  effectually,  that  there  were  in  his  dominions 
a  great  number  of  landlords  and  merchants,  substantial  and 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          769 

intelligent  persons,  who  set  a  very  definite  limit  to  the  calls 
and  occasions  of  the  monarch  and  his  ministers.  They  were 
prepared  to  tolerate  his  rule  if  they  themselves  might  also  be 
monarchs  of  their  lands  and  businesses  and  trades  and  what 
not.  But  not  otherwise. 

Everywhere  in  Europe  there  was  a  parallel  development. 
Beneath  the  kings  and  princes  there  were  these  lesser  monarchs, 
the  private  owners,  noblemen,  wealthy  citizens  and  the  like,  who 
were  now  offering  the  sovereign  prince  much  the  same  resist- 
ance that  the  kings  and  princes  of  Germany  had  offered  the 
Emperor.  They  wanted  to  limit  taxation  so  far  as  it  pressed 
upon  themselves,  and  to  be  free  in  their  own  houses  and  estates. 
And  the  spread  of  books  and  reading  and  intercommunication 
was  enabling  these  smaller  monarchs,  these  monarchs  of  owner- 
ship, to  develop  such  a  community  of  ideas  and  such  a  solidarity 
of  resistance  as  had  been  possible  at  no  previous  stage  in  the 
world's  history.  Everywhere  they  were  disposed  to  resist  the 
prince,  but  it  was  not  everywhere  that  they  found  the  same 
faculties  for  an  organized  resistance.  The  economic  circum- 
stances and  the  political  traditions  of  the  Netherlands  and 
England  made  those  countries  the  first  to  bring  this  antagonism 
of  monarchy  and  private  ownership  to  an  issue. 

At  first  this  seventeenth-century  "public,"  this  public  of 
property  owners,  cared  very  little  for  foreign  policy.  They 
did  not  perceive  at  first  how  it  affected  them.  They  did  not 
want  to  be  bothered  with  it ;  it  was,  they  conceded,  the  affairs 
of  kings  and  princes.  They  made  no  attempt  therefore  to  con- 
trol foreign  entanglements.  But  it  was  with  the  direct  conse- 
quences of  these  entanglements  that  they  quarrelled;  they  ob- 
jected to  heavy  taxation,  to  interference  with  trade,  to  arbi- 
trary imprisonment,  and  to  the  control  of  consciences  by  the 
monarch.  It  was  upon  these  questions  that  they  joined  issue 
with  the  Crown. 


The  breaking  away  of  the  Netherlands  from  absolutist  mon- 
archy was  the  beginning  of  a  series  of  such  conflicts  through- 
out the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  They  varied  very 
greatly  in  detail  according  to  local  and  racial  peculiarities,  but 
essentially  they  were  all  rebellious  against  th$  idea  of  a  pre- 


770  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

dominating  personal  "prince"  and  his  religious  and  political 
direction. 

In  the  twelfth  century  all  the  lower  Rhine  country  was 
divided  up  among  a  number  of  small  rulers,  and  the  popu- 
lation was  a  Low  German  one  on  a  Celtic  basis,  mixed  with 
subsequent  Danish  ingredients  very  similar  to  the  English  ad- 
mixture. The  south-eastern  fringe  of  it  spoke  French  dialects: 
the  bulk,  Frisian,  Dutch,  and  other  Low  German  languages. 
The  Netherlands  figured  largely  in  the  crusades.  Godfrey  of 
Bouillon,  who  took  Jerusalem  (First  Crusade),  was  a  Belgian; 
and  the  founder  of  the  so-called  Latin  Dynasty  of  emperors  in 
Constantinople  (Fourth  Crusade)  was  Baldwin  of  Flanders. 
(They  were  called  Latin  emperors  because  they  were  on  the 
side  of  the  Latin  church.)  In  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries  considerable  towns  grew  up  in  the  Netherlands: 
Ghent,  Bruges,  Ypres,  Utrecht,  Leyden,  Haarlem,  and  so  forth ; 
and  these  towns  developed  quasi-independent  municipal  gov- 
ernments and  a  class  of  educated  townsmen.  We  will  not 
trouble  the  reader  with  the  dynastic  accidents  that  linked  the 
affairs  of  the  Netherlands  with  Burgundy  (Eastern  France), 
and  which  finally  made  their  overlordship  the  inheritance  of 
the  Emperor  Charles  V. 

It  was  under  Charles  that  the  Protestant  doctrines  that  now 
prevailed  in  Germany  spread  into  the  Netherlands.  Charles 
persecuted  with  some  vigour,  but  in  1556,  as  we  have  told,  he 
handed  over  the  task  to  his  son  Philip  (Philip  II).  Philip's 
spirited  foreign  policy — he  was  carrying  on  a  war  with  France 
— presently  became  a  second  source  of  trouble  between  him- 
self and  the  Netherlandish  noblemen  and  townsmen,  because 
he  had  to  come  to  them  for  supplies.  The  great  nobles,  led  by 
William  the  Silent,  Prince  of  Orange,  and  the  Counts  of 
Egmont  and  Horn,  made  themselves  the  heads  of  a  popular 
resistance,  in  which  it  is  now  impossible  to  disentangle  the 
objection  to  taxation  from  the  objection  to  religious  persecu- 
tion. The  great  nobles  were  not  at  first  Protestants.  They 
became  Protestants  as  the  struggle  grew  in  bitterness.  The 
people  were  often  bitterly  Protestant. 

Philip  was  resolved  to  rule  both  the  property  and  consciences 
of  his  Netherlander.  He  sent  picked  Spanish  troops  into  the 
country,  and  he  made  governor-general  a  nobleman  named  Alva, 
one  of  those  ruthless  "strong"  men  who  wreck  governments  and 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          771 

monarchies.  For  a  time  he  ruled  the  land  with  a  hand  of  iron, 
but  the  hand  of  iron  begets  a  soul  of  iron  in  the  body  it  grips, 
and  in  1567  the  Netherlands  were  in  open  revolt.  Alva  mur- 
dered, sacked,  and  massacred — in  vain.  Counts  Egmont  and 
Horn  were  executed.  William  the  Silent  became  the  great 
leader  of  the  Dutch,  a  king  de  facto.  For  a  long  time,  and  with 
many  complications,  the  struggle  for  liberty  continued,  and 
through  it  all  it  is  noteworthy  that  the  rebels  continued  to 
cling  to  the  plea  that  Philip  II  was  their  king — if  only  he 
would  be  a  reasonable  and  limited  king.  But  the  idea  of 
limited  monarchy  was  distasteful  to  the  crowned  heads 
of  Europe  at  that  time,  and  at  last  Philip  drove  the 
United  Provinces,  for  which  we  now  use  the  name  of  Holland, 
to  the  republican  form  of  government.  Holland,  be  it  noted — 
not  all  the  Netherlands ;  the  southern  Netherlands,  Belgium  as 
we  now  call  that  country,  remained  at  the  end  of  the  struggle 
a  Spanish  possession  and  Catholic. 

The  siege  of  Alkmaar  (1573),  as  Motley  1  describes  it,  may 
be  taken  as  a  sample  of  that  long  and  hideous  conflict  between 
the  little  Dutch  people  and  the  still  vast  resources  of  Catholic 
Imperialism. 

"  'If  I  take  Alkmaar/  Alva  wrote  to  Philip,  *I  am  resolved 
not  to  leave  a  single  creature  alive;  the  knife  shall  be  put  to 
every  throat/  .  .  . 

"And  now,  with  the  dismantled  and  desolate  Haarlem  before 
their  eyes,  a  prophetic  phantom,  perhaps,  of  their  own  immi- 
nent fate,  did  the  handful  of  people  shut  up  within  Alkmaar 
prepare  for  the  worst.  Their  main  hope  lay  in  the  friendly 
sea.  The  vast  sluices  called  the  Zyp,  through  which  the  inunda- 
tion of  the  whole  northern  province  could  be  very  soon  effected, 
were  but  a  few  miles  distant.  By  opening  these  gates,  and  by 
piercing  a  few  dykes,  the  ocean  might  be  made  to  fight  for 
them.  To  obtain  this  result,  however,  the  consent  of  the  in- 
habitants was  requisite,  as  the  destruction  of  all  the  standing 
crops  would  be  inevitable.  The  city  was  so  closely  invested, 
that  it  was  a  matter  of  life  and  death  to  venture  forth,  and  it 
was  difficult,  therefore,  to  find  an  envoy  for  this  hazardous 
mission.  At  last,  a  carpenter  in  the  city,  Peter  Van  der  Mey 
by  name,  undertook  the  adventure.  .  .  . 

"Affairs  soon  approached  a  crisis  within  the  beleaguered  city. 

1  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic. 


772  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Daily  skirmishes,  without  decisive  results,  had  taken  place  out- 
side the  walls.  At  last,  on  the  18th  of  September,  after  a 
steady  cannonade  of  nearly  twelve  hours,  Don  Frederick,  at 
three  in  the  afternoon,  ordered  an  assault  Notwithstanding 
his  seven  months'  experience  at  Haarlem,  he  still  believed  it 
certain  that  he  should  carry  Alkmaar  by  storm.  The  attack 
took  place  at  once  upon  the  Frisian  gate  and  upon  the  red  tower 
on  the  opposite  side.  Two  choice  regiments,  recently  arrived 
from  Lombardy,  led  the  onset,  rending  the  air  with  their  shouts 
and  confident  of  an  easy  victory.  They  were  sustained  by  what 
seemed  an  overwhelming  force  of  disciplined  troops.  Yet  never, 
even  in  the  recent  history  of  Haarlem,  had  an  attack  been  re- 
ceived by  more  dauntless  breasts.  Every  living  man  was  on 
the  walls.  The  storming  parties  were  assailed  with  cannon, 
with  musketry,  with  pistols.  Boiling  water,  pitch  and  oil, 
molten  lead,  and  unslaked  lime  were  poured  upon  them  every 
moment.  Hundreds  of  tarred  and  burning  hoops  were  skilfully 
quoited  around  the  necks  of  the  soldiers,  who  struggled  in  vain 
to  extricate  themselves  from  these  fiery  ruffs,  while  as  fast  as 
any  of  the  invaders  planted  foot  upon  the  breach,  they  were 
confronted  face  to  face  with  sword  and  dagger  by  the  burghers, 
who  hurled  them  headlong  into  the  moat  below. 

" Thrice  was  the  attack  renewed  with  ever-increasing  rage — 
thrice  repulsed  with  unflinching  fortitude.  The  storm  con- 
tinued four  hours  long.  During  all  that  period  not  one  of  the 
defenders  left  his  post,  till  he  dropped  from  it  dead  or  wounded. 
.  .  .  The  trumpet  of  recall  was  sounded,  and  the  Spaniards, 
utterly  discomfited,  retired  from  the  walls,  leaving  at  least  one 
thousand  dead  in  the  trenches,  while  only  thirteen  burghers  and 
twenty-four  of  the  garrison  lost  their  lives.  .  .  .  Ensign  Solis, 
who  had  mounted  the  breach  for  an  instant,  and  miraculously 
escaped  with  life,  after  having  been  hurled  from  the  battle- 
ments, reported  that  he  had  seen  'neither  helmet  nor  harness7 
as  he  looked  down  into  the  city:  only  some  plain-looking  peo- 
ple, generally  dressed  like  fishermen.  Yet  these  plain-looking 
fishermen  had  defeated  the  veterans  of  Alva.  .  .  . 

"Meantime,  as  Governor  Sonoy  had  opened  many  of  the 
dykes,  the  land  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  camp  was  becoming 
plashy,  although  as  yet  the  threatened  inundation  had  not  taken 
place.  The  soldiers  were  already  very  uncomfortable  and  very 
refractory.  The  carpenter-envoy  had  not  been  idle.  .  .  ." 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          773 

He  returned  with  despatches  for  the  city.  By  accident  or 
contrivance  he  lost  these  despatches  as  he  made  his  way  into 
the  town,  so  that  they  fell  into  Alva's  hands.  They  contained 
a  definite  promise  from  the  Duke  of  Orange  to  flood  the  country 
so  as  to  drown  the  whole  Spanish  army.  Incidentally  this 
would  also  have  drowned  most  of  the  Dutch  harvest  and  cattle. 
But  Alva,  when  he  had  read  these  documents,  did  not  wait  for 
the  opening  of  any  more  sluices.  Presently  the  stout  men  of 
Alkmaar,  cheering  and  jeering,  watched  the  Spaniards  break- 
ing camp.  .  .  . 

The  form  assumed  by  the  government  of  liberated  Holland 
was  a  patrician  republic  under  the  headship  of  the  house  of 
Orange.  The  States-General  was  far  less  representative  of 
the  whole  body  of  citizens  than  was  the  English  Parliament  we 
shall  next  relate. 

Though  the  worst  of  the  struggle  was  over  after  Alkmaar, 
Holland  wa«  not  effectively  independent  until  1609,  and  its 
independence  was  only  fully  and  completely  recognized  by  the 
treaty  of  Westphalia  in  1648. 

§0 
3 

The  open  struggle  of  the  private  property  owner  against  the 
aggressions  of  the  "Prince"  begins  in  England  far  back  in  the 
twelfth  century.  The  phase  in  this  struggle  that  we  have  to 
study  now  is  the  phase  that  opened  with  the  attempts  of  Henry 
VII  and  VIII  and  their  successors,  Edward  VI,  Mary  and 
Elizabeth,  to  make  the  government  of  England  a  "personal 
monarchy"  of  the  continental  type.  It  became  more  acute 
when,  by  dynastic  accidents,  James,  King  of  Scotland,  became 
James  I,  King  of  both  Scotland  and  England  (1603),  and 
began  to  talk  in  the  manner  we  have  already  quoted  of  his 
"divine  right"  to  do  as  he  pleased.  But  never  hajd  the  path  of 
English  monarchy  been  a  smooth  one.  In  all  the  monarchies 
of  the  Northmen  and  Germanic  invaders  of  the  empire  there 
had  been  a  tradition  of  a  popular  assembly  of  influential  and 
representative  men  to  preserve  their  general  liberties,  and  in 
none  was  it  more  living  than  in  England.  France  had  her 
tradition  of  the  assembly  of  the  Three  Estates,  Spain  her  Cortes, 
but  the  English  assembly  was  peculiar  in  two  respects ;  that  it 
had  behind  it  a  documentary  declaration  of  certain  elementary 


774  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  universal  rights,  and  that  it  contained  elected  "Knights  of 
the  Shire/'  as  well  as  elected  burghers  from  the  towns.  The 
French  and  Spanish  assemblies  had  the  latter,  hut  not  the 
former  element. 

These  two  features  gave  the  English  Parliament  a  peculiar 
strength  in  its  struggle  with  the  Throne.  The  document  in 
question  was  Magna  Carta,  the  Great  Charter,  a  declaration 
which  was  forced  from  King  John  (1199-1216),  the  brother 
and  successor  of  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion  (1189-99),  after  a 
revolt  of  the  Barons  in  1215.  It  rehearsed  a  number  of  funda- 
mental rights  that  made  England  a  legal  and  not  a  regal  state. 
It  rejected  the  power  of  the  king  to  control  the  personal  prop- 
erty and  liberty  of  every  sort  of  citizen — save  with  the  consent 
of  that  man's  equals. 

The  presence  of  the  elected  shire  representatives  in  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament,  the  second  peculiarity  of  the  British  situation, 
came  about  from  very  simple  and  apparently  innocuous  begin- 
nings. From  the  shires,  or  county  divisions,  knights  seem  to 
have  been  summoned  to  the  national  council  to  testify  to  the 
taxable  capacity  of  their  districts.  They  were  sent  up  by  the 
minor  gentry,  freeholders  and  village  elders  of  their  districts 
as  early  as  1254,  two  knights  from  each  shire.  This  idea  in- 
spired Simon  de  Montfort,1  who  was  in  rebellion  against  Henry 
III,  the  successor  of  John,  to  summon  to  the  national  council 
two  knights  from  each  shire  and  two  citizens  from  each  city  or 
borough.  Edward  I,  the  successor  to  Henry  III,  continued 
this  practice  because  it  seemed  a  convenient  way  of  getting 
into  financial  touch  with  the  growing  towns.  At  first  there  was 
considerable  reluctance  on  the  parts  of  the  knights  and  towns- 
men to  attend  Parliament,  but  gradually  the  power  they  pos- 
sessed of  linking  the  redress  of  grievances  with  the  granting 
of  subsidies  was  realized.  Quite  early,  if  not  from  the  first, 
these  representatives  of  the  general  property  owners  in  town 
and  country,  the  Commons,  sat  and  debated  apart  from  the 
great  Lords  and  Bishops.  So  there  grew  up  in  England  a 
representative  assembly,  the  Commons,  beside  an  episcopal  and 
patrician  one,  the  Lords.  There  was  no  profound  and  funda- 
mental difference  between  the  personnel  of  the  two  assemblies; 
many  of  the  knights  of  the  shire  were  substantial  men  who 

1  This  is  not  the  same  Simon  de  Montfort  as  the  leader  of  the  crusades 
against  the  Albigenses,  but  his  son. 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          775 

might  be  as  wealthy  and  influential  as  peers  and  also  the  sons 
and  brothers  of  peers,  but  on  the  whole  the  Commons  was  the 
more  plebeian  assembly.  From  the  first  these  two  assemblies, 
and  especially  the  Commons,  displayed  a  disposition  to  claim 
the  entire  power  of  taxation  in  the  land.  Gradually  they  ex- 
tended their  purview  of  grievances  to  a  criticism  of  all  the 
affairs  of  the  realm.  We  will  not  follow  the  fluctuations  of 
the  power  and  prestige  of  the  English  Parliament  through  the 
time  of  the  Tudor  monarchs  (i.e.,  Henry  VII  and  VIII, 
Edward  VI,  Mary  and  Elizabeth),  but  it  will  be  manifest 
from  what  has  been  said  that  when  at  last  James  Stuart  made 
his  open  claim  to  autocracy,  the  English  merchants,  peers,  and 
private  gentlemen  found  themselves  with  a  tried  and  honoured 
traditional  means  of  resisting  him  such  as  no  other  people  in 
Europe  possessed. 

Another  peculiarity  of  the  English  political  conflict  was  its 
comparative  detachment  from  the  great  struggle  between  Catho- 
lic and  Protestant  that  was  now  being  waged  all  over  Europe. 
There  were,  it  is  true,  very  distinct  religious  issues  mixed  up 
in  the  English  struggle,  but  upon  its  main  lines  it  was  a  po- 
litical struggle  of  King  against  the  Parliament  embodying  the 
class  of  private-property-owning  citizens.  Both  Crown  and 
people  were  formally  reformed  and  Protestant.  It  is  true  that 
many  people  on  the  latter  side  were  Protestants  of  a  Bible- 
respecting,  non-sacerdotal  type,  representing  the  reformation 
according  to  the  peoples,  and  that  the  king  was  the  nominal 
head  of  a  special  sacerdotal  and  sacramental  church,  the  estab- 
lished Church  of  England,  representing  the  reformation  ac- 
cording to  the  princes,  but  this  antagonism  never  completely 
obscured  the  essentials  of  the  conflict. 

The  struggle  of  King  and  Parliament  had  already  reached 
an  acute  phase  before  the  death  of  James  I  (1625),  but  only 
in  the  reign  of  his  son  Charles  I  did  it  culminate  in  civil  war. 
Charles  did  exactly  what  one  might  have  expected  a  king  to  do 
in  such  a  position,  in  view  of  the  lack  of  Parliamentary  control 
over  foreign  policy ;  he  embroiled  the  country  in  a  conflict  with 
both  Spain  and  France,  and  then  came  to  the  country  for  sup- 
plies in  the  hope  that  patriotic  feeling  would  override  the  nor- 
mal dislike  to  giving  him  money.  When  Parliament  refused 
supplies,  he  demanded  loans  from  various  subjects,  and  at- 
tempted similar  illegal  exactions.  This  produced  from  Parlia- 


776  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ment  in  1628  a  very  memorable  document,  the  Petition  of 
Right,  citing  the  Great  Charter  and  rehearsing  the  legal  limita- 
tions upon  the  power  of  the  English  king,  denying  his  right, 
to  levy  charges  upon,  or  to  imprison,  or  punish  anyone,  or  to 
quarter  soldiers  on  the  people,  without  due  process  of  law.  The 
Petition  of  Right  stated  the  case  of  the  English  Parliament. 
The  disposition  to  "state  a  case"  has  always  been  a  very  marked 
English  characteristic.  When  President  Wilson,  during  the 
Great  War  of  1914-18,  prefaced  each  step  in  his  policy  by  a 
"Note,"  he  was  walking  in  the  most  respectable  traditions  of 
the  English.  Charles  dealt  with  this  Parliament  with  a  high 
hand,  he  dismissed  it  in  1629,  and  for  eleven  years  he  sum- 
moned no  Parliament.  He  levied  money  illegally,  but  not 
enough  for  his  purpose ;  and  realizing  that  the  church  could  be 
used  as  an  instrument  of  obedience,  he  made  Laud,  an  aggres- 
sive high  churchman,  very  much  of  a  priest  and  a  very  strong 
believer  in  "divine  right,"  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  so 
head  of  the  Church  of  England. 

In  1638  Charles  tried  to  extend  the  half-Protestant,  half- 
Catholic  characteristics  of  the  Church  of  England  to  his  other 
kingdom  of  Scotland,  where  the  secession  from  Catholicism  had 
been  more  complete,  and  where  a  non-sacerdotal,  non-sacra- 
mental form  of  Christianity,  Presbyterianism,  had  been  estab- 
lished as  the  national  church.  The  Scotch  revolted,  and  the 
English  levies  Charles  raised  to  fight  them  mutinied.  In- 
solvency, at  all  times  the  natural  result  of  a  "spirited"  foreign 
policy,  was  close  at  hand.  Charles,  without  money  or  trust- 
worthy troops,  had  to  summon  a  Parliament  at  last  in  1640. 
This  Parliament,  the  Short  Parliament,  he  dismissed  in 
the  same  year;  he  tried  a  Council  of  Peers  at  York  (1640), 
and  then  in  the  November  of  that  year  summoned  his  last 
Parliament. 

This  body,  the  Long  Parliament,  assembled  in  the  mood  for 
conflict.  It  seized  Laud,  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and 
charged  him  with  treason.  It  published  a  "Grand  Eemon- 
strance,"  which  was  a  long  and  full  statement  of  its  case  against 
Charles.  It  provided  by  a  bill  for  a  meeting  of  Parliament  at 
least  once  in  three  years,  whether  the  King  summoned  it  or  no. 
It  prosecuted  the  King's  chief  ministers  who  had  helped  him 
to  reign  for  so  long  without  Parliament,  and  in  particular  the 
Earl  of  Stratford.  To  save  Stratford  the  King  plotted  for  a 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          777 

sudden  seizure  of  London  by  the  army.  This  was  discovered, 
and  the  Bill  for  Stratford's  condemnation  was  hurried  on  in 
the  midst  of  a  vast  popular  excitement.  Charles  I,  who  was 
probably  one  of  the  meanest  and  most  treacherous  occupants 
the  English  throne  has  ever  known,  was  frightened  by  the  Lon- 
don crowds.  Before  Stratford  could  die  by  due  legal  process, 
it  was  necessary  for  the  King  to  give  his  assent.  Charles  gave 
it — and  Stratford  was  beheaded.  Meanwhile  the  King  was  plot- 
ting and  looking  for  help  in  strange  quarters — from  the  Catho- 
lic Irish,  from  treasonable  Scotchmen.  Finally  he  resorted  to 
a  forcible-feeble  display  of  violence.  He  went  down  to  the 
Houses  of  Parliament  to  arrest  five  of  his  most  active  oppo- 
nents. He  entered  the  House  of  Commons  and  took  the 
Speaker's  chair.  He  was  prepared  with  some  bold  speech  about 
treason,  but  when  he  saw  the  places  of  his  five  antagonists 
vacant,  he  was  baffled,  confused,  and  spoke  in  broken  sentences. 
He  learnt  that  they  had  departed  from  his  royal  city  of  West- 
minster and  taken  refuge  in  the  city  of  London  (see  Chap.  XXIV, 
§  7).  London  defied  him.  A  week  later  the  Five  Members 
were  escorted  back  in  triumph  to  the  Parliament  House  in 
Westminster  by  the  Trained  Bands  of  London,  and  the  King, 
to  avoid  the  noise  and  hostility  of  the  occasion,  left  Whitehall 
for  Windsor. 

Both  parties  then  prepared  openly  for  war. 

The  King  was  the  traditional  head  of  the  army,  and  the 
habit  of  obedience  in  soldiers  is  to  the  King.  The  Parliament 
had  the  greater  resources.  The  King  set  up  his  standard  at 
Nottingham  on  the  eve  of  a  dark  and  stormy  August  day  in 
1642.  There  followed  a  long  and  obstinate  civil  war,  the  King 
holding  Oxford,  the  Parliament,  London.  Success  swayed 
from  side  to  side,  but  the  King  could  never  close  on  London 
nor  Parliament  take  Oxford.  Each  antagonist  was  weakened 
by  moderate  adherents  who  adid  not  want  to  go  too  far."  There 
emerged  among  the  Parliamentary  commanders  a  certain  Oliver 
Cromwell,  who  had  raised  a  small  troop  of  horse  and  who  rose 
to  the  position  of  general.  Lord  Warwick,  his  contemporary, 
describes  him  as  a  plain  man,  in  a  cloth  suit  "made  by  an  ill 
country  tailor."  He  was  no  mere  fighting  soldier,  but  a  mili- 
tary organizer;  he  realized  the  inferior  quality  of  many  of  the 
Parliamentary  forces,  and  set  himself  to  remedy  it.  The 
Cavaliers  of  the  King  had  the  picturesque  tradition  of  chivalry 


778  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  loyalty  on  their  side;  Parliament  was  something  new  and 
difficult — without  any  comparable  traditions.  "Your  troops  are 
most  of  them  old  decayed  serving  men  and  tapsters/'  said  Crom- 
well. "Do  you  think  that  the  spirits  of  such  base  and  mean 
fellows  will  ever  be  able  to  encounter  gentlemen  that  have 
honour  and  courage  and  resolution  in  them  ?"  But  there  is 
something  better  and  stronger  than  picturesque  chivalry  in 
the  world,  religious  enthusiasm.  He  set  himself  to  get  to- 
gether a  "godly"  regiment.  They  were  to  be  earnest,  sober- 
living  men.  Above  all,  they  were  to  be  men  of  strong  convic- 
tions. He  disregarded  all  social  traditions,  and  drew  his  officers 
from  every  class.  "I  had  rather  have  a  plain,  russet-coated 
captain  that  knows  ivhat  he  fights  for  and  loves  what  he  knows, 
than  what  you  call  a  gentleman  and  is  nothing  else.'7  England 
discovered  a  new  force,  the  Ironsides,  in  its  midst,  in  which 
footmen,  draymen,  and  ships'  captains  held  high  command, 
side  by  side  with  men  of  family.  They  became  the  type  on 
which  the  Parliament  sought  to  reconstruct  its  entire  army. 
The  Ironsides  were  the  backbone  of  this  "New  Model."  From 
Marston  Moor  to  Naseby  these  men  swept  the  Cavaliers 
before  them.  The  King  was  at  last  a  captive  in  the  hands  of 
Parliament. 

There  were  still  attempts  at  settlement  that  would  have  left 
the  King  a  sort  of  king,  but  Charles  was  a  man  doomed  to  tragic 
issues,  incessantly  scheming,  "so  false  a  man  that  he  is  not  to 
be  trusted."  The  English  were  drifting  towards  a  situation 
new  in  the  world's  history,  in  which  a  monarch  should  be 
formally  tried  for  treason  to  his  people  and  condemned. 

Most  revolutions  are  precipitated,  as  this  English  one  was, 
by  the  excesses  of  the  ruler,  and  by  attempts  at  strength  and 
firmness  beyond  the  compass  of  the  law ;  and  most  revolutions 
swing  by  a  kind  of  necessity  towards  an  extremer  conclusion 
than  is  warranted  by  the  original  quarrel.  The  English  revolu- 
tion was  no  exception.  The  English  are  by  nature  a  compro- 
mising and  even  a  vacillating  people,  and  probably  the  great 
majority  of  them  still  wanted  the  King  to  be  King  and  the 
people  to  be  free,  and  all  the  lions  and  lambs  to  lie  down  to- 
gether in  peace  and  liberty.  But  the  army  of  the  New  Model 
could  not  go  back.  There  would  have  been  scant  mercy  for 
these  draymen  and  footmen  who  had  ridden  down  the  King's 
gentlemen  if  the  King  came  back.  When  Parliament  began 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          779 

to  treat  again  with  this  regal  trickster,  the  New  Model  inter- 
vened; Colonel  Pride  turned  out  eighty  members  from  the 
House  of  Commons  who  favoured  the  King,  and  the  illegal 
residue,  the  Rump  Parliament,  then  put  the  King  on  trial. 

But  indeed  the  King  was  already  doomed.  The  House  of 
Lords  rejected  the  ordinance  for  the  trial,  and  the  Rump  then 
proclaimed  "that  the  People  are,  under  God,  the  original  of 
all  just  power,"  and  that  "the  Commons  of  England  .  .  .  have 
the  supreme  power  in  this  nation,"  and — assuming  that  it  was 
itself  the  Commons — proceeded  with  the  trial.  The  King  was 
condemned  as  a  "tyrant,  traitor,  murderer,  and  enemy  of  his 
country."  He  was  taken  one  January  morning  in  1649  to  a 
scaffold  erected  outside  ,the  windows  of  his  own  banqueting- 
room  at  Whitehall.  There  he  was  beheaded.  He  died  with 
piety  and  a  certain  noble  self-pity- — eight  years  after  the  execu- 
tion of  Strafford,  and  after  six  and  a  half  years  of  a  destructive 
civil  war  which  had  been  caused  almost  entirely  by  his  own 
lawlessness. 

This  was  indeed  a  great  and  terrifying  thing  that  Parliament 
had  done.  The  like  of  it  had  never  been  heard  of  in  the  world 
before.  Kings  had  killed  each  other  times  enough;  parricide, 
fratricide,  assassination,  those  are  the  privileged  expedients 
of  princes;  but  that  a  section  of  the  people  should  rise  up,  try 
its  king  solemnly  and  deliberately  for  disloyalty,  mischief,  and 
treachery,  and  condemn  and  kill  him,  sent  horror  through  every 
court  in  Europe.  The  Rump  Parliament  had  gone  beyond 
the  ideas  and  conscience  of  its  time.  It. was  as  if  a  committee 
of  jungle  deer  had  taken  and  killed  a  tiger — a  crime  against 
nature.  The  Tsar  of  Russia  chased  the  English  envoy  from 
his  court.  France  and  Holland  committed  acts  of  open  hos- 
tility. England,  confused  and  conscience-stricken  at  her  own 
sacrilege,  stood  isolated  before  the  world. 

But  for  a  time  the  personal  quality  of  Oliver  Cromwell  and 
the  discipline  and  strength  of  the  army  he  had  created  main- 
tained England  in  the  republican  course  she  had  taken.  The 
Irish  Catholics  had  made  a  massacre  of  the  Protestant  English 
in  Ireland,  and  now  Cromwell  suppressed  the  Irish  insurrec- 
tion with  great  vigour.  Except  for  certain  friars  at  the  storm 
of  Drogheda,  none  but  men  with  arms  in  their  hands  were  killed 
by  his  troops ;  but  the  atrocities  of  the  massacre  were  fresh  in 
his  mind,  no  quarter  was  given  in  battle,  and  so  his  memory 


780  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

still  rankles  in  the  minds  of  the  Irish,  who  have  a  long  memory 
for  their  own  wrongs.  After  Ireland  came  Scotland,  where 
Cromwell  shattered  a  Koyalist  army  at  the  Battle  of  Dunbar 
(1650).  Then  he  turned  his  attention  to  Holland,  which  coun- 
try had  rashly  seized  upon  the  divisions  among  the  English  as 
an  excuse  for  the  injury  of  a  trade  rival.  The  Dutch  were  then 
the  rulers  of  the  sea,  and  the  English  fleet  fought  against  odds ; 
hut  after  a  series  of  obstinate  sea  fights  the  Dutch  were  driven 
from  the  British  seas  and  the  English  took  their  place  as  the 
ascendant  naval  power.  Dutch  and  French  ships  must  dip 
their  flags  to  them.  An  English  fleet  went  into  the  Mediter- 
ranean— the  first  English  naval  force  to  enter  those  waters ;  it 
put  right  various  grievances  of  the  English  shippers  with  Tus- 
cany and  Malta,  and  bombarded  the  pirate  nest  of  Algiers  and 
destroyed  the  pirate  fleet — which  in  the  lax  days  of  Charles  had 
been  wont  to  come  right  up  to  the  coasts  of  Cornwall  and  Devon 
to  intercept  ships  and  carry  off  slaves  to  Africa.  The  strong 
arm  of  England  also  intervened  to  protect  the  Protestants  in  the 
south  of  France,  who  were  being  hunted  to  death  by  the  Duke 
of  Savoy.  France,  Sweden,  Denmark,  all  found  it  wiser  to 
overcome  their  first  distaste  for  regicide  and  allied  themselves 
with  England.  Came  a  war  with  Spain,  and  the  great  English 
Admiral  Blake  destroyed  the  Spanish  Plate  Fleet  at  Teneriffe 
in  an  action  of  almost  incredible  daring.  He  engaged  land 
batteries.  He  was  the  first,  man  "that  brought  ships  to  contemn 
castles  on  the  shore."  (He  died  in  1657,  and  was  buried  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  but  after  the  restoration  of  the  monarchy 
his  bones  were  dug  out  by  the  order  of  Charles  II,  and  removed 
to  St.  Margaret's,  Westminster.)  Such  was  the  figure  that 
England  cut  in  the  eyes  of  the  world  during  her  brief  republican 
days. 

On  September  3rd,  1658,  Cromwell  died  in  the  midst  of  a 
great  storm  that  did  not  fail  to  impress  the  superstitious.  Once 
his  strong  hand  lay  still,  England  fell  away  from  this  premature, 
attempt  to  realize  a  righteous  commonweal  of  free  men.  In 
1660  Charles  II,  the  son  of  Charles  the  "Martyr,"  was  wel- 
comed back  to  England  with  all  those  manifestations  of  personal 
loyalty  dear  to  the  English  heart,  and  the  country  relaxed  from 
its  military  and  naval  efficiency  as  a  sleeper  might  wake  and 
stretch  and  yawn  after  too  intense  a  dream.  The  Puritans 
were  done  with.  "Merrie  England"  was  herself  again,  and  in 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          781 

1667  the  Dutch,  once  more  masters  of  the  sea,  sailed  up  the 
Thames  to  Gravesend  and  burnt  an  English  fleet  in  the  Med- 
way.  "On  the  night  when  our  ships  were  burnt  by  the  Dutch,'1 
says  Pepys,  in  his  diary,  "the  King  did  sup  with  my  Lady 
Castelrnaine,  and  there  they  were  all  mad,  hunting  a  poor 
moth."  Charles,  from  the  date  of  his  return,  1660,  took  con- 
trol of  the  foreign  affairs  of  the  state,  and  in  1670  concluded  a 
secret  treaty  with  Louis  XIV  of  France  by  which  he  undertook 
to  subordinate  entirely  English  foreign  policy  to  that  of  France 
for  an  annual  pension  of  £100,000.  Dunkirk,  which  Cromwell 
had  taken,  had  already  been  sold  back  to  France.  The  King 
was  a  great  sportsman ;  he  had  the  true  English  love  for  watch- 
ing horse  races,  and  the  racing  centre  at  Newmarket  is  perhaps 
his  most  characteristic  monument. 

While  Charles  lived,  his  easy  humour  enabled  him  to  retain 
the  British  crown,  but  he  did  so  by  wariness  and  compromise, 
and  when  in  1685  he  was  succeeded  by  his  brother  James  II, 
who  was  a  devout  Catholic,  and  too  dull  to  recognize  the  hidden 
limitation  of  the  monarchy  in  Britain,  the  old  issue  between 
Parliament  and  Crown  became  acute.  James  set  himself  to 
force  his  country  into  a  religious  reunion  with  Rome.  In  1688 
he  was  in  flight  to  France.  But  this  time  the  great  lords  and 
merchants  and  gentlemen  were  too  circumspect  to  let  this  revolt 
against  the  King  fling  them  into  the  hands  of  a  second  Pride 
or  a  second  Cromwell.  They  had  already  called  in  another  king, 
William,  Prince  of  Orange,  to  replace  James.  The  change  was 
made  rapidly.  There  was  no  civil  war — except  in  Ireland — 
and  no  release  of  the  deeper  revolutionary  forces  of  the  country. 

Of  William's  claim  to  the  throne,  or  rather  of  his  wife  Mary's 
claim,  we  cannot  tell  here,  its  interest  is  purely  technical,  nor 
how  William  III  and  Mary  ruled,  nor  how,  after  the  widower 
William  had  reigned  alone  for  a  time,  the  throne  passed  on  to 
Mary's  sister  Anne  (1702-14).  Anne  seems  to  have  thought 
favourably  of  a  restoration  of  the  Stuart  line,  but  the  Lords  and 
the  Commons,  who  now  dominated  English  affairs,  preferred  a 
less  competent  king.  Some  sort  of  claim  could  be  made  out 
for  the  Elector  of  Hanover,  who  became  King  of  England  as 
George  I  (1714-27).  He  was  entirely  German,  he  could 
speak  no  English,  and  he  brought  a  swarm  of  German  women 
and  German  attendants  to  the  English  court ;  a  dullness,  a  tar- 
nish, came  over  the  intellectual  life  of  the  land  with  his  coming, 


782  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

but  this  isolation  of  the  court  from  English  life  was  his  con- 
clusive recommendation  to  the  great  landowners  and  the  com- 
mercial interests  who  chiefly  brought  him  over.  England  en- 
tered upon  a  phase  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  called  the 
" Venetian  oligarchy"  stage ;  the  supreme  power  resided  in  Par- 
liament, dominated  now  by  the  Lords,  for  the  art  of  bribery 
and  a  study  of  the  methods  of  working  elections  carried  to  a 
high  pitch  by  Sir  Robert  Walpole  had  robbed  the  House  of  Com- 
mons of  its  original  freedom  and  vigour.  By  ingenious  de- 
vices the  parliamentary  vote  was  restricted  to  a  shrinking 
number  of  electors,  old  towns  with  little  or  no  population  would 
return  one  or  two  members  (old  Sarum  had  one  non-resident 
voter,  no  population,  and  two  members),  while  newer  populous 
centres  had  no  representation  at  all.  And  by  insisting  upon  a 
high  property  qualification  for  members,  the  chance  of  the 
Commons  speaking  in  common  accents  of  vulgar  needs  was  still 
more  restricted.  George  I  was  followed  by  the  very  similar 
George  II  (1727-60),. and  it  was  only  at  his  death  that  Eng- 
land had  again  a  king  who  had  been  born  in  England,  and  one 
who  could  speak  English  fairly  well,  his  grandson  George  III. 
On  this  monarch's  attempt  to  recover  some  of  the  larger  powers 
of  monarchy  we  shall  have  something  to  say  in  a  later  section. 
Such  briefly  is  the  story  of  the  struggle  in  England  during 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  between  the  three  main 
factors  in  the  problem  of  the  "modern  state" ;  between  the  crown, 
the  private  property  owners,  and  that  vague  power,  still  blind 
and  ignorant,  the  power  of  the  quite  common  people.  This 
latter  factor  appears  as  yet  only  at  moments  when  the  country 
is  most  deeply  stirred ;  then  it  sinks  back  into  the  depths.  But 
the  end  of  the  story,  thus  far,  is  a  very  complete  triumph  of  the 
British  private  property  owner  over  the  dreams  and  schemes  of 
Machiavellian  absolutism.  With  the  Hanoverian  Dynasty,  Eng- 
land became — as  the  Times  recently  styled  her — a  "crowned 
republic."  She  had  worked  out  a  new  method  of  government, 
Parliamentary  government,  recalling  in  many  ways  the  Senate 
and  Popular  Assembly  of  Rome,  but  more  steadfast  and  efficient 
because  of  its  use,  however  restricted,  of  the  representative 
method.  Her  assembly  at  Westminster  was  to  become  the 
"Mother  of  Parliaments"  throughout  the  world.  Towards  the 
crown  the  English  Parliament  has  held  and  still  holds  much 
the  relation  of  the  mayor  of  the  palace  to  the  Merovingian 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          783 

kings.  The  king  is  conceived  of  as  ceremonial  and  irresponsible, 
a  living  symbol  of  the  royal  and  imperial  system.  But  much 
power  remains  latent  in  the  tradition  and  prestige  of  the  crown, 
and  the  succession  of  the  four  Hanoverian  Georges,  William 
IV  (1830),  Victoria  (1837),  Edward  VII  (1901),  and  the 
present  king,  George  V  (1910),  is  of  a  quite  different  strain 
from  the  feeble  and  short-lived  Merovingian  monarchs.  In  the 
affairs  of  the  church,  the  military  and  naval  organizations,  and 
the  foreign  office,  these  sovereigns  have  all  in  various  degrees 
exercised  an  influence  which  is  none  the  less  important  because 
it  is  indefinable. 

§4 

Upon  no  part  of  Europe  did  the  collapse  of  the  idea  of  a 
unified  Christendom  bring  more  disastrous  consequences  than 
to  Germany.  Naturally  one  would  have  supposed  that  the 
Emperor,  being  by  origin  a  German,  both  in  the  case  of  the 
earlier  lines  and  in  the  case  of  the  Habsburgs,  would  have 
developed  into  the  national  monarch  of  a  united  German-speak- 
ing state.  It  was  the  accidental  misfortune  of  Germany  that 
her  Emperors  never  remained  German.  Frederick  II,  the  last 
Hohenstaufen,  was,  as  we  have  seen,  a  half-Orientalized 
Sicilian;  the  Habsburgs,  by  marriage  and  inclination,  became 
in  the  person  of  Charles  V,  first  Burgundian  and  then  Spanish 
in  spirit.  After  the  death  of  Charles  V,  his  brother  Ferdinand 
took  Austria  and  the  empire,  and  his  son  Philip  II  took  Spain, 
the  Netherlands,  and  South  Italy;  but  the  Austrian  line,  ob- 
stinately Catholic,  holding  its  patrimony  mostly  on  the  eastern 
frontiers,  deeply  entangled  therefore  with  Hungarian  affairs 
and  paying  tribute,  as  .Ferdinand  and  his  two  successors  did, 
to  the  Turk,  retained  no  grip  upon  the  north  Germans  with 
their  disposition  towards  Protestantism,  their  Baltic  and  west- 
ward affinities,  and  their  ignorance  of  or  indifference  to  the 
Turkish  danger. 

The  sovereign  princes,  dukes,  electors,  prince  bishops  and  the 
like,  whose  domains  cut  up  the  map  of  the  Germany  of  the 
Middle  Ages  into  a  crazy  patchwork,  were  really  not  the  equiva- 
lents of  the  kings  of  England  and  France.  They  were  rather 
on  the  level  of  the  great  land-owning  dukes  and  peers  of  France 
and  England.  Until  1701  none  of  them  had  the  title  of  "King." 


784- 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Many  of  their  dominions  were  less  both  in  size  and  value  than 
the  larger  estates  of  the  British  nobility.  The  German  Diet  was 
like  the  States-General  or  like  a  parliament  without  the  pres- 
ence of  elected  representatives.  So  that  the  great  civil  war  in 
Germany  that  presently  broke  out,  the  Thirty  Years'  War 


&ntral  EUROPE a/fer  &e  Teac* 


Boundary  cf  tiuz        Free  Town*,  thus-.        Swedish, -territory. ... 
Empire  *~+,»+  •Cologne  French 


(1618-48)  was  in  its  essential  nature  much  more  closely 
akin  to  the  civil  war  in  England  (1643-49)  and  to  the  war  of 
the  Fronde  (1648-53),  the  league  of  feudal  nobles  against  the 
Crown  in  France,  than  appears  upon  the  surface.  In  all  these 
cases  the  Crown  was  either  Catholic  or  disposed  to  be- 
come Catholic,  and  the  recalcitrant  nobles  found  their  in- 
dividualistic disposition  tending  to  a  Protestant  formula. 
But  while  in  England  and  Holland  the  Protestant  nobles  and 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  785 

rich  merchants  ultimately  triumphed  and  in  France  the  suc- 
cess of  the  Crown  was  even  more  complete,  in  Germany 
neither  was  the  Emperor  strong  enough,  nor  had  the  Protestant 
princes  a  sufficient  unity  and  organization  among  themselves 
to  secure  a  conclusive  triumph.  It  ended  there  in  a  torn-up 
Germany.  Moreover,  the  German  issue  was  complicated  by 
the  fact  that  various  non-German  peoples,  the  Bohemians  and 
the  Swedes  (who  had  a  new  Protestant  monarchy  which  had 
arisen  under  Gustava  Vasa  as  a  direct  result  of  the  Reforma- 
tion), were  entangled  in  the  struggle.  Finally,  the  French 
monarchy,  triumphant  now  over  its  own  nobles,  although  it  was 
Catholic,  came  in  on  the  Protestant  side  with  the  evident  inten- 
tion of  taking  the  place  of  the  Habsburgs  as  the  imperial  line. 
The  prolongation  of  the  war,  and  the  fact  that  it  was  not 
fought  along  a  determinate  frontier,  but  all  over  an  empire  of 
patches,  Protestant  here,  Catholic  there,  made  it  one  of  the  most 
cruel  and  destructive  that  Europe  had  known  since  the  days 
of  the  barbarian  raids.  Its  peculiar  mischief  lay  not  in  the 
fighting,  but  in  the  concomitants  of  the  fighting.  It  came  at  a 
time  when  military  tactics  had  developed  to  a  point  that  ren- 
dered ordinary  levies  useless  against  trained  professional  in- 
fantry. Volley  firing  with  muskets  at  a  range  of  a  few  score 
yards  had  abolished  the  individualistic  knight  in  armour,  but 
the  charge  of  disciplined  masses  of  cavalry  could  still  disperse 
any  infantry  that  had  not  been  drilled  into  a  mechanical  rigidity. 
The  infantry  with  their  muzzle-loading  muskets  could  not  keep 
up  a  steady  enough  fire  to  wither  determined  cavalry  before  it 
charged  home.  They  had,  therefore,  to  meet  the  shock  standing 
or  kneeling  behind  a  bristling  wall  of  pikes  or  bayonets.  For 
this  they  needed  great  discipline  and  experience.  Iron  cannon 
were  still  of  small  size  and  not  very  abundant,  and  they  did 
not  play  a  decisive  part  as  yet  in  warfare.  They  could  "plough 
lanes"  in  infantry,  but  they  could  not  easily  smash  and  scatter 
it  if  it  was  sturdy  and  well  drilled.  War  under  these  conditions 
was  entirely  in  the  hands  of  seasoned  professional  soldiers,  and 
the  question  of  their  pay  was  as  important  a  one  to  the  generals 
of  that  time  as  the  question  of  food  or  munitions.  As  the  long 
struggle  dragged  on  from  phase  to  phase,  and  the  financial  dis- 
tress of  the  land  increased,  the  commanders  of  both  sides  were 
forced  to  fall  back  upon  the  looting  of  towns  and  villages,  both 
for  supply  and  to  make  up  the  arrears  of  their  soldiers'  pay. 


786  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  soldiers  became,  therefore,  more  and  more  mere  brigands 
living  on  the  country,  and  the  Thirty  Years7  War  set  up  a 
tradition  of  looting  as  a  legitimate  operation  in  warfare  and  of 
outrage  as  a  soldier's  privilege  that  has  tainted  the  good  name 
of  Germany  right  down  to  the  Great  War  of  1914.  The  earlier 
chapters  of  Defoe's  Memoirs  of  a  Cavalier,  with  its  vivid  de- 
scription of  the  massacre  and  burning  of  Magdeburg,  will  give 
the  reader  a  far  better  idea  of  the  warfare  of  this  time  than  any 
formal  history.  So  harried  was  the  land  that  the  farmers 
ceased  from  cultivation,  what  snatch  crops  could  be  harvested 
were  hidden  away,  and  great  crowds  of  starving  women  and 
children  became  camp  followers  of  the  armies,  and  supplied  a 
thievish  tail  to  the  rougher  plundering.  At  the  close  of  the 
struggle  all  Germany  was  ruined  and  desolate.  Central  Europe 
did  not  fully  recover  from  these  robberies  and  devastations  for 
a  century. 

Here  we  can  but  name  Tilly  and  Wallenstein,  the  great  plun- 
der captains  on  the  Habsburg  side,  and  Gustavus  Adolphus,  the 
King  of  Sweden,  the  Lion  of  the  North,  the  champion  of  the 
Protestants,  whose  dream  was  to  make  the  Baltic  Sea  a  "Swed- 
ish Lake."  Gustavus  Adolphus  was  killed  in  his  decisive  victory- 
over  Wallenstein  at  Liitzen  (1632),  and  Wallenstein  was  mur- 
dered in  1634.  In  1648  the  princes  and  diplomatists  gathered 
amidst  the  havoc  they  had  made  to  patch  up  the  affairs  of 
Central  Europe  at  the  Peace  of  Westphalia.  By  that  peace  the 
power  of  the  Emperor  was  reduced  to  a  shadow,  ard  the  ac- 
quisition of  Alsace  brought  France  up  to  the  Rhine.  And  one 
German  prince,  the  Hohenzollern  Elector  of  Brandenburg,  ac- 
quired so  much  territory  as  to  become  the  greatest  German 
power  next  to  the  Emperor,  a  power  that  presently  (1701)  be- 
came the  kingdom  of  Prussia.  The  Treaty  also  recognized  two 
long  accomplished  facts,  the  separation  from  the  empire  and  the 
complete  independence  of  both  Holland  and  Switzerland. 

§8 

We  have  opened  this  chapter  with  the  stories  of  two  countries, 
the  Netherlands  and  Britain,  in  which  the  resistance  of  the 
private  citizen  to  this  new  type  of  monarchy,  the  Machiavellian 
monarchy,  that  was  arising  out  of  the  moral  collapse  of  Chris- 
tendom, succeeded.  But  in  France,  Russia,  in  many  parts  of 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          787 


Germany  and  of  Italy — Saxony  and  Tuscany  e.g. — personal 
monarchy  was  not  so  restrained  and  overthrown ;  it  established 
itself  indeed  as  the  ruling  European  system  during  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries.  And  even  in  Holland  and 
Britain  the  monarchy  was  recovering  power  during  the  eight- 
eenth century. 

(In  Poland  condi- 
tions were  peculiar,  and 
they  will  be  dealt  with 
in  a  later  section.) 

In  France  there  had 
been  no  Magna  Carta, 
and  there  was  not  quite 
so  definite  and  effective 
a  tradition  of  parlia- 
mentary rule.  There 
was  the  same  opposition 
of  interests  between  the 
crown  on  the  one  hand 
and  the  landlords  and 
merchants  on  the  other, 
but  the  latter  had  no 
recognized  gathering- 
place,  and  no  dignified 
method  of  unity.  They 
formed  oppositions  to 
the  crown,  they  made 
leagues  of  resistance — 
such  was  the  "Fronde," 
which  was  struggling 
against  the  young  King 
Louis  XIV  and  his 
great  minister  Mazarin, 
while  Charles  I  was 

fighting  for  his  life  in  England — but  ultimately  (1652),  after 
a  civil  war,  they  were  conclusively  defeated;  and  while  in 
England  after  the  establishment  of  the  Hanoverians  the  House 
of  Lords  and  their  subservient  Commons  ruled  the  country, 
in  France,  on  the  contrary,  after  1652,  the  court  entirely  domi- 
nated the  aristocracy.  Cardinal  Mazarin  was  himself  building 
upon  a  foundation  that  Cardinal  Richelieu,  the  contemporary 


788  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  King  James  I  of  England,  had  prepared  for  him.  After  the 
time  of  Mazarin  we  hear  of  no  great  French  nobles  unless  they 
are  at  court  as  court  servants  and  officials.  They  have  been 
tamed — but  at  a  price,  the  price  of  throwing  the  burthen  of 
taxation  upon  the  voiceless  mass  of  the  common  people.  From 
many  taxes  both  the  clergy  and  the  nobility — everyone  indeed 
who  bore  a  title — were  exempt.  In  the  end  this  injustice  be- 
came intolerable,  but  for  a  while  the  French  monarchy  nour- 
ished like  the  Psalmist's  green  bay  tree.  By  the  opening  of 
the  eighteenth  century  English  writers  are  already  calling  at- 
tention to  the  misery  of  the  French  lower  classes  and  the  com- 
parative prosperity,  at  that  time,  of  the  English  poor. 

On  such  terms  of  unrighteousness  what  we  may  call  "Grand 
Monarchy"  established  itself  in  France.  Louis  XIV,  styled  the 
Grand  Monarque,  reigned  for  the  unparalleled  length  of  seventy- 
two  years  (1643-1715),  and  set  a  pattern  for  all  the  kings  of 
Europe.  At  first  he  was  guided  by  his  Machiavellian  minister, 
Cardinal  Mazarin;  after  the  death  of  the  Cardinal  he  himself 
in  his  own  proper  person  became  the  ideal  "Prince."  He  was, 
within  his  limitations,  an  exceptionally  capable  king;  his  ambi- 
tion was  stronger  than  his  baser  passions,  and  he  guided  his 
country  towards  bankruptcy,  through  the  complication  of  a 
spirited  foreign  policy,  with  an  elaborate  dignity  that  still  ex- 
torts our  admiration.  His  immediate  desire  was  to  consolidate 
and  extend  France  to  the  Rhine  and  Pyrenees,  and  to  absorb 
the  Spanish  Netherlands;  his  remoter  view  saw  the  French 
kings  as  the  possible  successors  of  Charlemagne  in  a  recast 
Holy  Roman  Empire.  He  made  bribery  a  state  method  almost 
more  important  than  warfare.  Charles  II  of  England  was  in 
his  pay,  and  so  were  most  of  the  Polish  nobility,  presently  to 
be  described.  His  money,  or  rather  the  money  of  the  tax-pay- 
ing classes  in  France,  went  everywhere.  But  his  prevailing  oc- 
cupation was  splendour.  His  great  palace  at  Versailles,  with 
its  salons,  its  corridors,  its  mirrors,  its  terraces  and  fountains 
and  parks  and  prospects,  was  the  envy  and  admiration  of  the 
world.  He  provoked  a  universal  imitation.  Every  king  and 
princelet  in  Europe  was  building  his  own  Versailles  as  much 
beyond  his  means  as  his  subjects  and  credits  would  permit. 
Everywhere  the  nobility  rebuilt  or  extended  their  chateaux  to 
the  new  pattern.  A  great  industry  of  beautiful  and  elaborate 
fabrics  and  furnishings  developed.  The  luxurious  arts  flour- 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          789 

ished  everywhere ;  sculpture  in  alabaster,  faience,  gilt  woodwork, 
metal  work,  stamped  leather,  much  music,  magnificent  paint- 
ing, beautiful  printing  and  bindings,  fine  cookery,  fine  vin- 
tages. Amidst  the  mirrors  and  fine  furniture  went  a  strange 
race  of  "gentlemen"  in  vast  powdered  wigs,  silks  and  laces, 
poised  upon  high  red  heels,  supported  by  amazing  canes;  and 
still  more  wonderful  "ladies,"  under  towers  of  powdered  hair 
and  wearing  vast  expansions  of  silk  and  satin  sustained  on  wire. 
Through  it  all  postured  the  great  Louis,  the  sun  of  his  world, 
unaware  of  the  meagre  and  sulky  and  bitter  faces  that  watched 
him  from  those  lower  darknesses  to  which  his  sunshine  did  not 
penetrate. 

We  cannot  give  here  at  any  length  the  story  of  the  wars  and 
doings  of  this  monarch.  In  many  ways  Voltaire's  Siecle  de 
Louis  XIV  is  still  the  best  and  most  wholesome  account.  He 
created  a  French  navy  fit  to  face  the  English  and  Dutch;  a 
very  considerable  achievement.  But  because  his  intelligence 
did  not  rise  above  the  lure  of  that  Fata  Morgana,  that  crack 
in  the  political  wits  of  Europe,  the  dream  of  a  world-wide 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  he  drifted  in  his  later  years  to  the  pro- 
pitiation of  the  Papacy,  which  had  hitherto  been  hostile  to  him. 
He  set  himself  against  those  spirits  of  independence  and  dis- 
union, the  Protestant  princes,  and  he  made  war  against  Protes- 
tantism in  France.  Great  numbers  of  his  most  sober  and  val- 
uable subjects  were  driven  abroad  by  his  religious  persecutions, 
taking  arts  and  industries  with  them.  The  English  silk  manu- 
facture, for  instance,  was  founded  by  French  Protestants. 
Under  his  rule  were  carried  out  the  "dragonnades,"  a  pecu- 
liarly malignant  and  effectual  form  of  persecution.  Rough  sol- 
diers were  quartered  in  the  houses  of  the  Protestants,  and  were 
free  to  disorder  the  life  of  their  hosts  and  insult  their  woman- 
kind as  they  thought  fit.  Men  yielded  to  that  sort  of  pressure 
who  would  not  have  yielded  to  rack  and  fire.  The  education 
of  the  next  generation  of  Protestants  was  broken  up,  and  the 
parents  had  to  give  Catholic  instruction  or  none.  They  gave  it, 
no  doubt,  with  a  sneer  and  an  intonation  that  destroyed  all  faith 
in  it.  While  more  tolerant  countries  became  mainly  sincerely 
Catholic  or  sincerely  Protestant,  the  persecuting  countries,  like 
France  and  Spain  and  Italy,  so  destroyed  honest  Protestant 
teaching  that  these  peoples  became  mainly  Catholic  believers  or 
Catholic  atheists,  ready  to  break  out  into  blank  atheism  when- 


790 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          791 

ever  the  opportunity  offered.  The  next  reign,  that  of  Louis 
XV,  was  the  age  of  that  supreme  mocker,  Voltaire  (1694- 
1778),  an  age  in  which  everybody  in  French  society  conformed 
to  the  Roman  church  and  hardly  anyone  helieved  in  it. 

It  was  part — and  an  excellent  part — of  the  pose  of  Grand 
Monarchy  to  patronize  literature  and  the  sciences.  Louis  XIV 
set  up  an  academy  of  sciences  in  rivalry  with  the  English  Royal 
Society  of  Charles  II  and  the  similar  association  at  Florence. 
He  decorated  his  court  with  poets,  playwrights,  philosophers,  and 
scientific  men.  If  the  scientific  process  got  little  inspiration 
from  this  patronage,  it  did  at  any  rate  acquire  resources  for 
experiment  and  publication,  and  a  certain  prestige  in  the  eyes 
of  the  vulgar. 

Louis  XV  was  the  great-grandson  of  Louis  XIV,  and  an  in- 
competent imitator  of  his  predecessor's  magnificence.  He  posed 
as  a  king,  but  his  ruling  passion  was  that  common  obsession  of 
our  kind,  the  pursuit  of  women,  tempered  by  a  superstitious 
fear  of  hell.  How  such  women  as  the  Duchess  of  Chateau- 
roux,  Madame  de  Pompadour,  and  Madame  du  Barry  domi- 
nated the  pleasures  of  the  king,  and  how  wars  and  alliances 
were  made,  provinces  devastated,  thousands  of  people  killed, 
because  of  the  vanities  and  spites  of  these  creatures,  and  how 
all  the  public  life  of  France  and  Europe  was  tainted  with  in- 
trigue and  prostitution  and  imposture  because  of  them,  the 
reader  must  learn  from  the  memoirs  of  the  time.  The  spirited 
foreign  policy  went  on  steadily  under  Louis  XV  towards  its 
final  smash. 

In  1774  this  Louis,  Louis  the  Well-Beloved,  as  his  flatterers 
called  him,  died  of  smallpox,  and  was  succeeded  by  his  grand- 
son, Louis  XVI  (1774-93),  a  dull,  well-meaning  man,  an  excel- 
lent shot,  and  an  amateur  locksmith  of  some  ingenuity.  Of 
how  he  came  to  follow  Charles  I  to  the  scaffold  we  shall  tell  in 
a  later  section.  Our  present  concern  is  with  Grand  Monarchy 
in  the  days  of  its  glory. 

Among  the  chief  practitioners  of  Grand  Monarchy  outside 
France  we  may  note  first  the  Prussian  kings,  Frederick  William 
I  (1713-40),  and  his  son  and  successor,  Frederick  II,  Fred- 
erick the  Great  (1740-86).  The  story  of  the  slow  rise  of  the 
Hohenzollern  family,  which  ruled  the  kingdom  of  Prussia,  from 
inconspicuous  beginnings  is  too  tedious  and  unimportant  for  us 
to  follow  here.  It  is  a  story  of  luck  and  violence,  of  bold  claims 


792  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  sudden  betrayals.  It  is  told  with  great  appreciation  in 
Carlyle's  Frederick  the  Great.  By  the  eighteenth  century  the 
Prussian  kingdom  was  important  enough  to  threaten  the  em- 
pire; it  had  a  strong,  well-drilled  army,  and  its  king  was  an 
attentive  and  worthy  student  of  Machiavelli.  Frederick  the 
Great  perfected  his  Versailles  at  Potsdam.  There  the  park  of 
Sans  Souci,  with  its  fountains,  avenues,  statuary,  aped  its 
model;  there  also  was  the  XCAV  Palace,  a  vast  hrick  building 
erected  at  enormous  expense,  the  Orangery  in  the  Italian  style, 
with  a  collection  of  pictures,  a  Marble  Palace,  and  so  on. 
Frederick  carried  culture  to  the  pitch  of  authorship,  and 
corresponded  with  and  entertained  Voltaire,  to  their  mutual 
exasperation. 

The  Austrian  dominions  were  kept  too  busy  between  the 
hammer  of  the  French  and  the  anvil  of  the  Turks  to  develop  the 
real  Grand  Monarch  style  until  the  reign  of  Maria  Theresa 
(who,  being  a  woman,  did  not  bear  the  title  of  Empress)  (1740- 
80).  Joseph  II,  who  was  Emperor  from  1765-92,  succeeded 
to  her  palaces  in  1780. 

With  Peter  the  Great  (1682-1725)  the  empire  of  Muscovy 
broke  away  from  her  Tartar  traditions  and  entered  the  sphere 
of  French  attraction.  Peter  shaved  the  Oriental  beards  of  his 
nobles  and  introduced  Western  costume.  These  were  but  the 
outward  and  visible  symbols  of  his  westering  tendencies.  To 
release  himself  from  the  Asiatic  feeling  and  traditions  of 
Moscow,  which,  like  Pekin,  has  a  sacred  inner  city,  the  Krem- 
lin, he  built  himself  a  new  capital,  Petrograd,  upon  the  swamp 
of  the  Neva.  And  of  course  he  built  his  Versailles,  the  Peter- 
hof,  about  eighteen  miles  from  this  new  Paris,  employing  a 
French  architect  and  having  a  terrace,  fountains,  cascades, 
picture  gallery,  park,  and  all  the  recognized  features.  His 
more  distinguished  successors  were  Elizabeth  (1741-62)  and 
Catherine  the  Great,  a  German  princess,  who,  after  obtaining 
the  crown  in  sound  Oriental  fashion  through  the  murder  of 
her  husband,  the  legitimate  Tsar,  reverted  to  advanced  Western 
ideals  and  ruled  with  great  vigour  from  1762  to  1796.  She 
set  up  an  academy,  and  corresponded  with  Voltaire.  And  she 
lived  to  witness  the  end  of  the  system  of  Grand  Monarchy  in 
Europe  and  the  execution  of  Louis  XVI. 

We  cannot  even  catalogue  here  the  minor  Grand  Monarchs 
of  the  time  in  Florence  (Tuscany)  and  Savoy  and  Saxony  and 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          793 

Denmark  and  Sweden.  Versailles,  under  a  score  of  names,  is 
starred  in  every  volume  of  Bseoleker,  and  the  tourist  gapes  in 
their  palaces.  Nor  can  we  deal  with  the  war  of  the  Spanish 
Succession.  Spain,  overstrained  by  the  imperial  enterprises  of 
Charles  V  and  Philip  II,  and  enfeebled  by  a  bigoted  persecution 
of  Protestants,  Moslems,  and  Jews,  was  throughout  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centuries  sinking  down  from  her  tempo- 
rary importance  in  European  affairs  to  the  level  of  a  secondary 
power  again. 

These  European  monarchs  ruled  their  kingdoms  as  theii 
noblemen  ruled  their  estates:  they  plotted  against  one  another, 
they  were  politic  and  far-seeing  in  an  unreal  fashion,  they 
made  wars,  they  spent  the  substance  of  Europe  upon  absurd 
"policies"  of  aggression  and  resistance.  At  last  there  burst 
upon  them  a  great  storm  out  of  the  depths.  That  storm,  the 
First  French  Revolution,  the  indignation  of  the  common  man 
in  Europe,  took  their  system  unawares.  It  was  but  the  open- 
ing outbreak  of  a  great  cycle  of  political  and  social  storms  that 
still  continue,  that  will  perhaps  continue  until  every  vestige 
of  nationalist  monarchy  has  been  swept  out  of  the  world  and 
the  skies  clear  again  for  the  great  peace  of  the  federation  of 
mankind. 


§/•» 
o 

We  have  seen  how  the  idea  of  a  world-rule  and  a  community 
of  mankind  first  came  into  human  affairs,  and  we  have  traced 
how  the  failure  of  the  Christian  churches  to  sustain  and  estab- 
lish those  conceptions  of  its  founder,  led  to  a  moral  collapse  in 
political  affairs  and  a  reversion  to  egotism  and  want  of  faith. 
We  have  seen  how  Machiavellian  monarchy  set  itself  up  against 
the  spirit  of  brotherhood  in  Christendom,  and  how  Machiavellian 
monarchy  developed  throughout  a  large  part  of  Europe  into 
the  Grand  Monarchies  and  Parliamentary  Monarchies  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries.  But  the  mind  and  imag- 
ination of  man  is  incessantly  active,  and  beneath  the  sway  of 
the  grand  monarchs,  a  complex  of  notions  and  traditions  was 
being  woven  as  a  net  is  woven,  to  catch  and  entangle  men's 
minds,  the  conception  of  international  politics  not  as  a  matter 
of  dealings  between  princes,  but  as  a  matter  of  dealings  be- 
tween a  kind  of  immortal  Beings,  the  Powers.  The  Princes 


794  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

came  and  went ;  a  Louis  XIV  would  be  followed  by  a  petticoat- 
hunting  Louis  XV,  and  he  again  by  that  dull-witted  amateur 
locksmith,  Louis  XVI.  Peter  the  Great  gave  place  to  a  suc- 
cession of  empresses;  the  chief  continuity  of  the  Habsburgs 
after  Charles  V,  either  in  Austria  or  Spain,  was  a  continuity 
of  thick  lips,  clumsy  chins,  and  superstition ;  the  amiable  scoun- 
drelism  of  a  Charles  II  would  make  a  mock  of  his  own  preten- 
sions. But  what  remained  much  more  steadfast  were  the  secre- 
tariats of  the  foreign  ministries  and  the  ideas  of  people  who 
wrote  of  state  concerns.  The  ministers  maintained  a  con- 
tinuity of  policy  during  the  "off  days"  of  their  monarchs,  and 
between  one  monarch  and  another. 

So  we  find  that  the  prince  gradually  became  less  important 
in  men's  minds  than  the  "Power"  of  which  he  was  the  head. 
We  begin  to  read  less  and  less  of  the  schemes  and  ambitions  of 
King  This  or  That,  and  more  of  the  "Designs  of  France"  or 
the  "Ambitions  of  Prussia."  In  an  age  when  religious  faith 
was  declining,  we  find  men  displaying  a  new  and  vivid  belief  in 
the  reality  of  these  personifications.  These  vast  vague  phan- 
toms, the  "Powers,"  crept  insensibly  into  European  political 
thought,  until  in  the  later  eighteenth  and  in  the  nineteenth 
centuries  they  dominated  it  entirely.  To  this  day  they  domi- 
nate it.  European  life  remained  nominally  Christian,  but  to 
worship  one  God  in  spirit  and  in  truth  is  to  belong  to  one 
community  with  all  one's  fellow  worshippers.  In  practical 
reality  Europe  does  not  do  this,  she  has  given  herself  up  alto- 
gether to  the  worship  of  this  strange  state  mythology.  To  these 
sovereign  deities,  to  the  unity  of  "Italy,"  to  the  hegemony  of 
"Prussia,"  to  the  glory  of  "France,"  and  the  destinies  of  "Rus- 
sia," she  has  sacrificed  many  generations  of  possible  unity, 
peace,  and  prosperity  and  the  lives  of  millions  of  men. 

To  regard  a  tribe  or  a  state  as  a  sort  of  personality  is  a 
very  old  disposition  of  the  human  mind.  The  Bible  abounds 
in  such  personifications.  Judah,  Edom,  Moab,  Assyria,  figure 
in  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  if  they  were  individuals;  it  is 
sometimes  impossible  to  say  whether  the  Hebrew  writer  is  deal- 
ing with  a  person  or  with  a  nation.  It  is  manifestly  a  primitive 
and  natural  tendency.  But  in  the  case  of  modern  Europe  it 
is  a  retrocession.  Europe,  under  the  idea  of  Christendom, 
had  gone  far  towards  unification.  And  while  such  tribal  per- 
sons as  "Israel"  or  "Tyre"  did  represent  a  certain  community 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          795 

of  blood,  a  certain  uniformity  of  type,  and  a  homogeneity  of 
interest,  the  European  powers  which  arose  in  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  were  entirely  fictitious  unities.  Rus- 
sia  was  in  truth  an  assembly  of  the  most  incongruous  elements, 
Cossacks,  Tartars,  Ukrainians,  Muscovites,  and,  after  the  time 
of  Peter,  Esthonians  and  Lithuanians ;  the  France  of  Louis  XV 
comprehended  German  Alsace  and  freshly  assimilated  regions 
of  Burgundy;  it  was  a  prison  of  suppressed  Huguenots  and  a 
sweating-house  for  peasants.  In  "Britain,"  England  carried 
on  her  back  the  Hanoverian  dominions  in  Germany,  Scotland, 
the  profoundly  alien  Welsh  and  the  hostile  and  Catholic  Irish. 
Such  powers  as  Sweden,  Prussia,  and  still  more  so  Poland  and 
Austria,  if  we  watch  them  in  a  series  of  historical  maps,  con- 
tract, expand,  thrust  out  extensions,  and  wander  over  the  map 
of  Europe  as  amoebae  do  under  the  microscope.  .  .  . 

If  we  consider  the  psychology  of  international  relationship  as 
we  see  it  manifested  in  the  world  about  us,  and  as  it  is  shown 
by  the  development  of  the  "Power"  idea  in  modern  Europe, 
we  shall  realize  certain  historically  very  important  facts  about 
the  nature  of  man.  Aristotle  said  that  man  is  a  political  ani- 
mal, but  in  our  modern  sense  of  the  word  politics,  which  now 
covers  world-politics,  he  is  nothing  of  the  sort.  He  has  still  the 
instincts  of  the  family  tribe,  and  beyond  that  he  has  a  disposi- 
tion to  attach  himself  and  his  family  to  something  larger,  to 
a  tribe,  a  city,  a  nation,  or  a  state.  But  that  disposition,  left 
to  itself,  is  a  vague  and  very  uncritical  disposition.  If  any- 
thing, he  is  inclined  to  fear  and  dislike  criticism  of  this  some- 
thing larger  that  encloses  his  life  and  to  which  he  has  given 
himself,  and  to  avoid  such  criticism.  Perhaps  he  has  a  sub- 
conscious fear  of  the  isolation  that  may  ensue  if  the  system  is 
broken  or  discredited.  He  takes  the  milieu  in  which  he  finds 
himself  for  granted ;  he  accepts  his  city  or  his  government,  just 
as  he  accepts  the  nose  or  the  digestion  which  fortune  has  be- 
stowed upon  him.  But  men's  loyalties,  the  sides  they  take  in 
political  things,  are  not  innate,  they  are  educational  results. 
For  most  men  their  education  in  these  matters  is  the  silent, 
continuous  education  of  things  about  them.  Men  find  them- 
selves a  part  of  Merry  England  or  Holy  Russia ;  they  grow  up 
into  these  devotions ;  they  accept  them  as  a  part  of  their  nature. 

It  is  only  slowly  that  the  world  is  beginning  to  realize  how 
profoundly  the  tacit  education  of  circumstances  can  be  supple- 


796  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

mented,  modified,  or  corrected  by  positive  teaching,  by  litera- 
ture, discussion,  and  properly  criticized  experience.  The  real 
life  of  the  ordinary  man  is  his  everyday  life,  his  little  circle  of 
affections,  fears,  hungers,  lusts,  and  imaginative  impulses.  It 
is  only  when  his  attention  is  directed  to  political  affairs  as 
something  vitally  affecting  this  personal  circle,  that  he  brings 
his  reluctant  mind  to  bear  upon  them.  It  is  scarcely  too  much  to 
say  that  the  ordinary  man  thinks  as  little  about  political  matters 
as  he  can,  and  stops  thinking  about  them  as  soon  as  possible. 
It  is  still  only  very  curious  and  exceptional  minds,  or  minds 
that  have  by  example  or  good  education  acquired  the  scientific 
habit  of  wanting  to  know  why,  or  minds  shocked  and  distressed 
by  some  public  catastrophe  and  roused  to  wide  apprehensions  of 
danger,  that,  will  not  accept  governments  and  institutions,  how- 
ever preposterous,  that  do  not  directly  annoy  them,  as  satis- 
factory. The  ordinary  human  being,  until  he  is  so  aroused,  will 
acquiesce  in  any  collective  activities  that  are  going  on  in  this 
world  in  which  he  finds  himself,  and  any  phrasing  or  symboliza- 
tion  that  meets  his  vague  need  for  something  greater  to  which 
his  personal  affairs,  his  individual  circle,  can  be  anchored. 

If  we  keep  these  manifest  limitations  of  our  nature  in  mind, 
it  no  longer  becomes  a  mystery  how,  as  the  idea  of  Christianity 
as  a  world  brotherhood  of  men  sank  into  discredit  because  of 
its  fatal  entanglement  with  priestcraft  and  the  Papacy  on  the 
one  hand  and  with  the  authority  of  princes  on  the  other,  and 
the  age  of  faith  passed  into  our  present  age  of  doubt  and  dis- 
belief, men  shifted  the  reference  of  their  lives  from  the  kingdom 
of  God  and  the  brotherhood  of  mankind  to  these  apparently 
more  living  realities,  France  and  England,  Holy  Russia,  Spain, 
Prussia,  which  were  at  least  embodied  in  active  courts,  which 
maintained  laws,  exerted  power  through  armies  and  navies, 
waved  flags  with  a  compelling  solemnity,  and  were  self-asser- 
tive and  insatiably  greedy  in  an  entirely  human  and  understand- 
able fashion.  Certainly  such  men  as  Cardinal  Richelieu  and 
Cardinal  Mazarin  thought  of  themselves  as  serving  greater  ends 
than  their  own  or  their  monarch's ;  they  served  the  quasi-divine 
France  of  their  imaginations.  And  as  certainly  these  habits 
of  mind  percolated  down  from  them  to  their  subordinates  and 
to  the  general  body  of  the  population.  In  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries  the  general  population  of  Europe  was  re- 
ligious and  only  vaguely  patriotic;  by  the  nineteenth  it  had 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          797 

become  wholly  patriotic.  In  a  crowded  English  or  French  or 
German  railway  carriage  of  the  later  nineteenth  century  it  would 
have  aroused  far  less  hostility  to  have  jeered  at  God  than  to 
have  jeered  at  one  of  those  strange  beings,  England  or  France 
or  Germany.  To  these  things  men's  minds  clung,  and  they 
clung  to  them  because  in  all  the  world  there  appeared  nothing 
else  so  satisfying  to  cling  to.  They  were  the  real  and  living 
gods  of  Europe. 

This  idealization  of  governments  and  foreign  offices,  this 
mythology  of  "Powers"  and  their  loves  and  hates  and  conflicts, 
has  so  obsessed  the  imaginations  of  Europe  and  Western  Asia  as 
to  provide  it  with  its  "forms  of  thought,"  Nearly  all  the  his- 
tories, nearly  all  the  political  literature  of  the  last  two  centuries 
in  Europe,  have  been  written  in  its  phraseology.  Yet  a  time 
is  coming  when  a  clear-sighted  generation  will  read  with  per- 
plexity how  in  the  community  of  western  Europe,  consisting 
everywhere  of  very  slight  variations  of  a  common  racial  mixture 
of  Nordic  and  Iberian  peoples  and  immigrant  Semitic  and  Mon- 
golian elements,  speaking  nearly  everywhere  modifications  of 
the  same  Aryan  speech,  having  a  common  past  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  common  religious  forms,  common  social  usages,  and  a 
common  art  and  science,  and  intermarrying  so  freely  that  no  one 
could  tell  with  certainty  the  "nationality"  of  any  of  his  great- 
grandchildren, men  could  be  moved  to  the  wildest  excitement 
upon  the  question  of  the  ascendancy  of  "France,"  the  rise  and 
unification  of  "Germany,"  the  rival  claims  of  "Russia"  and 
"Greece"  to  possess  Constantinople.  These  conflicts  will  seem 
then  as  reasonless  and  insane  as  those  dead,  now  incomprehensi- 
ble feuds  of  the  "greens"  and  "blues"  that  once  filled  the  streets 
of  Byzantium  with  shouting  and  bloodshed. 

Tremendously  as  these  phantoms,  the  Powers,  rule  our  minds 
and  lives  to-day,  they  are,  as  this  history  shows  clearly,  things 
only  of  the  last  few  centuries,  a  mere  hour,  an  incidental  phase, 
in  the  vast  deliberate  history  of  our  kind.  They  mark  a  phase 
of  relapse,  a  backwater,  as  the  rise  of  Machiavellian  monarchy 
marks  a  backwater ;  they  are  part  of  the  same  eddy  of  faltering 
faith,  in  a  process  altogether  greater  and  altogether  different 
in  its  general  tendency,  the  process  of  the  moral  and  intellectual 
reunion  of  mankind.  For  a  time  men  have  relapsed  upon  these 
national  or  imperial  gods  of  theirs;  it  is  but  for  a  time.  The 
idea  of  the  world  state,  the  universal  kingdom  of  righteousness 


798  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  which  every  living  soul  shall  be  a  citizen,  was  already  in  the 
world  two  thousand  years  ago  never  more  to  leave  it.  Men 
know  that  it  is  present  even  when  they  refuse  to  recognize  it 
In  the  writings  and  talk  of  men  about  international  affairs  to- 
day, in  the  current  discussions  of  historians  and  political  jour- 
nalists, there  is  an  effect  of  drunken  men  growing  sober,  and 
terribly  afraid  of  growing  sober.  They  still  talk  loudly  of  their 
"love"  for  France,  of  their  "hatred"  of  Germany,  of  the  "tra- 
ditional ascendancy  of  Britain  at  sea,"  and  so  on  and  so  on, 
like  those  who  sing  of  their  cups  in  spite  of  the  steadfast  onset 
of  sobriety  and  a  headache.  These  are  dead  gods  they  serve. 
By  sea  or  land  men  want  no  Powers  ascendant,  but  only  law 
and  service.  That  silent  unavoidable  challenge  is  in  all  our 
minds  like  dawn  breaking  slowly,  shining  between  the  shutters 
of  a  disordered  room. 

§? 

The  seventeenth  century  in  Europe  was  the  century  of  Louis 
XIV ;  he  and  French  ascendancy  and  Versailles  are  the  central 
motif  of  the  story.  The  eighteenth  century  was  equally  the 
century  of  the  "rise  of  Prussia  as  a  great  power,"  and  the  chief 
figure  in  the  story  is  Frederick  II,  Frederick  the  Great.  Inter- 
woven with  his  history  is  the  story  of  Poland. 

The  condition  of  affairs  in  Poland  was  peculiar.  Unlike  its 
three  neighbours,  Prussia,  Russia,  and  the  Austro-Hungarian 
monarchy  of  the  Habsburgs,  Poland  had  not  developed  a  Grand 
Monarchy.  Its  system  of  government  may  be  best  described  as 
republican  with  a  king,  an  elected  life-president.  Each  king 
was  separately  elected.  It  was  in  fact  rather  more  republican 
than  Britain,  but  its  republicanism  was  more  aristocratic  in 
form.  Poland  had  little  trade  and  few  manufactures ;  she  was 
agricultural  and  still  with  great  areas  of  grazing,  forest,  and 
waste;  she  was  a  poor  country,  and  her  landowners  were  poor 
aristocrats.  The  mass  of  her  population  was  a  downtrodden 
and  savagely  ignorant  peasantry,  and  she  also  harboured  great 
masses  of  very  poor  Jews.  She  had  remained  Catholic.  She 
was,  so  to  speak,  a  poor  Catholic  inland  Britain,  entirely  sur- 
rounded by  enemies  instead  of  by  the  sea.  She  had  no  definite 
boundaries  at  all,  neither  sea  nor  mountain.  And  it  added  to 
her  misfortunes  that  some  of  her  elected  kings  had  been  bril- 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          799 

liant  and  aggressive  rulers.  Eastward  her  power  extended 
weakly  into  regions  inhabited  almost  entirely  by  Russians ;  west- 
ward she  overlapped  a  German  subject  population. 

Because  she  had  no  great  trade,  she  had  no  great  towns  to 
compare  with  those  of  western  Europe,  and  no  vigorous  uni- 
versities to  hold  her  mind  together.  Her  noble  class  lived  on 
their  estates,  without  much  intellectual  intercourse.  They  were 
patriotic,  they  had  an  aristocratic  sense  of  freedom — which  was 
entirely  compatible  with  the  systematic  impoverishment  of  their 
serfs — but  their  patriotism  and  freedom  were  incapable  of  ef- 
fective co-operation.  While  warfare  was  a  matter  of  levies  of 
men  and  horses,  Poland  was  a  comparatively  strong  power; 
but  it  was  quite  unable  to  keep  pace  with  the  development  of 
military  art  that  was  making  standing  forces  of  professional 
soldiers  the  necessary  weapon  in  warfare.  Yet  divided  and 
disabled  as  she  was,  she  could  yet  count  some  notable  victories 
to  her  credit.  The  last  Turkish  attack  upon  Vienna  (1683) 
was  defeated  by  the  Polish  cavalry  under  King  John  Sobiesky, 
King  John  III.  (This  same  Sobiesky,  before  he  was  elected 
king,  had  been  in  the  pay  of  Louis  XIV,  and  had  also  fought 
for  the  Swedes  against  his  native  country.)  Needless  to  say, 
this  weak  aristocratic  republic,  with  its  recurrent  royal  elec- 
tions, invited  aggression  from  all  three  of  its  neighbours.  "For- 
eign money,"  and  every  sort  of  exterior  interference,  came  into 
the  country  at  each  election.  And  like  the  Greeks  of  old,  every 
disgruntled  Polish  patriot  flew  off  to  some  foreign  enemy  to 
wreak  his  indignation  upon  his  ungrateful  country. 

Even  when  the  King  of  Poland  was  elected,  he  had  very 
little  power  because  of  the  mutual  jealousy  of  the  nobles.  Like 
the  English  peers,  they  preferred  a  foreigner,  and  for  much 
the  same  reason,  because  he  had  no  roots  of  power  in  the  land ; 
but,  unlike  the  British,  their  own  government  had  not  the 
solidarity  which  the  periodic  assembling  of  Parliament  in  Lon- 
don, the  "coming  up  to  town,"  gave  the  British  peers.  In  Lon- 
don there  was  "Society,"  a  continuous  intermingling  of  influ- 
ential persons  and  ideas.  Poland  had  no  London  and  no  "So- 
ciety." So  practically  Poland  had  no  central  government  at 
all.  The  King  of  Poland  could  not  make  war  nor  peace,  levy 
a  tax  nor  alter  the  law,  without  the  consent  of  the  Diet,  and 
any  single  member  of  the  Diet  had  the  power  of  putting  a  veto 
upon  any  proposal  before  it.  He  had  merely  to  rise  and  say, 


800 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


"I  disapprove,"  and  the  matter  dropped.  He  could  even  carry 
his  free  veto,  his  liberum  veto,  further.  He  could  object  to  the 
assembly  of  the  Diet,  and  the  Diet  was  thereby  dissolved.  Po- 
land was  not  simply  a  crowned  aristocratic  republic  like  the 
British,  it  was  a  paralyzed  crowned  aristocratic  republic. 


PARTITIONS  of  POLAKD 


To  Frederick  the  Great  the  existence  of  Poland  was  partic- 
ularly provocative  because  of  the  way  in  which  an  arm  of  Po- 
land reached  out  to  the  Baltic  at  Dantzig  and  separated  his  an- 
cestral dominions  in  East  Prussia  from  his  territories  within 
the  empire.  It  was  he  who  incited  Catherine  the  Second  of 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  801 

Kussia  and  Maria  Theresa  of  Austria,  whose  respect  he  had 
earned  by  depriving  her  of  Silesia,  to  a  joint  attack  upon 
Poland. 

Let  four  maps  of  Poland  tell  the  tale. 

After  this  first  outrage  of  1772  Poland  underwent  a  great 
change  of  heart.  Poland  was  indeed  born  as  a  nation  on  the 
eve  of  her  dissolution.  There  was  a  hasty  but  very  consider- 
able development  of  education,  literature,  and  art;  historians 
and  poets  sprang  up,  and  the  impossible  constitution  that  had 
made  Poland  impotent  was  swept  aside.  The  free  veto  was 
abolished,  the  crown  was  made  hereditary  to  save  Poland  from 
the  foreign  intrigues  that  attended  every  election,  and  a  Parlia- 
ment in  imitation  of  the  British  was  set  up.  There  were,  how- 
ever, lovers  of  the  old  order  in  Poland  who  resented  these 
necessary  changes,  and  these  obstructives  were  naturally  sup- 
ported by  Prussia  and  Russia,  who  wanted  no  Polish  revival. 
Came  the  second  partition,  and,  after  a  fierce  patriotic  struggle 
that  began  in  the  region  annexed  by  Prussia  and  found  a  leader 
and  national  hero  in  Kosciusko,  the  final  obliteration  of  Poland 
from  the  map.  So  for  a  time  ended  this  Parliamentary  threat 
to  Grand  Monarchy  in  Eastern  Europe.  But  the  patriotism 
of  the  Poles  grew  stronger  and  clearer  with  suppression.  For 
a  hundred  and  twenty  years  Poland  struggled  like  a  submerged 
creature  beneath  the  political  and  military  net  that  held  her 
down.  She  rose  again  in  1918,  at  the  end  of  the  Great  War. 


§  8 

We  have  given  some  account  of  the  ascendancy  of  France  in 
Europe,  the  swift  decay  of  the  sappy  growth  of  Spanish  power 
and  its  separation  from  Austria,  and  the  rise  of  Prussia.  So 
far  as  Portugal,  Spain,  France,  Britain,  and  Holland  were  con- 
cerned, their  competition  for  ascendancy  in  Europe  was  ex- 
tended and  complicated  by  a  struggle  for  dominion  overseas. 

The  discovery  of  the  huge  continent  of  America,  thinly  in- 
habited, undeveloped,  and  admirably  adapted  for  European 
settlement  and  exploitation,  the  simultaneous  discovery  of  great 
areas  of  unworked  country  south  of  the  torrid  equatorial  re- 
gions of  Africa  that  had  hitherto  limited  European  knowledge, 
and  the  gradual  realization  of  vast  island  regions  in  the  Eastern 


802  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

seas,  as  yet  untouched  by  Western  civilization,  was  a  presenta- 
tion of  opportunity  to  mankind  unprecedented  in  all  history.  It 
was  as  if  the  peoples  of  Europe  had  come  into  some  splendid 
legacy.  Their  world  had  suddenly  quadrupled.  There  was  more 
than  enough  for  all ;  they  had  only  to  take  these  lands  and  con- 
tinue to  do  well  by  them,  and  their  crowded  poverty  would 
vanish  like  a  dream.  And  they  received  this  glorious  legacy 
like  ill-bred  heirs ;  it  meant  no  more  to  them  than  a  fresh  occa- 
sion for  atrocious  disputes.  But  what  community  of  human 
beings  has  ever  yet  preferred  creation  to  conspiracy?  What 
nation  in  all  our  story  has  ever  worked  with  another  when,  at 
any  cost  to  itself,  it  could  contrive  to  do  that  other  an  injury  ? 
The  Powers  of  Europe  began  by  a  frantic  "claiming"  of  the 
new  realms.  They  went  on  to  exhausting  conflicts.  Spain,  who 
claimed  first  and  most,  and  who  was  for  a  time  "mistress"  of 
two-thirds  of  America,  made  no  better  use  of  her  possession  than 
to  bleed  herself  nearly  to  death  therein. 

We  have  told  how  the  Papacy  in  its  last  assertion  of  world 
dominion,  instead  of  maintaining  the  common  duty  of  all  Chris- 
tendom to  make  a  great  common  civilization  in  the  new  lands, 
divided  the  American  continent  between  Spain  and  Portugal. 
This  naturally  roused  the  hostility  of  the  excluded  nations. 
The  seamen  of  England  showed  no  respect  for  either  claim,  and 
set  themselves  particularly  against  the  Spanish;  the  Swedes 
turned  their  Protestantism  to  a  similar  account.  The  Hollan- 
ders, so  soon  as  they  had  shaken  off  their  Spanish  masters, 
also  set  their  sails  westward  to  flout  the  Pope  and  share  in  the 
good  things  of  the  new  world.  His  Most  Catholic  Majesty  of 
France  hesitated  as  little  as  any  Protestant.  All  these  powers 
were  soon  busy  staking  out  claims  in  North  America  and  the 
West  Indies. 

Neither  the  Danish  kingdom  (which  at  that  time  included 
Norway  and  Iceland)  nor  the  Swedes  secured  very  much  in  the 
scramble.  The  Danes  annexed  some  of  the  West  Indian  islands. 
Sweden  got  nothing.  Both  Denmark  and  Sweden  at  this  time 
were  deep  in  the  affairs  of  Germany.  We  have  already  named 
Gustavus  Adolphus,  the  Protestant  "Lion  of  the  North,"  and 
mentioned  his  campaigns  in  Germany,  Poland,  and  Russia. 
These  Eastern  European  regions  are  great  absorbents  of  energy, 
and  the  strength  that  might  have  given  Sweden  a  large  share 
in  the  new  world  reaped  a  barren  harvest  of  glory  in  Europe. 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          803 

Such  small  settlements  as  the  Swedes  made  in  America  pres- 
ently fell  to  the  Dutch. 

The  Hollanders,  too,  with  the  French  monarchy  under  Car- 
dinal Richelieu  and  under  Louis  XIV  eating  its  way  across  the 
Spanish  Netherlands  towards  their  frontier,  had  not  the  un- 
distracted  resources  that  Britain,  behind  her  "silver  streak"  of 
sea,  could  put  into  overseas  adventures. 

Moreover,  the  absolutist  efforts  of  James  I  and  Charles  I, 
and  the  restoration  of  Charles  II,  had  the  effect  of  driving  out 
from  England  a  great  number  of  sturdy-minded,  republican- 
spirited  Protestants,  men  of  substance  and  character,  who  set 
up  in  America,  and  particularly  in  New  England,  out  of  reach, 
as  they  supposed,  of  the  king  and  his  taxes.  The  Mayflower 
was  only  one  of  the  pioneer  vessels  of  a  stream  of  emigrants. 
It  was  the  luck  of  Britain  that  they  remained,  though  dis- 
sentient in  spirit,  under  the  British  flag.  The  Dutch  never 
sent  out  settlers  of  the  same  quantity  and  quality,  first  because 
their  Spanish  rulers  would  not  let  them,  and  then  because  they 
had  got  possession  of  their  own  country.  And  though  there  was 
a  great  emigration  of  Protestant  Huguenots  from  the  dragon- 
nades  and  persecution  of  Louis  XIV,  they  had  Holland  and 
England  close  at  hand  as  refuges,  and  their  industry,  skill,  and 
sobriety  went  mainly  to  strengthen  those  countries,  and  partic- 
ularly England.  A  few  of  them  founded  settlements  in  Caro- 
lina, but  these  did  not  remain  Erench;  they  fell  first  to  the 
Spanish  and  finally  to  the  English. 

The  Dutch  settlements,  with  the  Swedish,  also  succumbed  to 
Britain;  Nieuw  Amsterdam  became  British  in  1674,  and 
its  name  was  changed  to  New  York,  as  the  reader  may  learn 
very  cheerfully  in  Washington  Irving' s  Knickerbocker  s  His- 
tory of  New  York.  The  state  of  affairs  in  North  America 
in  1750  is  indicated  very  clearly  by  a  map  we  have 
adapted  from  one  in  Robinson's  Medieval  and  Modern 
Times.  The  British  power  was  established  along  the  east  coast 
from  Savannah  to  the  St.  Lawrence  River,  and  Newfoundland 
and  considerable  northern  areas,  the  Hudson  Bay  Company  ter- 
ritories, had  been  acquired  by  treaty  from  the  French.  The 
British  occupied  Barbados  (almost  our  oldest  possession)  in 
1605,  and  acquired  Jamaica,  the  Bahamas,  and  British  Hon- 
duras from  the  Spaniards.  But  France  was  pursuing  a  very 
dangerous  and  alarming  game,  a  game  even  more  dangerous 


804, 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


N.B.-  Sharling  does  not  indicate 
areas  actually  settled  (cf.  La£er 
maps)  but  aeruzral  extent  cf 
terrSories  daairued. 


H  UU50KA5CWSAY 


and  alarming  on  the  map  than  in  reality.  She  had  made  real 
settlements  in  Quebec  and  Montreal  to  the  north  and  at  New 
Orleans  in  the  south,  and  her  explorers  and  agents  had  pushed 
south  and  north,  making  treaties  with  the  American  Indians 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  805 

of  the  great  plains  and  setting  up  claims — without  setting  up 
towns — right  across  the  continent  behind  the  British.  But  the 
realities  of  the  case  are  not  adequately  represented  in  this  way. 
The  British  colonies  were  being  very  solidly  settled  by  a  good 
class  of  people;  they  already  numbered  a  population  of  over  a 
million ;  the  French  at  that  time  hardly  counted  a  tenth  of  that. 
They  had  a  number  of  brilliant  travellers  and  missionaries  at 
work,  but  no  substance  of  population  behind  them. 

Many  old  maps  of  America  in  this  period  are  still  to  be  found, 
maps  designed  to  scare  and  "rouse"  the  British  to  a  sense  of 
the  "designs  of  France"  in  America.  War  broke  out  in  1754, 
and  in  1759  the  British  and  Colonial  forces  under  General 
Wolfe  took  Quebec  and  completed  the  conquest  of  Canada  in 
the  next  year.  In  1763  Canada  was  finally  ceded  to  Britain. 
(But  the  western  part  of  the  rather  indefinite  region  of  Louisi- 
ana in  the  south,  named  after  Louis  XIV,  remained  outside  the 
British  sphere.  It  was  taken  over  by  Spain;  and  in  1800  it 
was  recovered  by  France.  Finally,  in  1803,  it  was  bought  from 
France  by  the  United  States  government.)  In  this  Canadian 
war  the  American  colonists  gained  a  considerable  experience 
of  the  military  art,  and  a  knowledge  of  British  military  or- 
ganization that  was  to  be  of  great  use  to  them  a  little  later. 

§  9 

It  was  not  only  in  America  that  the  French  and  British 
powers  clashed.  The  condition  of  India  at  this  time  was  one 
very  interesting  and  attractive  to  European  adventurers.  The 
great  Mongol  Empire  of  Baber,  Akbar,  and  Aurangzeb  was  now 
far  gone  in  decay.  What  had  happened  to  India  was  very 
parallel  to  what  had  happened  to  Germany.  The  Great  Mo- 
gul at  Delhi  in  India,  like  the  Holy  Roman  Emperor  in  Ger- 
many, was  still  legally  overlord,  but  after  the  death  of  Aurang- 
zeb he  exerted  only  a  nominal  authority  except  in  the  immediate 
neighbourhood  of  his  capital.  In  the  south-west  a  Hindu  peo- 
ple, the  Mahrat.tas,  had  risen  against  Islam,  restored  Brahmin- 
ism  as  the  ruling  religion,  and  for  a  time  extended  their  power 
over  the  whole  southern  triangle  of  India.  In  Rajputana  also 
the  rule  of  Islam  was  replaced  by  Brahminism,  and  at  Bhurt- 
pur  and  Jaipur  there  ruled  powerful  Rajput  princes.  In  Oudh 
there  was  a  Shiite  kingdom,  with  its  capital  at  Lucknow,  and 


806  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Bengal  was  also  a  separate  (Moslem)  kingdom.  Away  in  the 
Punjab  to  the  north  had  arisen  a  very  interesting  religious  body, 
the  Sikhs,  proclaiming  the  universal  rule  of  one  God  and  assail- 
ing both  the  Hindu  Vedas  and  the  Moslem  Koran.  Originally 
a  pacific  sect,  the  Sikhs  presently  followed  the  example  of  Islam, 
and  sought — at  first  very  disastrously  to  themselves — to  establish 
the  kingdom  of  God  by  the  sword.  And  into  this  confused  and 
disordered  India  there  presently  (1738)  came  an  invader  from 
the  north,  Nadir  Shah  (1736-47),  the  Turcoman  ruler  of 
Persia,  who  swept  down  through  the  Kyber  pass,  broke  every 
army  that  stood  in  his  way,  and  captured  and  sacked  Delhi, 
carrying  off  an  enormous  booty.  He  left  the  north  of  India 
so  utterly  broken,  that  in  the  next  twenty  years  there  were  no 
less  than  six  other  successful  plundering  raids  into  North  India 
from  Afghanistan,  which  had  become  an  independent  state  at  the 
death  of  Nadir  Shah.  For  a  time  Mahrattas  fought  with 
Afghans  for  the  rule  of  North  India ;  then  the  Mahratta  power 
broke  up  into  a  series  of  principalities,  Indore,  Gwalior,  Baroda, 
and  others.  .  .  . 

This  was  the  India  into  which  the  French  and  English  were 
thrusting  during  the  eighteenth  century.  A  succession  of  other 
European  powers  had  been  struggling  for  a  commercial  and 
political  footing  in  India  and  the  east  ever  since  Vasco  da 
Gama  had  made  his  memorable  voyage  round  the  Cape  to 
Calicut.  The  sea  trade  of  India  had  previously  been  in  the 
hands  of  the  Red  Sea  Arabs,  and  the  Portuguese  won  it  from 
them  in  a  series  of  sea  fights.  The  Portuguese  ships  were  the 
bigger,  and  carried  a  heavier  armament.  For  a  time  the  Por- 
tuguese held  the  Indian  trade  as  their  own,  and  Lisbon  outshone 
Venice  as  a  mart  for  oriental  spices;  the  seventeenth  century, 
however,  saw  the  Dutch  grasping  at  this  monopoly.  At  the 
crest  of  their  power  the  Dutch  had  settlements  at  the  Cape  of 
Good  Hope,  they  held  Mauritius,  they  had  two  establishments  in 
Persia,  twelve  in  India,  six  in  Ceylon,  and  all  over  the  East 
Indies  they  had  dotted  their  fortified  stations.  But  their  self- 
ish resolution  to  exclude  traders  of  any  other  European  na- 
tionality forced  the  Swedes,  Danes,  French,  and  English  into 
hostile  competition.  The  first  effectual  blows  at  their  overseas 
monopoly  were  struck  in  European  waters  by  the  victories  of 
Blake,  the  English  republican  admiral ;  and  by  the  opening  of 
the  eighteenth  century  both  the  English  and  French  were  in 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          807 

vigorous  competition  with  the  Dutch  for  trade  and  privileges 
throughout  India.  At  Madras,  Bombay,  and  Calcutta  the  Eng- 
lish established  their  headquarters;  Pondicherry  and  Chander- 
nagore  were  the  chief  French  settlements. 

At  first  all  these  European  powers  came  merely  as  traders, 
and  the  only  establishments  they  attempted  were  warehouses; 


The  chief  Foreign  Settlement  in, 
at-fae  endL  of  the 


but  the  unsettled  state  of  the  country,  and  the  unscrupulous 
methods  of  their  rivals,  made  it  natural  for  them  to  fortify 
and  arm  their  settlements,  and  this  armament  made  them  attrac- 
tive allies  of  the  various  warring  princes  who  now  divided  India. 
And  it  was  entirely  in  the  spirit  of  the  new  European  nationalist 
politics  that  when  the  French  took  one  side,  the  British  should 
take  another.  The  great  leader  upon  the  English  side  was 
Robert  Olive,  who  was  born  in  1725,  and  went  to  India  in  1743. 
His  chief  antagonist  was  Dupleix.  The  story  of  this  struggle 


808  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

throughout  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  too  long 
and  intricate  to  be  told  here.  By  1761  the  British  found  them- 
selves completely  dominant  in  the  Indian  peninsula.  At  Plas- 
sey  (1757)  and  at  Buxar  (1764)  their  armies  gained  striking 
and  conclusive  victories  over  the  army  of  Bengal  and  the  army 
of  Oudh.  The  Great  Mogul,  nominally  their  overlord,  became 
in  effect  their  puppet.  They  levied  taxes  over  great  areas; 
they  exacted  indemnities  for  real  or  fancied  opposition. 

These  successes  were  not  gained  directly  by  the  forces  of 
the  King  of  England ;  they  were  gained  by  the  East  India  Trad- 
ing Company,  which  had  been  originally  at  the  time  of  its 
incorporation  under  Queen  Elizabeth  no  more  than  a  company 
of  sea  adventurers.  Step  by  step  they  had  been  forced  to  raise 
troops  and  arm  their  ships.  And  now  this  trading  company, 
with  its  tradition  of  gain,  found  itself  dealing  not  merely  in 
spices  and  dyes  and  tea  and  jewels,  but  in  the  revenues  and 
territories  of  princes  and  the  destinies  of  India.  It  had  come 
to  buy  and  sell,  and  it  found  itself  achieving  a  tremendous 
piracy.  There  was  no  one  to  challenge  its  proceedings.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  its  captains  and  commanders  and  officials, 
nay,  even  its  clerks  and  common  soldiers,  came  back  to  England 
loaded  with  spoils?  Men  under  such  circumstances,  with  a 
great  and  wealthy  land  at  their  mercy,  could  not  determine 
what  they  might  or  might  not  do.  It  was  a  strange  land  to 
them,  with  a  strange  sunlight ;  its  brown  people  were  a  different 
race,  outside  their  range  of  sympathy ;  its  temples  and  buildings 
seemed  to  sustain  fantastic  standards  of  behaviour.  English- 
men at  home  were  perplexed  when  presently  these  generals  and 
officials  came  back  to  make  dark  accusations  against  each  other 
of  extortions  and  cruelties.  Upon  Clive  Parliament  passed  a 
vote  of  censure.  He  committed  suicide  in  1774.  In  1788 
Warren  Hastings,  a  second  great  Indian  administrator,  was 
impeached  and  acquitted  (1792).  It  was  a  strange  and  un- 
precedented situation  in  the  world's  history.  The  English  Par- 
liament found  itself  ruling  over  a  London  trading  company, 
which  in  its  turn  was  dominating  an  empire  far  greater  and 
more  populous  than  all  the  domains  of  the  British  crown.  To 
the  bulk  of  the  English  people  India  was  a  remote,  fantastic, 
almost  inaccessible  land,  to  which  adventurous  poor  young  men 
went  out,  to  return  after  many  years  very  rich  and  very  choleric 
old  gentlemen.  It  was  difficult  for  the  English  to  conceive  what 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  809 

the  life  of  these  countless  brown  millions  in  the  eastern  sunshine 
could  be.  Their  imaginations  declined  the  task.  India  re- 
mained romantically  unreal.  It  was  impossible  for  the  English, 
therefore,  to  exert  any  effective  supervision  and  control  over 
the  company's  proceedings. 

§   10 

And  while  the  great  peninsula  of  the  south  of  Asia  was  thus 
falling  under  the  dominion  of  the  English  sea  traders,  an  equally 
remarkable  reaction  of  Europe  upon  Asia  was  going  on  in  the 
north.  We  have  told  in  Chap.  XXXIII,  §  5c,  how  the  Christian 
states  of  Russia  recovered  their  independence  from  the  Golden 
Horde,  and  how  the  Tsar  of  Moscow  became  master  of  the  re- 
public of  Novgorod ;  and  in  §  5  of  this  chapter  we  have  told  of 
Peter  the  Great  joining  the  circle  of  Grand  Monarchs  and,  as 
it  were,  dragging  Russia  into  Europe.  The  rise  of  this  great 
central  power  of  the  old  world,  which  is  neither  altogether  of  the 
East  nor  altogether  of  the  West,  is  one  of  the  utmost  importance 
to  our  human  destiny.  We  have  also  told  in  the  same  chapter 
of  the  appearance  of  a  Christian  steppe  people,  the  Cossacks, 
who  formed  a  barrier  between  the  feudal  agriculture  of  Poland 
and  Hungary  to  the  west  and  the  Tartar  to  the  east.  The  Cos- 
sacks were  the  wild  east  of  Europe,  and  in  many  ways  not  un- 
like the  wild  west  of  the  United  States  in  the  middle  nineteenth 
century.  All  who  had  made  Russia  too  hot  to  hold  them, ;  crim- 
inals as  well  as  the  persecuted  innocent,'  rebellious  serfs,  re- 
ligious sectaries,  thieves,  vagabonds,  murderers,  sought  afcylum 
in  the  southern  steppes,  and  there  made  a  fresh  start  and  fought 
for  life  and  freedom  against  Pole,  Russian,  and  Tartar  alike. 
Doubtless  fugitives  from  the  Tartars  to  the  east  also  contributed 
to  the  Cossack  mixture.  Chief  among  these  new  nomad  tribes 
were  the  Ukraine  Cossacks  on  the  Dnieper  and  the  Don  Cossacks 
on  the  Don.  Slowly  these  border  folk  were  incorporated  in 
the  Russian  imperial  service,  much  as  the  Highland  clans  of 
Scotland  were  converted  into  regiments  by  the  British  govern- 
ment. New  lands  were  offered  them  in  Asia.  They  became  a 
weapon  against  the  dwindling  power  of  the  Mongolian  nomads, 
first  in  Turkestan  and  then  across  Siberia  as  far  as  the  Amur. 

The  decay  of  Mongol  energy  in  the  seventeenth  and  eight- 
eenth centuries  is  very  difficult  to  explain.  Within  two  or 
three  centuries  from  the  days  of  Jengis  and  Timurlane,  central 


810 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Asia  had  relapsed  from  a  period  of  world  ascendancy  to  ex- 
treme political  impotence.  Changes  of  climate,  unrecorded 
pestilences,  infections  of  a  malarial  type,  may  have  played  their 
part  in  this  recession — which  may  be  only  a  temporary  recession 
measured  by  the  scale  of  universal  history — of  the  Central  Asian 


South  of  nnmnnm  subject  to 
Tribute. 


Tj/.^'.svnQ  Sphere  of  French 
influence 


French,  settlements  undzr&ngf. 
British.       n 


INDIA 

izt 

1750 
* 


peoples.  Some  authorities  think  that  the  spread  of  Buddhist 
teaching  from  China  also  had  a  pacifying  influence  upon  them. 
At  any  rate,  by  the  sixteenth  century  the  Mongol  Tartar  and 
Turkish  peoples  were  no  longer  pressing  outward,  but  were 
being  invaded,  subjugated,  and  pushed  back  both  by  Christian 
Russia  in  the  west  and  by  China  in  the  east. 

All  through  the  seventeenth  century  the  Cossacks  were  spread- 
ing eastward  from  European   Russia,  and  settling  wherever 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  811 

they  found  agricultural  conditions.  Cordons  of  forts  and  sta- 
tions formed  a  moving  frontier  to  these  settlements  to  the  south, 
where  the  Turkomans  were  still  strong  and  active ;  to  the  north- 
east, however,  Russia  had  no  frontier  until  she  reached  right 
to  the  Pacific.  .  .  . 

At  the  same  time  China  was  in  a  phase  of  expansion.  In 
1644  the  Ming  Dynasty,  in  a  state  of  artistic  decay  and  greatly 
weakened  by  a  Japanese  invasion,  fell  to  Manchu  conquerors, 
a  people  apparently  identical  with  the  former  Kin  Dynasty, 
which  had  ruled  at  Pekin  over  North  China  until  the  days  of 
Jengis.  It  was  the  Manchus  who  imposed  the  pigtail  as  a  mark 
of  political  loyalty  upon  the  Chinese  population.  They  brought 
a  new  energy  into  Chinese  affairs,  and  their  northern  interests 
led  to  a  considerable  northward  expansion  of  the  Chinese  civ- 
ilization and  influence  into  Manchuria  and  Mongolia.  So  it 
was  that  by  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Russians 
and  Chinese  were  in  contact  in  Mongolia.  At  this  period 
China  ruled  eastern  Turkestan,  Tibet,  Nepal,  Burmah,  and 
Annam.  .  .  , 

We  have  mentioned  a  Japanese  invasion  of  China  (or  rather 
of  Korea).  Except  for  this  aggression  upon  China,  Japan  plays 
no  part  in  our  history  before  the  nineteenth  century.  Like 
China  under  the  Mings,  Japan  had  set  her  face  resolutely  against 
the  interference  of  foreigners  in  her  affairs.  She  was  a  country 
leading  her  own  civilized  life,  magically  sealed  against  intruders. 
We  have  told  little  of  her  hitherto  because  there  was  little  to 
tell.  Her  picturesque  and  romantic  history  stands  apart  from 
the  general  drama  of  human  affairs.  Her  population  was 
chiefly  a  Mongolian  population,  with  some  very  interesting 
white  people  of  a  Nordic  type,  the  Hairy  Ainu,  in  the  northern 
islands.  Her  civilization  seems  to  have  been  derived  almost 
entirely  from  Korea  and  China ;  her  art  is  a  special  development 
of  Chinese  art,  her  writing  an  adaptation  of  the  Chinese  script. 

§  11 

In  these  preceding  ten  sections  we  have  been  dealing  with  an 
age  of  division,  of  separated  nationalities.  We  have  already 
described  this  period  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
as  an  interregnum  in  the  progress  of  mankind  towards  a  world- 
wide unity.  Throughout  this  period  there  was  no  ruling  unify- 


812  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ing  idea  in  men's  minds.  The  impulse  of  the  empire  had  failed 
until  the  Emperor  was  no  more  than  one  of  a  number  of  com- 
peting princes,  and  the  dream  of  Christendom  also  was  a  fading 
dream.  The  developing  "powers"  jostled  one  another  through- 
out the  world;  hut  for  a  time  it  seemed  that  they  might  jostle 
one  another  indefinitely  without  any  great  catastrophe  to  man- 
kind. The  great  geographical  discoveries  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury had  so  enlarged  human  resources  that,  for  all  their  divi- 
sions, for  all  the  waste  of  their  wars  and  policies,  the  people 
of  Europe  enjoyed  a  considerable  and  increasing  prosperity. 
Central  Europe  recovered  steadily  from  the  devastation  of  the 
Thirty  Years'  War. 

Looking  back  upon  this  period,  which  came  to  its  climax 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  looking  back,  as  we  can  begin  to  do 
nowadays,  and  seeing  its  events  in  relation  to  the  centuries  that 
came  before  it  and  to  the  great  movements  of  the  present  time, 
we  are  able  to  realize  how  transitory  and  provisional  were  its 
political  forms  and  how  unstable  its  securities.  Provisional 
it  was  'as  no  other  age  has  been  provisional,  an  age  of  assimi- 
lation and  recuperation,  a  political  pause,  a  gathering  up  of 
the  ideas  of  men  and  the  resources  of  science  for  a  wider 
human  effort.  But  the  contemporary  mind  did  not  see 
it  in  that  light.  The  failure  of  the  great  creative  ideas  as 
they  had  been  formulated  in  the  Middle  Ages  had  left  human 
thought  for  a  time  destitute  of  the  guidance  of  creative  ideas; 
even  educated  and  imaginative  men  saw  the  world  undramati- 
cally ;  no  longer  as  an  interplay  of  effort  and  destiny,  but  as  the 
scene  in  which  a  trite  happiness  was  sought  and  the  milder  vir- 
tues were  rewarded.  It  was  not  simply  the  contented  and  con- 
servative-minded who,  in  a  world  of  rapid  changes,  were  under 
the  sway  of  this  assurance  of  an  achieved  fixity  of  human  condi- 
tions. Even  highly  critical  and  insurgent  intelligences,  in  de- 
fault of  any  sustaining  movements  in  the  soul  of  the  community, 
betrayed  the  same  disposition.  Political  life,  they  felt,  had 
ceased  to  be  the  urgent  and  tragic  thint,  it  had  once  been;  it  had 
become  a  polite  comedy.  The  eighteenth  was  a  century  of 
comedy — which  at  the  end  grew  grim.  It  is  inconceivable  that 
that  world  of  the  middle  eighteenth  century  could  have  produced 
a  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  a  Gautama,  a  Francis  of  Assisi,  an  Igna- 
tius of  Loyola.  If  one  may  imagine  an  eighteenth-century  John 
Huss,  it  is  impossible  to  imagine  anyone  with  sufficient  pas- 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  813 

sion  to  burn  him.  Until  the  stirrings  of  conscience  in  Britain 
that  developed  into  the  Methodist  revival  began,  we  can  detect 
scarcely  a  suspicion  that  there  still  remained  great  tasks  in 
hand  for  our  race  to  do,  that  enormous  disturbances  were  close 
at  hand,  or  that  the  path  of  man  through  space  and  time  was 
dark  with  countless  dangers,  and  must  to  the  end  remain  a 
high  and  terrible  enterprise. 

We  have  quoted  again  and  again  in  this  history  from  Gib- 
bon's Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Now  we  shall 
quote  from  it  for  the  last  time  and  bid  it  farewell,  for  we  have 
come  to  the  age  in  which  it  was  written.  Gibbon  was  born  in 
1737,  and  the  last  volume  of  his  history  was  published  in 
1787,  but  the  passage  we  shall  quote  was  probably  written  in 
the  year  1780.  Gibbon  was  a  young  man  of  delicate  health 
and  fairly  good  fortune;  he  had  a  partial  and  interrupted 
education  at  Oxford,  and  then  he  completed  his  studies  in  Gen- 
eva; on  the  whole  his  outlook  was  French  and  cosmopolitan 
rather  than  British,  and  he  was  much  under  the  intellectual 
influence  of  that  great  Frenchman  who  is  best  known  under  the 
name  of  Voltaire  ( Franc,  ois  Marie  Arouet  de  Voltaire,  1694- 
1778).  Voltaire  was  an  author  of  enormous  industry;  seventy 
volumes  of  him  adorn  the  present  writer's  shelves,  and  another 
edition  of  Voltaire's  works  runs  to  ninety-four ;  he  dealt  largely 
with  history  and  public  affairs,  and  he  corresponded  with 
Catherine  the  Great  of  Russia,  Frederick  the  Great  of  Prus- 
sia, Louis  XV,  and  most  of  the  prominent  people  of  the  time. 
Both  Voltaire  and  Gibbon  had  the  sense  of  history  strong  in 
them ;  both  have  set  out  very  plainly  and  fully  their  visions  of 
human  life;  and  it  is  clear  that  to  both  of  them  the  system  in 
which  they  lived,  the  system  of  monarchy,  of  leisurely  and 
privileged  gentlefolks,  of  rather  despised  industrial  and  trading 
people  and  of  downtrodden  and  negligible  labourers  and  poor 
and  common  people,  seemed  the  most  stably  established  way  of 
living  that  the  world  has  ever  seen.  They  postured  a  little  as 
republicans,  and  sneered  at  the  divine  pretensions  of  monarchy ; 
but  the  republicanism  that  appealed  to  Voltaire  was  the  crowned 
republicanism  of  the  Britain  of  those  days,  in  which  the  king 
was  simply  the  official  head,  the  first  and  greatest  of  the 
gentlemen. 

The  ideal  they  sustained  was  the  ideal  of  a  polite  and  polished 
world  in  which  men — men  of  quality,  that  is,  for  no  others 


814  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

counted — would  be  ashamed  to  be  cruel  or  gross  or  enthusiastic, 
in  which  the  appointments  'of  life  would  be  spacious  and  ele- 
gant, and  the  fear  of  ridicule  the  potent  auxiliary  of  the  law 
in  maintaining  the  decorum  and  harmonies  of  life.  Voltaire 
had  in  him  the  possibility  of  a  passionate  hatred  of  injustice, 
and  his  interventions  on  behalf  of  persecuted  or  ill-used  men 
are  the  high  lights  of  his  long  and  complicated  life-story.  And 
this  being  the  mental  disposition  of  Gibbon  and  Voltaire,  and 
of  the  age  in  which  they  lived,  it  is  natural  that  they  should 
find  the  existence  of  religion  in  the  world,  and  in  particular 
the  existence  of  Christianity,  a  perplexing  and  rather  unac- 
countable phenomenon.  The  whole  of  that  side  of  life  seemed 
to  them  a  kind  of  craziness  in  the  human  make-up.  Gibbon's 
great  history  is  essentially  an  attack  upon  Christianity  as  the 
operating  cause  of  the  decline  and  fall.  He  idealized  the  crude 
and  gross  plutocracy  of  Rome  into  a  world  of  fine  gentlemen 
upon  the  eighteenth-century  model,  and  told  how  it  fell  before 
the  Barbarian  from  without  because  of  the  decay  through  Chris- 
tianity within.  In  our  history  here  we  have  tried  to  set  that 
story  in  a  better  light.  To  Voltaire  official  Christianity  was 
"I'lnfame";  something  that  limited  people's  lives,  interfered 
with  their  thoughts,  persecuted  harmless  dissentients.  And  in- 
deed in  that  period  of  the  interregnum  there  was  very  little 
life  or  light  in  either  the  orthodox  Christianity  of  Rome  or  in 
the  orthodox  tame  churches  of  Russia  and  of  the  Protestant 
princes.  In  an  interregnum  incommoded  with  an  abundance  of 
sleek  parsons  and  sly  priests  it  was  hard  to  realize  what  fires  had 
once  blazed  in  the  heart  of  Christianity,  and  what  fires  of  po- 
litical and  religious  passion  might  still  blaze  in  the  hearts  of 
men. 

At  the  end  of  his  third  volume  Gibbon  completed  his  account 
of  the  breaking  up  of  the  Western  Empire.  He  then  raised  the 
question  whether  civilization  might  ever  undergo  again  a 
similar  collapse.  This  led  him  to  review  the  existing  state  of 
affairs  (1780)  and  to  compare  it  with  the  state  of  affairs  dur- 
ing the  decline  of  imperial  Rome.  It  will  be  very  convenient 
to  our  general  design  to  quote  some  passages  from  that  com- 
parison here,  for  nothing  could  better  illustrate  the  state  of 
mind  of  the  liberal  thinkers  of  Europe  at  the  crest  of  the  po- 
litical interregnum  of  the  age  of  the  Great  Powers,  before  the 
first  intimations  of  those  profound  political  and  social  forces 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  815 

of  disintegration  that  have  produced  at  length  the  dramatic 
interrogations  of  our  o$vn  times. 

"This  awful  revolution,"  wrote  Gibbon  of  the  Western  col- 
lapse, "may  be  usefully  applied  to  the  useful  instruction  of  the 
present  age.  It  is  the  duty  of  a  patriot  to  prefer  and 
promote  the  exclusive  interest  and  glory  of  his  native  coun- 
try; but  a  philosopher  may  be  permitted  to  enlarge  his 
views,  and  to  consider  Europe  as  one  great  republic,  whose 
various  inhabitants  have  attained  almost  the  same  level  of  po- 
liteness and  cultivation.  The  balance  of  power  will  continue 
to  fluctuate,  and  the  prosperity  of  our  own  or  the  neighbouring 
kingdoms  may  be  alternately  exalted  or  depressed;  but  these 
partial  events  cannot  essentially  injure  our  general  state  of 
happiness,  the  system  of  arts,  and  laws,  and  manners,  which 
so  advantageously  distinguish,  above  the  rest  of  mankind,  the 
Europeans  and  their  colonies.  The  savage  nations  of  the  globe 
are  the  common  enemies  of  civilized  society;  and  we  may  en- 
quire with  anxious  curiosity  whether  Europe  is  still  threatened 
with  a  repetition  of  those  calamities  which  formerly  oppressed 
the  arms  and  institutions  of  Rome.  Perhaps  the  same  reflec- 
tions will  illustrate  the  fall  of  that  mighty  empire  and  ex- 
plain the  probable  causes  of  our  actual  security. 

"The  Romans  were  ignorant  of  the  extent  of  their  danger, 
and  the  number  of  their  enemies.  Beyond  the  Rhine  and 
Danube,  the  northern  countries  of  Europe  and  Asia  were  filled 
with  innumerable  tribes  of  hunters  and  shepherds,  poor,  vora- 
cious, and  turbulent ;  bold  in  arms,  and  impatient  to  ravish  the 
fruits  of  industry.  The  Barbarian  world  was  agitated  by  the 
rapid  impulse  of  war;  and  the  peace  of  Gaul  or  Italy  was 
shaken  by  the  distant  revolutions  of  China.  The  Huns,  who 
fled  before  a  victorious  enemy,  directed  their  march  towards  the 
west;  and  the  torrent  was  swelled  by  the  gradual  accession  of 
captives  and  allies.  The  flying  tribes  who  yielded  to  the  Huns 
assumed  in  their  turn  the  spirit  of  conquest ;  the  endless  column 
of  barbarians  pressed  on  the  Roman  Empire  with  accumulated 
weight  and,  if  the  foremost  were  destroyed,  the  vacant  space 
was  instantly  replenished  by  new  assailants.  Such  formidable 
emigrations  can  no  longer  issue  from  the  North;  and  the  long 
repose,  which  has  been  imputed  to  the  decrease  of  population, 
is  the  Happy  consequence  of  the  progress  of  arts  and  agricul- 
ture. Instead  of  some  rude  villages,  thinly  scattered  among 


816  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

its  woods  and  morasses,  Germany  now  produces  a  list  of  two 
thousand  three  hundred  walled  towns;  the  Christian  kingdoms 
of  Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Poland  have  been  successively  estab- 
lished; and  the  Hanse  merchants,  with  the  Teutonic  knights, 
have  extended  their  colonies  along  the  coast  of  the  Baltic,  as 
far  as  the  Gulf  of  Finland.  From  the  Gulf  of  Finland  to  the 
Eastern  Ocean,  Russia  now  assumes  the  form  of  a  powerful 
and  civilized  empire.  The  plough,  the  loom,  and  the  forge  are 
introduced  on  the  banks  of  the  Volga,  the  Oby,  and  the  Lena ; 
and  the  fiercest  of  the  Tartar  hordes  have  been  taught  to  trem- 
ble and  obey.  .  .  . 

"The  Empire  of  Rome  was  firmly  established  by  the  singular 
and  perfect  coalition  of  its  members.  .  .  .  But  this  union  was 
purchased  by  the  loss  of  national  freedom  and  military  spirit ; 
and  the  servile  provinces,  destitute  of  life  and  motion,  expected 
their  safety  from  the  mercenary  troops  and  governors,  who  were 
directed  by  the  orders  of  a  distant  court.  The  happiness  of  a 
hundred  millions  depended  on  the  personal  merit  of  one  or  two 
men,  perhaps  children,  whose  minds  were  corrupted  by  educa- 
tion, luxury,  and  despotic  power.  Europe  is  now  divided  into 
twelve  powerful,  though  unequal  kingdoms,  three  respectable 
commonwealths,  and  a  variety  of  smaller,  though  independent, 
states;  the  chances  of  royal  and  ministerial  talents  are  multi- 
plied, at  least  with  the  number  of  its  rulers;  and  a  Julian  l 
or  Semiramis  2  may  reign  in  the  north,  while  Arcadius  and 
Honorius  3  again  slumber  on  the  thrones  of  the  House  of  Bour- 
bon. The  abuses  of  tyranny  are  restrained  by  the  mutual  in- 
fluence of  fear  and  shame;  republics  have  acquired  order  and 
stability;  monarchies  have  imbibed  the  principles  of  freedom, 
or,  at  least,  of  moderation ;  and  some  sense  of  honour  and  jus- 
tice is  introduced  into  the  most  defective  constitutions  by  the 
general  manners  of  the  times.  In  peace,  the  progress  of  knowl- 
edge and  industry  is  accelerated  by  the  emulation  of  so  many 
active  rivals :  in  war,  the  European  forces  are  exercised  by  tem- 
perate and  undecisive  contests.  If  a  savage  conqueror  should 
issue  from  the  deserts  of  Tartary,  he  must  repeatedly  vanquish 
the  robust  peasants  of  Russia,  the  numerous  armies  of  Ger- 
many, the  gallant  nobles  of  France,  and  the  intrepid  freemen 

1  Frederick   the  Great  of  Prussia. 

3  Catherine  the  Great  of  Russia. 

9  kpuis  XVI  of  France  and  Charles  III  of  Spain, 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  817 


of  Britain;  who,  perhaps,  might  confederate  for  their  common 
defence.  Should  the  victorious  Barbarians  carry  slavery  and 
desolation  as  far  as  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  ten  thousand  vessels 
would  transport  beyond  their  pursuit  the  remains  of  civilized 
society ;  and  Europe  would  revive  and  flourish  in  the  American 
world  which  is  already  filled  with  her  colonies  and  institutions. 

"Cold,  poverty,  and  a  life  of  danger  and  fatigue  fortify  the 
strength  and  courage  of  Barbarians.  In  every  age  they  have  op- 
pressed the  polite  and  peaceful  nations  of  China,  India,  and 
Persia,  who  neglected,  and  still  neglect,  to  counterbalance  these 
natural  powers  by  the  resources  of  military  art.  The  warlike 
states  of  antiquity,  Greece,  Macedonia,  and  Rome,  educated 
a  race  of  soldiers ;  exercised  their  bodies,  disciplined  their  cour- 
age, multiplied  their  forces  by  regular  evolutions,  and  con- 
verted the  iron  which  they  possessed  into  strong  and  serviceable 
weapons.  But  this  superiority  insensibly  declined  with  their 
laws  and  manners;  and  the  feeble  policy  of  Constantine  and 
his  successors  armed  and  instructed,  for  the  ruin  of  the  em- 
pire, the  rude  valour  of  the  Barbarian  mercenaries.  The  mili- 
tary art  has  been  changed  by  the  invention  of  gunpowder ;  which 
enables  man  to  command  the  two  most  powerful  agents  of 
nature,  air  and  fire.  Mathematics,  chemistry,  mechanics,  archi- 
tecture, have  been  applied  to  the  service  of  war;  and  the  ad- 
verse parties  oppose  to  each  other  the  most  elaborate  modes  of 
attack  and  of  defence.  Historians  may  indignantly  observe  that 
the  preparations  of  a  siege  would  found  and  maintain  a  flourish- 
ing colony;  yet  we  cannot  be  displeased  that  the  subversion  of 
a  city  should  be  a  work  of  cost  and  difficulty,  or  that  an  indus- 
trious people  should  be  protected  by  those  arts,  which  survive 
and  supply  the  decay  of  military  virtue.  Cannon  and  fortifica- 
tions now  form  an  impregnable  barrier  against  the  Tartar 
horse  l ;  and  Europe  is  secure  from  any  future  irruption  of 
Barbarians ;  since,  before  they  can  conquer,  they  must  cease  to 
be  barbarous.  .  .  . 

"Should  these  speculations  be  found  doubtful  or  fallacious, 
there  still  remains  a  more  humble  source  of  comfort  and  hope. 
The  discoveries  of  ancient  and  modern  navigators,  and  the  do- 
mestic history,  or  tradition,  of  the  most  enlightened  nations, 
represent  the  human  savage,  naked  both  in  mind  and  body,  and 

1  Gibbon  forgets  here  that  cannon  and  the  fundamentals  of  modern 
military  method  came  to  Europe  With  the  Mongols. 


818  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

destitute  of  laws,  of  arts,  of  ideas,  and  almost  of  language. 
From  this  abject  condition,  perhaps  the  primitive  and  universal 
state  of  man,  he  has  gradually  arisen  to  command  the  animals, 
to  fertilize  the  earth,  to  traverse  the  ocean,  and  to  measure  the 
heavens.  His  progress  in  the  improvement  and  exercise  of  his 
mental  and  corporeal  faculties  has  been  irregular  and  various, 
infinitely  slow  in  the  beginning,  and  increasing  by  degrees  with 
redoubled  velocity ;  ages  of  laborious  ascent  have  been  followed 
by  a  moment  of  rapid  downfall ;  and  the  several  climates  of  the 
globe  have  felt  the  vicissitudes  of  light  and  darkness.  Yet  the 
experience  of  four  thousand  years  should  enlarge  our  hopes,  and 
diminish  our  apprehensions;  we  cannot  determine  to  what 
height  the  human  species  may  aspire  in  their  advances  towards 
perfection;  but  it  may  safely  be  presumed  that  no  people,  un- 
less the  face  of  nature  is  changed,  will  relapse  into  their  original 
barbarism. 

"Since  the  first  discovery  of  the  arts,  war,  commerce,  and 
religious  zeal  have  diffused,  among  the  savages  of  the  Old  and 
New  World,  those  inestimable  gifts,  they  have  been  successively 
propagated ;  they  can  never  be  lost.  We  may  therefore  acquiesce 
in  the  pleasing  conclusion  that  every  age  of  the  world  has  in- 
creased, and  still  increases,  the  real  wealth,  the  happiness,  the 
knowledge,  and  perhaps  the  virtue,  of  the  human  race." 

§  12 

One  of  the  most  interesting  aspects  of  this  story  of  Europe  in 
the  seventeenth  and  earlier  eighteenth  century  during  the  phase 
of  the  Grand  and  Parliamentary  Monarchies,  is  the  compara- 
tive quiescence  of  the  peasants  and  workers.  The  insurrection- 
ary fires  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries 
seem  to  have  died  down.  The  acute  economic  clashes  of  the 
earlier  period  had  been  mitigated  by  rough  adjustments.  The 
discovery  of  America  had  revolutionized  and  changed  the  scale 
of  business  and  industry,  had  brought  a  vast  volume  of  pre- 
cious metal  for  money  into  Europe,  had  increased  and  varied 
employment.  For  a  time  life  and  work  ceased  to  be  intolerable 
to  the  masses  of  the  poor.  This  did  not,  of  course,  prevent 
much  individual  misery  and  discontent;  the  poor  we  have  al- 
ways had  with  us,  but  this  misery  and  discontent  was  divided 
and  scattered.  It  became  inaudible. 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS          819 

In  the  earlier  period  the  common  people  had  had  an  idea  to 
crystallize  upon,  the  idea  of  Christian  communism.  They  had 
found  an  educated  leadership  in  the  dissentient  priests  and 
doctors  of  the  Wycliffe  type.  As  the  movement  for  a  revival 
in  Christianity  spent  its  force,  as  Lutheranism  fell  back  for 
leadership  from  Jesus  upon  the  Protestant  Princes,  this  con- 
tact and  reaction  of  the  fresher  minds  of  the  educated  class 
upon  the  illiterate  mass  was  interrupted.  However  numerous 
a  downtrodden  class  may  be,  and  however  extreme  its  miseries, 
it  will  never  be  able  to  make  an  effective  protest  until  it  achieves 
solidarity  by  the  development  of  some  common  general  idea. 
Educated  men  and  men  of  ideas  are  more  necessary  to  a  popular 
political  movement  than  to  any  other  political  process.  A  mon- 
archy learns  by  ruling,  and  an  oligarchy  of  any  type  has  the 
education  of  affairs ;  but  the  common  man,  the  peasant  or  toiler, 
has  no  experience  in  large  matters,  and  can  exist  politically 
only  through  the  services,  devotion,  and  guidance  of  educated 
men.  The  Reformation,  the  Reformation  that  succeeded,  the 
Reformation  that  is  of  the  Princes,  by  breaking  up  educational 
facilities,  largely  destroyed  the  poor  scholar  and  priest  class 
whose  persuasion  of  the  crowd  had  rendered  the  Reformation 
possible. 

The  Princes  of  the  Protestant  countries  when  they  seized 
upon  the  national  churches  early  apprehended  the  necessity  of 
gripping  the  universities  also.  Their  idea  of  education  was 
the  idea  of  capturing  young  clever  people  for  the  service  of  their 
betters.  Beyond  that  they  were  disposed  to  regard  education 
as  a  mischievous  thing.  The  only  way  to  an  education,  therefore, 
for  a  poor  man  was  through  patronage.  Of  course  there  was  a 
parade  of  encouragement  towards  learning  in  all  the  Grand 
Monarchies,  a  setting  up  of  Academies  and  Royal  Societies,  but 
these  benefited  only  a  small  class  of  subservient  scholars.  The 
church  also  had  learnt  to  distrust  the  educated  poor  man.  In 
the  great  aristocratic  "crowned  republic"  of  Britain  there  was 
the  same  shrinkage  of  educational  opportunity.  "Both  the  an- 
cient universities,"  says  Hammond,  in  his  account  of  the  eight- 
eenth century,  "were  the  universities  of  the  rich.  There  is  a 
passage  in  Macaulay  describing  the  state  and  pomp  of  Oxford 
at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century,  'when  her  Chancellor,  the 
Venerable  Duke  of  Ormonde,  sat  in  his  embroidered  mantle  on 
his  throne  under  the  painted  ceiling  of  the  Sheldonian  theatre, 


820  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

surrounded  by  hundreds  of  graduates  robed  according  to  their 
rank,  while  the  noblest  youths  of  England  were  solemnly  pre- 
sented to  him  as  candidates  for  academical  honours/  The  uni- 
versity was  a  power,  not  in  the  sense  in  which  that  could  be 
said  of  a  university  like  the  old  university  of  Paris,  whose  learn- 
ing could  make  Popes  tremble,  but  in  the  sense  that  the  univer- 
sity was  part  of  the  recognized  machinery  of  aristocracy.  What 
was  true  of  the  universities  was  true  of  the  public  schools. 
Education  in  England  was  the  nursery  not  of  a  society,  but  of 
an  order ;  not  of  a  state,  but  of  a  race  of  owner-rulers."  The  mis- 
sionary spirit  had  departed  from  education  throughout  Europe. 
To  that  quite  as  much  as  to  the  amelioration  of  things  by  a  dif- 
fused prosperity,  this  phase  of  quiescence  among  the  lower 
classes  is  to  be  ascribed.  They  had  lost  brains  and  speech,  and 
they  were  fed.  The  community  was  like  a  pithed  animal  in  the 
hands  of  the  governing  class.1 

Moreover,  there  had  been  considerable  changes  in  the  propor- 
tions of  class  to  class.  One  of  the  most  difficult  things  for  the 
historian  to  trace  is  the  relative  amount  of  the  total  property 
of  the  community  held  at  any  time  by  any  particular  class  in 
that  community.  These  things  fluctuate  very  rapidly.  The 
peasant  wars  of  Europe  indicate  a  phase  of  comparatively  con- 
centrated property  when  large  masses  of  people  could  feel  them- 
selves expropriated  and  at  a  common  disadvantage,  and  so  take 
mass  action.  This  was  the  time  of  the  rise  and  prosperity  of 
the  Fuggers  and  their  like,  a  time  of  international  finance. 
Then  with  the  vast  importation  of  silver  and  gold  and  com- 
modities into  Europe  from  America,  there  seems  to  have  been 
a  restoration  of  a  more  diffused  state  of  wealth.  The  poor 
were  just  as  miserable  as  ever,  but  there  were  perhaps  not  so 
many  poor  relatively,  and  they  were  broken  up  into  a  variety 
of  types  without  any  ideas  in  common.  In  Great  Britain  the 
agricultural  life  which  had  been  dislocated  by  the  confiscations 
of  the  Reformation  had  settled  down  again  into  a  system  of 
tenant  farming  under  great  landowners.  Side  by  side  with 
the  large  estates  there  was  still,  however,  much  common  land 

1  "Our  present  public  school  system  is  candidly  based  on  training  a 
dominant  master  class.  But  the  uprising  of  the  workers  and  modern 
conditions  are  rapidly  making  the  dominant  method  unworkable.  .  .  . 
The  change  in  the  aim  of  schools  will  transform  all  the  organizations  and 
methods  of  schools,  and  my  belief  is  that  this  change  will  make  the  new  era." 
— F.  W.  Sanderson,  Head  Master  of  Oundle,  in  an  address  at  Leeds,  Feb- 
ruary 16th,  1920. 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  821 

for  pasturing  the  beasts  of  the  poorer  villagers,  and  much  land 
cultivated  in  strips  upon  communal  lines.  The  middling  sort 
of  man,  and  even  the  poorer  sort  of  man  upon  the  land,  were 
leading  an  endurable  existence  in  1700.  The  standard  of  life, 
the  idea,  that  is,  of  what  is  an  endurable  existence,  was,  how- 
ever, rising  during  the  opening  phase  of  Grand  Monarchy; 
after  a  time  the  process  of  the  upward  concentration  of  wealth 
seems  to  have  been  resumed,  the  larger  landowners  began  to 
acquire  and  crowd  out  the  poorer  free  cultivators,  and  the  pro- 
portion of  poor  people  and  of  people  who  felt  they  were  lead- 
ing impoverished  lives  increased  again.  The  bigger  men  were 
unchallenged  rulers  of  Great  Britain,  and  they  set  themselves 
to  enact  laws,  the  Enclosure  Acts,  that  practically  confiscated  the 
unenclosed  and  common  lands,  mainly  for  the  benefit  of  the 
larger  landowners.  The  smaller  men  sank  to  the  level  of  wage 
workers  upon  the  land  over  which  they  had  once  possessed  rights 
of  cultivation  and  pasture. 

The  peasant  in  France  and  upon  the  Continent  generally  was 
not  so  expropriated;  his  enemy  was  not  the  landlord,  but  the 
taxgatherer;  he  was  squeezed  on  his  land  instead  of  being 
squeezed  off  it. 

As  the  eighteenth  century  progressed,  it  is  apparent  in  the 
literature  of  the  time  that  what  to  do  with  "the  poor77  was  again 
exercising  men's  thoughts.  We  find  such  active-minded  Eng- 
lish writers  as  Defoe  (1659-1731)  and  Fielding  (1707-54) 
deeply  exercised  by  this  problem.  But  as  yet  there  is  no  such 
revival  of  the  communistic  and  equalitarian  ideas  of  primitive 
Christianity  as  distinguished  the  time  of  Wycliffe  and  John 
Huss.  Protestantism  in  breaking  up  the  universal  church  had 
for  a  time  broken  up  the  idea  of  a  universal  human  solidarity. 
Even  if  the  universal  church  of  the  Middle  Ages  had  failed  al- 
together to  realize  that  idea,  it  had  at  any  rate  been  the  symbol 
of  that  idea. 

Defoe  and  Fielding  were  men  of  a  livelier  practical  imagina- 
tion than  Gibbon,  and  they  realized  something  of  the  economic 
processes  that  were  afoot  in  their  time.  So  did  Oliver  Gold- 
smith (1728-74) ;  his  Deserted  Village  (1770)  is  a  pamphlet 
on  enclosures  disguised  as  a  poem.  But  Gibbon's  circumstances 
had  never  brought  economic  facts  very  vividly  before  his  eyes , 
he  saw  the  world  as  a  struggle  between  barbarism  and  civiliza- 
tion, but  he  perceived  nothing  of  that  other  struggle  over  which 


822  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

he  floated,  the  mute,  unconscious  struggle  of  the  commonalty 
against  able,  powerful,  rich,  and  selfish  men.  He  did  not  per- 
ceive the  accumulation  of  stresses  that  were  presently  to  strain 
and  break  up  all  the  balance  .of  his  "twelve  powerful,  though 
unequal,  kingdoms,"  his  "three  respectable  commonwealths," 
and  their  rag,  tag,  and  bobtail  of  independent  minor  princes, 
reigning  dukes,  and  so  forth.  Even  the  civil  war  that  had  begun 
in  the  British  colonies  in  America  did  not  rouse  him  to  the 
nearness  of  what  we  now  call  "Democracy." 

From  what  we  have  been  saying  hitherto,  the  reader  may 
suppose  that  the  squeezing  of  the  small  farmer  and  the  peasant 
off  the  land  by  the  great  landowners,  the  mere  grabbing  of  com- 
mons and  the  concentration  of  property  in  the  hands  of  a  power- 
ful privileged  and  greedy  class,  was  all  that  was  happening  to 
the  English  land  in  the  eighteenth  century.  So  we  do  but  state 
the  worse  side  of  the  change.  Concurrently  with  this  change 
of  ownership  there  was  going  on  a  great  improvement  in  agri- 
culture. There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  methods  of  cultiva- 
tion pursued  by  the  peasants,  squatters,  and  small  farmers  were 
antiquated,  wasteful,  and  comparatively  unproductive,  and  that 
the  larger  private  holdings  and  estates  created  by  the  Enclo- 
sure Acts  were  much  more  productive  (one  authority  says 
twenty  times  more  productive)  than  the  old  ways.  The  change 
was  perhaps  a  necessary  one  and  the  evil  of  it  was  not  that  it 
was  brought  about,  but  that  it  was  brought  about  so  as  to  in- 
crease both  wealth  and  the  numbers  of  the  poor.  Its  benefits 
were  intercepted  by  the  bigger  private  owners.  The  community 
was  injured  to  the  great  profit  of  this  class. 

And  here  we  come  upon  one  of  the  chief  problems  of  our 
lives  at  the  present  time,  the  problem  of  the  deflection  of  the 
profits  of  progress.  For  two  hundred  years  there  has  been, 
mainly  under  the  influence  of  the  spirit  of  science  and  enquiry, 
a  steady  improvement  in  the  methods  of  production  of  almost 
everything  that  humanity  requires.  If  our  sense  of  community 
and  our  social  science  were  equal  to  the  tasks  required  of  them, 
there  can  be  little  question  that  this  great  increment  in  pro- 
duction would  have  benefited  the  whole  community,  would  have 
given  everyone  an  amount  of  education,  leisure,  and  freedom 
such  as  mankind  had  never  dreamt  of  before.  But  though  the 
common  standard  of  living  has  risen,  the  rise  has  been  on  a 
scale  disproportionately  small.  The  rich  have  developed  a 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  823 

freedom  and  luxury  unknown  in  the  world  hitherto,  and  there 
has  been  an  increase  in  the  proportion  of  rich  people  and  stag- 
nantly prosperous  and  unproductive  people  in  the  community; 
but  that  also  fails  to  account  for  the  full  benefit.  There  has  been 
much  sheer  waste.  \7ast  accumulations  of  material  and  energy 
have  gone  into  warlike  preparations  and  warfare.  Much  has 
been  devoted  to  the  futile  efforts  of  unsuccessful  business  com- 
petition. Huge  possibilities  have  remained  undeveloped  be- 
cause of  the  opposition  of  owners,  forestallers,  and  speculators 
to  their  economical  exploitation.  The  good  things  that  science 
and  organization  have  been  bringing  within  the  reach  of  man- 
kind have  not  been  taken  methodically  and  used  to  their  utmost, 
but  they  have  been  scrambled  for,  snatched  at,  seized  upon  by 
gambling  adventurers  and  employed  upon  selfish  and  vain  ends. 
The  eighteenth  century  in  Europe,  and  more  particularly  in 
Great  Britain  and  Poland,  was  the  age  of  private  ownership. 
"Private  enterprise,"  which  meant  in  practice  that  everyone 
was  entitled  to  get  everything  he  could  out  of  the  business  of 
the  community,  reigned  supreme.  ~No  sense  of  obligation  to 
the  state  in  business  matters  is  to  be  found  in  the  ordinary 
novels,  plays,  and  such-like  representative  literature  of  the 
time.  Everyone  is  out  "to  make  his  fortune,"  there  is  no 
recognition  that  it  is  wrong  to  be  an  unproductive  parasite  on 
the  community,  and  still  less  that  a  financier  or  merchant  or 
manufacturer  can  ever  be  overpaid  for  his  services  to  mankind. 
This  was  the  moral  atmosphere  of  the  time,  and  those  lords 
and  gentlemen  who  grabbed  the  people's  commons,  assumed 
possession  of  the  mines  under  their  lands,  and  crushed  down 
the  yeoman  farmers  and  peasants  to  the  status  of  pauper 
labourers,  had  no  idea  that  they  were  living  anything  but  highly 
meritorious  lives. 

Concurrently  with  this  change  in  Great  Britain  from  tradi- 
tional patch  agriculture  and  common  pasture  to  large  and  more 
scientific  agriculture,  very  great  changes  were  going  on  in  the 
manufacture  of  commodities.  In  these  changes  Great  Britain 
was,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  leading  the  world.  Hitherto, 
throughout  the  whole  course  of  history  from  the  beginnings  of 
civilization,  manufactures,  building,  and  industries  generally 
had  been  in  the  hands  of  craftsmen  and  small  masters  who 
worked  in  their  own  houses.  They  had  been  organized  in 
guilds,  and  were  mostly  their  own  employers.  They  formed 


824.  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

an  essential  and  permanent  middle  class.  There  were  capi- 
talists among  them,  who  let  out  looms  and  the  like,  supplied 
material,  and  took  the  finished  product,  but  they  were  not  big 
capitalists.  There  had  been  no  rich  manufacturers.  The  rich 
men  of  the  world  before  this  time  had  been  great  landowners 
or  money-lenders  and  money  manipulators  or  merchants.  But 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  workers  in  certain  industries  began 
to  be  collected  together  into  factories  in  order  to  produce  things 
in  larger  quantities  through  a  systematic  division  of  labour,  and 
the  employer,  as  distinguished  from  the  master  worker,  began 
to  be  a  person  of  importance.  Moreover,  mechanical  inven- 
tion was  producing  machines  that  simplified  the  manual  work 
of  production,  and  were  capable  of  being  driven  by  water 
power  and  presently  by  steam.  In  1765  Watt's  steam  en- 
gine was  constructed,  a  very  important  date  in  the  history  oi 
industrialism. 

The  cotton  industry  was  one  of  the  first  to  pass  into  factory 
production  (originally  with  water-driven  machinery).  The 
woollen  industry  followed.  At  the  same  time  iron  smelting, 
which  had  been  restrained  hitherto  to  small  methods  by  the 
use  of  charcoal,  resorted  to  coke  made  from  coal,  and  the  coal 
and  iron  industries  also  began  to  expand.  The  iron  industry 
shifted  from  the  wooded  country  of  Sussex  and  Surrey  to  the 
coal  districts.  By  1800  this  change-over  of  industry  from  a 
small  scale  business  with  small  employers  to  a  large  scale  pro- 
duction under  big  employers  was  well  in  progress.  Every- 
where there  sprang  up  factories  using  first  water,  then  steam 
power.  It  was  a  change  of  fundamental  importance  in  human 
economy.  From  the  dawn  of  history  the  manufacturer  and 
craftsman  had  been,  as  we  have  said,  a  sort  of  middle-class 
townsman.  The  machine  and  the  employer  now  superseded  his 
skill,  and  he  either  became  an  employer  of  his  fellows,  and 
grew  towards  wealth  and  equality  with  the  other  rich  classes, 
or  he  remained  a  worker  and  sank  very  rapidly  to  the  level  of 
a  mere  labourer.  This  great  change  in  human  affairs  is  known 
as  the  Industrial  Revolution.  Beginning  in  Great  Britain,  it 
spread  during  the  nineteenth  century  throughout  the  world. 

As  the  Industrial  Revolution  went  on,  a  great  gulf  opened 
between  employer  and  employed.  In  the  past  every  manufac- 
turing worker  had  the  hope  of  becoming  an  independent  mas- 
ter- Even  the  slave  craftsmen  of  Babylon  and  Rome  were 


PRINCES,  PARLIAMENTS,  AND  POWERS  825 

protected  by  laws  that  enabled  them  to  save  and  buy  their 
freedom  and  to  set  up  for  themselves.  But  now  a  factory  and 
its  engines  and  machines  became  a  vast  and  costly  thing  meas- 
ured by  the  scale  of  the  worker's  pocket.  Wealthy  men  had 
to  come  together  to  create  an  enterprise;  credit  and  plant,  that 
is  to  say,  "Capital,"  were  required.  "Setting  up  for  oneself" 
ceased  to  be  a  normal  hope  for  an  artisan.  The  worker  was 
henceforth  a  worker  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  Besides  the 
landlords  and  merchants  and  the  money-dealers  who  financed 
trading  companies  and  lent  their  money  to  the  merchants  and 
the  state,  there  arose  now  this  new  wealth  of  industrial  capital 
— a  new  sort  of  power  in  the  state. 

Of  the  working  out  of  these  beginnings  we  shall  tell  later. 
The  immediate  effect  of  the  industrial  revolution  upon  the 
countries  to  which  it  came,  was  to  cause  a  vast,  distressful  shift- 
ing and  stirring  of  the  mute,  uneducated,  leaderless,  and  now 
more  and  more  propertyless  common  population.  The  small 
cultivators  and  peasants,  ruined  and  dislodged  by  the  Enclosure 
Acts,  drifted  towards  the  new  manufacturing  regions,  and  there 
they  joined  the  families  of  the  impoverished  and  degraded 
craftsmen  in  the  factories.  Great  towns  of  squalid  houses  came 
into  existence.  Nobody  seems  to  have  noted  clearly  what  was 
going  on  at  the  time.  It  is  the  keynote  of  "private  enterprise" 
to  mind  one's  own  business,  secure  the  utmost  profit,  and  dis- 
regard any  other  consequences.  Ugly  great  factories  grew  up, 
built  as  cheaply  as  possible,  to  hold  as  many  machines  and 
workers  as  possible.  Around  them  gathered  the  streets  of 
workers'  homes,  built  at  the  cheapest  rate,  without  space,  with- 
out privacy,  barely  decent,  and  let  at  the  utmost  rent  that  could 
be  exacted.  These  new  industrial  centres  were  at  first  without 
schools,  without  churches.  .  .  . 

The  English  gentleman  of  the  closing  decades  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  read  Gibbon's  third  volume  and  congratulated 
himself  that  there  was  henceforth  no  serious  fear  of  the  Bar- 
barians, with  this  new  barbarism  growing  up,  with  this  meta- 
morphosis of  his  countrymen  into  something  dark  and  desperate, 
in  full  progress,  within  an  easy  walk  perhaps  of  his  door. 


XXXVI 

THE  NEW  DEMOCEATIC  EEPUBLICS  OF  AMEKICA 
AND  FKANCE 

§  1.  Inconveniences  of  the  Great  Power  System.  §  2.  The 
Thirteen  Colonies  Before  Their  Revolt.  §  3.  Civil  War  Is 
Forced  Upon  the  Colonies.  §  4.  The  War  of  Independence. 
§  5.  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  §  6.  Primitive 
Features  of  the  United  States  Constitution.  §  7.  Revolu- 
tionary Ideas  in  France.  §  8.  The  Revolution  of  the  Year 
1789.  §  9.  The  French  "Crowned^  Republic"  of  '89-91. 
§  10.  The  Revolution  of  the  Jacobins.  §11.  The  Jacobin 
Republic,  1792-94.  §  12.  The  Directory.  §  13.  The  Pause 
in  Reconstruction  and  the  Dawn  of  Modern  Socialism. 

§1 

WHEN  Gibbon,  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  was 
congratulating  the  world  of  refined  and  educated  peo- 
ple that  the  age  of  great  political  and  social  catas- 
trophes was  past,  he  was  neglecting  many  signs  which  we — 
in  the  wisdom  of  accomplished  facts — could  have  told  him 
portended  far  heavier  jolts  and  dislocations  than  any  he  fore- 
saw. We  have  told  how  the  struggle  of  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth-century princes  for  ascendancies  and  advantages  de- 
veloped into  a  more  cunning  and  complicated  struggle  of  foreign 
offices,  masquerading  as  idealized  "Great  Powers,"  as  the  eight- 
eenth century  wore  on.  The  intricate  and  pretentious  art  of 
diplomacy  developed.  The  "Prince"  ceased  to  be  a  single  and 
secretive  Machiavellian  schemer,  and  became  merely  the 
crowned  symbol  of  a  Machiavellian  scheme.  Prussia,  Russia, 
and  Austria  fell  upon  and  divided  Poland.  France  was  baffled 
in  profound  schemes  against  Spain.  Britain  circumvented  the 
"designs  of  France"  in  America  and  acquired  Canada,  and 
got  the  better  of  France  in  India.  And  then  a  remarkable  thing 
occurred,  a  thing  very  shocking  to  European  diplomacy.  The 
British  colonies  in  America  flatly  refused  to  have  further  part 

826 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  827 

or  lot  in  this  game  of  "Great  Powers."  They  objected  that  they 
had  no  voice  and  no  great  interest  in  these  European  schemes 
and  conflicts,  and  they  refused  to  bear  any  portion  of  the 
burthen  of  taxation  these  foreign  policies  entailed.  "Taxation 
without  representation  is  tyranny";  this  was  their  dominant 
idea. 

Of  course  this  decision  to  separate  did  not  flash  out  complete 
and  finished  from  the  American  mind  at  the  beginning  of  these 
troubles.  In  America  in  the  eighteenth  century,  just  as  in 
England  in  the  seventeenth,  there  was  an  entire  willingness, 
indeed  a  desire  on  the  part  of  ordinary  men,  to  leave  foreign 
affairs  in  the  hands  of  the  king  and  his  ministers.  But  there 
was  an  equally  strong  desire  on  the  part  of  ordinary  men  to 
be  neither  taxed  nor  interfered  with  in  their  ordinary  pursuits. 
These  are  incompatible  wishes.  Common  men  cannot  shirk 
world  politics  and  at  the  same  time  enjoy  private  freedom;  but 
it  has  taken  them  countless  generations  to  learn  this.  The 
first  impulse  in  the  American  revolt  against  the  government  in 
Great  Britain  was  therefore  simply  a  resentment  against,  the 
taxation  and  interference  that  followed  necessarily  from  "for- 
eign policy"  without  any  clear  recognition  of  what  was  in- 
volved in  that  objection.  It  was  only  when  the  revolt  was  con- 
summated that  the  people  of  the  American  colonies  recognized 
at  all  clearly  that  they  had  repudiated  the  Great  Power  view  of 
life.  The  sentence  in  which  that  repudiation  was  expressed 
was  Washington's  injunction  to  "avoid  entangling  alliances." 
For  a  full  century  the  united  colonies  of  Great  Britain  in  North 
America,  liberated  and  independent  as  the  United  States  of 
America,  stood  apart  altogether  from  the  blood-stained  intrigues 
and  conflicts  of  the  European  foreign  offices.  Soon  after  (1810 
to  1823)  they  were  able  to  extend  their  principle  of  detach- 
ment to  the  rest  of  the  continent,  and  to  make  all  the  New 
World  "out  of  bounds"  for  the  scheming  expansionists  of  the 
old.  When  at  length,  in  1917,  they  were  obliged  to  re-enter  the 
arena  of  world  politics,  it  was  to  bring  the  new  spirit  and  new 
aims  their  aloofness  had  enabled  them  to  develop  into  the  tangle 
of  international  relationships.  They  were  not,  however,  the 
first  to  stand  aloof.  Since  the  treaty  of  Westphalia  (1648), 
the  confederated  states  of  Switzerland,  iu  their  mountain  fast- 
nesses, had  sustained  their  right  to  exclusion  from  the  schemes 
of  kings  and  empires. 


828  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

But  since  the  North  American  peoples  are  now  to  play  an 
increasingly  important  part  in  our  history,  it  will  be  well  to 
devote  a  little  more  attention  than  we  have  hitherto  given  to 
their  development.  We  have  already  glanced  at  this  story  in 
§  8  of  the  preceding  chapter.  We  will  now  tell  a  little  more 
fully — though  still  in  the  barest  outline — what  these  colonies 
were,  whose  recalcitrance  was  so  disconcerting  to  the  king  and 
ministers  of  Great  Britain  in  their  diplomatic  game  against 
the  rest  of  mankind. 

§  2 

The  extent  of  the  British  colonies  in  America  in  the  early 
half  of  the  eighteenth  century  is  shown  in  the  accompanying 
map.  The  darker  shading  represents  the  districts  settled  in 
1700,  the  lighter  the  growth  of  the  settlements  up  to  1760.  It 
will  be  seen  that  the  colonies  were  a  mere  fringe  of  population 
along  the  coast,  spreading  gradually  inland  and  finding  in  the 
Alleghany  and  Blue  Mountains  a  very  serious  barrier.  Among 
the  oldest  of  these  settlements  was  the  colony  of  Virginia,  the 
name  of  which  commemorates  Queen  Elizabeth,  the  Virgin 
Queen  of  England.  The  first  expedition  .to  found  a  colony  in 
Virginia  was  made  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  in  1584,  but  there 
was  no  permanent  settlement  at  that  time ;  and  the  real  begin- 
nings of  Virginia  date  from  the  foundation  of  the  Virginia 
Company  in  1606  in  the  reign  of  James  I  (1603-25).  The 
story  of  John  Smith  and  the  early  founders  of  Virginia  and 
of  how  the  Indian  "princess"  Pocahontas  married  one  of  his 
gentlemen,  is  an  English  classic.1  In  growing  tobacco  the  Vir- 
ginians found  the  beginning  of  prosperity.  At  the  same  time 
that  the  Virginian  Company  was  founded,  the  Plymouth  Com- 
pany obtained  a  charter  for  the  settlement  of  the  country  to 
the  north  of  Long  Island  Sound,  to  which  the  English  laid 
claim.  But  it  was  only  in  1620  that  the  northern  region  began 
to  be  settled,  and  that  under  fresh  charters.  The  settlers  of 
the  northern  region  (ISTew  England),  which  became  Connecti- 
cut, !N~ew  Hampshire,  Rhode  Island,  and  Massachusetts,  were 
men  of  a  different  stamp  to  the  Virginia  people.  They  were 
Protestants  discontented  with  the  Anglican  Church  compromise, 
and  republican-spirited  men  hopeless  of  resistance  to  the  Grand 

*John  Smith's  Travels. 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  829 

Monarchy  of  James  I  and  Charles  I.  Their  pioneer  shij>  was 
the  Mayflower,  which  founded  New  Plymouth  in  1620.  The 
dominant  northern  colony  was  Massachusetts.  Differences  in 
religious  method  and  in  ideas  of  toleration  led  to  the  separation 
of  the  three  other  Puritan  colonies  from  Massachusetts.  It 
illustrates  the  scale  upon  which  things  were  done  in  those  days 
that  the  whole  state  of  New  Hampshire  was  claimed  as  belong- 
ing to  a  certain  Captain  John  Mason,  and  that  he  offered  to 
sell  it  to  the  king  (King  Charles  II  in  1671)  in  exchange  for 
the  right  to  import  300  tons  of  French  wine  free  of  duty — an 
offer  which  was  refused.  The  present  state  of  Maine  was  bought 
by  Massachusetts  from  its  alleged  owner  for 'twelve  hundred 
and  fifty  pounds. 

In  the  Civil  War  that  ended  with  the  decapitation  of  Charles 
I  the  sympathies  of  New  England  were  for  the  Parliament, 
and  Virginia  was  Cavalier;  but  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
separated  these  settlements,  and  there  were  no  serious  hostili- 
ties. With  the  return  of  the  monarchy  in  1660,  there  was  a 
vigorous  development  of  British  colonization  in  America, 
Charles  II  and  his  associates  were  greedy  for  gain,  and  the 
British  crown  had  no  wish  to  make  any  further  experiments 
in  illegal  taxation  at  home.  But  the  undefined  relations  of 
the  colonies  to  the  crown  and  the  British  government  seemed  to 
afford  promise  of  financial  adventure  across  the  Atlantic.  There 
was  a  rapid  development  of  plantations  and  proprietary  colonies. 
Lord  Baltimore  had  already  in  1632  set  up  a  colony  that  was 
to  be  a  home  of  religious  freedom  for  Catholics  under  the  at- 
tractive name  of  Maryland,  to  the  north  and  east  of  Virginia; 
and  now  the  Quaker  Penn  (whose  father  had  rendered  valuable 
services  to  Charles  II)  established  himself  to  the  north  at 
Philadelphia  and  founded  the  colony  of  Pennsylvania.  Its 
main  boundary  with  Maryland  and  Virginia  was  delimited 
by  two  men,  Mason  and  Dixon,  whose  "Mason  and  Dixon's 
Line"  was  destined  to  become  a  very  important  line  indeed  in 
the  later  affairs  of  the  United  States.  Carolina,  which  was 
originally  an  unsuccessful  French  Protestant  establishment,  and 
which  owed  its  name  not  to  Charles  (Carolus)  II  of  England, 
but  to  Charles  IX  of  France,  had  fallen  into  English  hands  and 
was  settled  at  several  points.  Between  Maryland  and  New 
England  stretched  a  number  of  small  Dutch  and  Swedish  set- 
tlements, of  which  the  chief  town  was  New  Amsterdam.  These 


830 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


settlements  were  captured  from  the  Dutch  by  the  British  in 
1664,  lost  again  in  1673,  and  restored  by  treaty  when  Hol- 
land and  England  made  peace  in  1674.  Thereby  the  whole 


AMERICA-N 

•etd&l  up  to  J76O  F 


coast  from  Maine  to  Carolina  became  in  some  form  or  other  a 
British  possession.  To  the  south  the  Spanish  were  established ; 
their  headquarters  were  at  Fort  St.  Augustine  in  Florida,  and 
in  1732  the  town  of  Savannah  was  settled  by  a  philanthropist 
Oglethorpe  from  England,  who  had  taken  pity  on  the  miserable 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  831 

people  imprisoned  for  debt  in  England,  and  rescued  a  number 
of  them  from  prison  to  become  the  founders  of  a  new  colony, 
Georgia,  which  was  to  be  a  bulwark  against  the  Spanish.  So 
by  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  we  have  these  settle- 
ments along  the  American  coast-line:  the  New  England  group 
of  Puritans  and  free  Protestants,  Maine  (belonging  to  Massa- 
chusetts), New  Hampshire,  Connecticut,  Ehode  Island,  and 
Massachusetts;  the  captured  Dutch  group,  which  was  now  di- 
vided up  into  New  York  (New  Amsterdam  rechristened) ,  New 
Jersey,  and  Delaware  (Swedish  before  it  was  Dutch,  and  in  its 
earliest  British  phase  attached  to  Pennsylvania)  ;  then  came 
Catholic  Maryland;  Cavalier  Virginia;  Carolina  (which  was 
presently  divided  into  North  and  South)  and  Oglethorpe's 
Georgia.  Later  on  a  number  of  Tyrolese  Protestants  took 
refuge  in  Georgia,  and  there  was  a  considerable  immigration  of 
a  good  class  of  German  cultivators  into  Pennsylvania. 

Such  were  the  miscellaneous  origins  of  the  citizens  of  the 
Thirteen  Colonies.  The  possibility  of  their  ever  becoming 
closely  united  would  have  struck  an  impartial  observer  in  1760 
as  being  very  slight.  Superadded  to  the  initial  differences  of 
origin,  fresh  differences  were  created  by  climate.  North  of  the 
Mason  and  Dixon  line  farming  was  practised  mainly  upon 
British  or  Central  European  lines  by  free  white  cultivators. 
The  settled  country  of  New  England  took  on  a  likeness  to  the 
English  countryside;  considerable  areas  of  Pennsylvania  de- 
veloped fields  and  farmhouses  like  those  of  South  Germany. 
The  distinctive  conditions  in  the  north  had,  socially,  important 
effects.  Masters  and  men  had  to  labour  together  as  backwoods- 
men, and  were  equalized  in  the  process.  They  did  not  start 
equally;  many  "servants"  are  mentioned  in  the  roster  of  the 
Mayflower.  But  they  rapidly  became  equal  under  colonial  con- 
ditions; there  was,  for  instance,  a  vast  tract  of  land  to  be  had 
for  the  taking,  and  the  "servant"  went  off  and  took  land  like 
his  master.  The  English  class  system  disappeared.  Under 
colonial  conditions  there  arose  equality  "in  the  faculties  both 
of  body  and  mind,"  and  an  individual  independence  of  judg- 
ment impatient  of  interference  from  England.  But  south  of 
the  Mason  and  Dixon  line  tobacco  growing  began,  and  the 
warmer  climate  encouraged  the  establishment  of  plantations 
with  gang  labour.  Red  Indian  captives  were  tried,  but  found 
to  be  too  homicidal;  Cromwell  sent  Irish  prisoners  of  war  to 


832  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Virginia,  which  did  much  to  reconcile  the  Royalist  planters  to 
republicanism ;  convicts  were  sent  out,  and  there  was  a  consid- 
erable trade  in  kidnapped  children,  who  were  "spirited  away" 
to  America  to  become  apprentices  or  bond  slaves.  But  the  most 
convenient  form  of  gang  labour  proved  to  be  that  of  negro 
slaves.  The  first  negro  slaves  were  brought  to  Jamestown  in 
Virginia  by  a  Dutch  ship  as  early  as  1620.  By  1700  negro 
slaves  were  scattered  all  over  the  states,  but  Virginia,  Mary- 
land, and  the  Carolina  s  were  their  chief  regions  of  employ- 
ment, and  while  the  communities  to  the  north  were  communities 
of  not  very  rich  and  not  very  poor  farming  men,  the  south 
developed  a  type  of  large  proprietor  and  a  white  community  of 
overseers  and  professional  men  subsisting  on  slave  labour. 
Slave  labour  was  a  necessity  to  the  social  and  economic  system 
that  had  grown  up  in  the  south;  in  the  north  the  presence  of 
slaves  was  unnecessary  and  in  some  respects  inconvenient.  Con- 
scientious scruples  about  slavery  were  more  free,  therefore,  to 
develop  and  flourish  in  the  northern  atmosphere.  To  this 
question  of  the  revival  of  slavery  in  the  world  we  must  return 
when  we  come  to  consider  the  perplexities  of  American  Democ- 
racy. Here  we  note  it  simply  as  an  added  factor  in  the  hetero- 
geneous mixture  of  the  British  Colonies. 

But  if  the  inhabitants  of  the  Thirteen  Colonies  were  miscel- 
laneous in  their  origins  and  various  in  their  habits  and  sym- 
pathies, they  had  three  very  strong  antagonisms  in  common. 
They  had  a  common  interest  against  the  Red  Indians.  For  a 
time  they  shared  a  common  dread  of  French  conquest  and 
dominion.  And  thirdly,  they  were  all  in  conflict  with  the  claims 
of  the  British  crown  and  the  commercial  selfishness  of  the  nar- 
row oligarchy  who  dominated  the  British  Parliament  and 
British  affairs. 

So  far  as  the  first  danger  went,  the  Indians  were  a  constant 
evil,  but  never  more  than  a  threat  of  disaster.  They  remained 
divided  against  themselves.  Yet  they  had  shown  possibilities 
of  combination  upon  a  larger  scale.  The  Five  Nations  of  the 
Iroquois  (see  map,  p.  830)  was  a  very  important  league  of 
tribes.  But  it  never  succeeded  in  playing  off  the  French  against 
the  English  to  secure  itself,  and  no  Red  Indian  Jengis  Khan 
ever  arose  among  these  nomads  of  the  new  world.  The  French 
aggression  was  a  more  serious  threat.  The  French  never  made 
settlements  in  America  on  a  scale  to  compete  with  the  English, 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  833 

but  their  government  set  about  the  encirclement  of  the  colonies 
and  their  subjugation  in  a  terrifyingly  systematic  manner.  The 
English  in  America  were  colonists ;  the  French  were  explorers, 
adventurers,  agents,  missionaries,  merchants,  and  soldiers. 
Only  in  Canada  did  they  strike  root.  French  statesmen  sat 
over  maps  and  dreamt  dreams,  and  their  dreams  are  to  be  seen 
in  our  map  in  the  chain  of  forts  creeping  southward  from  the 
great  lakes  and  northward  up  the  Mississippi  and  Ohio  rivers. 
The  struggle  of  France  and  Britain  was  a  world-wide  struggle. 
It  was  decided  in  India,  in  Germany,  and  on  the  high  seas.  In 
the  Peace  of  Paris  (1763)  the  French  gave  England  Canada, 
and  relinquished  Louisiana  to  the  inert  hands  of  declining 
Spain.  It  was  the  complete  abandonment  of  America  by  France. 
The  lifting  of  the  French  danger  left  the  colonists  unencum- 
bered to  face  their  third  common  antagonist — the  crown  and 
government  of  their  mother  land. 


§  3 

We  have  noted  in  the  previous  chapter  how  the  governing 
class  of  Great  Britain  steadily  acquired  the  land  and  destroyed 
the  liberty  of  the  common  people  throughout  the  eighteenth 
century,  and  how  greedily  and  blindly  the  new  industrial  revolu- 
tion was  brought  about.  We  have  noted  also  how  the  British 
Parliament,  through  the  decay  of  the  representative  methods 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  had  become  both  in  its  upper  and 
lower  houses  merely  the  instrument  of  government  through  the 
big  landowners.  Both  these  big  property-holders  and  the  crown 
were  deeply  interested  in  America;  the  former  as  private  ad- 
venturers, the  latter  partly  as  representing  the  speculative  ex- 
ploitations of  the  Stuart  kings,  and  partly  as  representing  the 
state  in  search  of  funds  for  the  expenses  of  foreign  policy,  and 
neither  lords  nor  crown  were  disposed-  to  regard  the  traders, 
planters,  and  common  people  of  the  colonies  with  any  more  con- 
sideration than  they  did  the  yeomen  and  small  cultivators  at 
home.  At  bottom  the  interests  of  the  common  man  in  Great 
Britain,  Ireland,  and  America  were  the  same.  Each  was  bein<r 
squeezed  by  the  same  system.  But  while  in  Britain  oppressor 
and  oppressed  were  closely  tangled  up  in  one  intimate  social 
system,  in  America  the  crown  and  the  exploiter  were  far  away, 


834  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  men  could  get  together  and  develop  a  sense  of  community 
against  their  common  enemy. 

Moreover,  the  American  colonist  had  the  important  advan- 
tage of  possessing  a  separate  and  legal  organ  of  resistance  to 
the  British  government  in  the  assembly  or  legislature  of  his 
colony  that  was  necessary  for  the  management  of  local  affairs. 
The  common  man  in  Britain,  cheated  out  of  his  proper  repre- 
sentation in  the  Commons,  had  no  organ,  no  centre  of  expression 
and  action  for  his  discontents. 

It  will  be  evident  to  the  reader,  hearing  in  mind  the  variety 
of  the  colonies,  that  here  was  the  possibility  of  an  endless  series 
of  disputes,  aggressions,  and  counter-aggressions.  The  story 
of  the  development  of  irritations  between  the  colonies  and 
Britain  is  a  story  far  too  intricate,  subtle,  and  lengthy  for  the 
scheme  of  this  Outlina  Suffice  it  that  the  grievances  fell  under 
three  main  heads :  attempts  to  secure  for  British  adventurers  or 
the  British  government  the  profits  of  the  exploitation  of  new 
lands;  systematic  restrictions  upon  trade  designed  to  keep  the 
foreign  trade  of  the  colonies  entirely  in  British  hands,  so  that 
the  colonial  exports  all  went  through  Britain  and  only  British- 
made  goods  were  used  in  America ;  and  finally  attempts  at  taxa- 
tion through  the  British  Parliament  as  the  supreme  taxing 
authority  of  the  empire.  Under  the  pressure  of  this  triple 
system  of  annoyances,  the  American  colonists  were  forced  to 
do  a  very  considerable  amount  of  hard  political  thinking.  Such 
men  as  Patrick  Henry  and  James  Otis  began  to  discuss  the 
fundamental  ideas  of  government  and  political  association  very 
much  as  they  had  been  discussed  in  England  in  the  great  days 
of  Cromwell's  Commonweal.  They  began  to  deny  both  the 
divine  origin  of  kingship  and  the  supremacy  of  the  British 
Parliament,  and  (James  Otis,  1762)  to  say  such  things  as: — 

"God  made  all  men  naturally  equal. 

"Ideas  of  earthly  superiority  are  educational,  not  innate. 

"Kings  were  made  for  the  good  of  the  people,  and  not  the 
people  for  them. 

"No  government,  has  a  right  to  make  slaves  of  its  subjects. 

"Though  most  governments  are  de  facto  arbitrary,  and  conse- 
quently the  curse  and  scandal  of  human  nature,  yet  none  are 
de  jure  arbitrary." 

Some  of  which  propositions  reach  far. 

This  ferment  in  the  political  ideas  of  the  Americans  was 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  835 

started  by  English  leaven.  One  very  influential  English  writer 
was  John  Locke  (1632-1704),  whose  Two  Treatises  on  Civil 
Government  may  be  taken,  as  much  as  any  one  single  book  can 
be  taken  in  such  cases,  as  the  point  of  departure  for  modern 
democratic  ideas.  He  ,was  the  son  of  a  Cromwellian  soldier, 
he  was  educated  at  Christ  Church,  Oxford,  during  the  repub- 
lican ascendancy,  he  spent  some  years  in  Holland  in  exile,  and 
his  writings  form  a  bridge  between  the  bold  political  thinking 
of  those  earlier .  republican  days  and  the  revolutionary  move- 
ment both  in  America  and  France. 

But  men  do .  not  begin  to  act  upon  theories.  It  is  always 
some  real  danger,. some  practical  necessity,  that  produces  action ; 
and  it  is  only  after  action  has  destroyed  olol  relationships  and 
produced  a  new  and  perplexing  state  of  affairs  that  theory  comes 
to  its  own.  Then  it  is  that  theory  is  put  to  the  test.  The  dis- 
cord in  interests  and  ideas  between  the  colonists  was  brought 
to  a  fighting  issue  by  the  obstinate  resolve  of  the  British  Parlia- 
ment after  the  peace  of  1763  to  impose  taxation  upon  the  Ameri- 
can colonies.  Britain  was  at.  peace  and  flushed  with  successes ; 
it  seemed  an  admirable  opportunity  for  settling  accounts  with 
these  recalcitrant  settlers.  But  the  great  British  property- 
owners  found  a  power  beside  their  own,  of  much  the  same  mind 
with  them,  but  a  little  divergent  in  its  ends — the  reviving 
crown.  King  George  III,  who  had  begun  his  reign  in  1760, 
was  resolved  to  be  much  more  of  a  king  than  his  two  German 
predecessors.  He  could  speak  English;  he  claimed  to  "glory 
in  the  name  of  Briton" — and  indeed  it  is  not  a  bad  name  for  a 
man  without  a  perceptible  drop  of  English,  Welsh,  or  Scotch 
blood  in  his  veins.  In  the  American  colonies  and  the  overseas 
possessions  generally,  with  their  indefinite  charters  or  no  char- 
ters at  all,  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  crown  might  claim  authority 
and  obtain  resources  and  powers  absolutely  denied  to  it  by  the 
strong  and  jealous  aristocracy  in  Britain.  This  inclined  many 
of  the  Whig  noblemen  to  a  sympathy  with  the  colonists  that 
they  might  not  otherwise  have  shown.  They  had  no  objection 
to  the  exploitation  of  the  colonies  in  the  interests  of  British 
"private  enterprise,"  but  they  had  very  strong  objections  to 
the  strengthening  of  the  crown  by  that  exploitation  so  as  to 
make  it  presently  independent  of  themselves. 

The  war  that  broke  out  was  therefore  in  reality  not  a  war 
between  Britain  and  the  colonists,  it  was  a  war  between 


836  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  British  government  and  the  colonists,  with  a  body  of 
Whig  noblemen  and  a  considerable  amount  of  public  feeling 
in  England  011  the  side  of  the  latter.  An  early  move  after  1763 
was  an  attempt  to  raise  revenue  for  Britain  in  the  colonies  by 
requiring  that  newspapers  and  documents  of  various  sorts 
should  be  stamped.  This  was  stiffly  resisted,  the  British  crown 
was  intimidated,  and  the  Stamp  Acts  were  repealed  (1766). 
Their  repeal  was  greeted  by  riotous  rejoicings  in  London,  more 
hearty  even  than  those  in  the  colonies. 

But  the  Stamp  Act  affair  was  only  one  eddy  in  a  turbulent 
stream  flowing  towards  civil  war.  Upon  a  score  of  pretexts, 
and  up  and  down  the  coast,  the  representatives  of  the  British 
government  were  busy  asserting  their  authority  and  making- 
British  government  intolerable.  The  quartering  of  soldiers 
upon  the  colonists  was  a  great  nuisance.  Rhode  Island  was 
particularly  active  in  defying  the  trade  restrictions ;  the  Rhode 
Islanders  were  "free  traders/7 — that  is  to  say,  smugglers;  a 
government  schooner,  the  Gaspee,  ran  aground  off  Providence; 
she  was  surprised,  boarded,  and  captured  by  armed  men  in 
boats,  and  burnt.  In  1773,  with  a  total  disregard  of  the  exist- 
ing colonial  tea  trade,  special  advantages  for  the  importation 
of  tea  into  America  were  given  by  the  British  Parliament  to 
the  East  India  Company.  It  was  resolved  by  the  colonists  to 
refuse  and  boycott  this  tea.  When  the  tea  importers  at  Boston 
showed  themselves  resolute  to  land  their  cargoes,  a  band  of 
men  disguised  as  Indians,  in  the  presence  of  a  great  crowd  of 
people,  boarded  the  three  tea  ships  and  threw  the  tea  overboard 
(December  16th,  1773). 

All  1774  was  occupied  in  the  gathering  up  of  resources  on 
either  side  for  the  coming  conflict.  It  was  decided  by  the  Brit- 
ish Parliament  in  the  spring  of  1774  to  punish  Boston  by  clos- 
ing her  port.  Her  trade  was  to  be  destroyed  unless  she  accepted 
that  tea.  It  was  a  quite  typical  instance  of  that  silly  "firmness" 
which  shatters  empires.  In  order  to  enforce  this  measure,  Brit- 
ish troops  were  concentrated  at  Boston  under  General  Gage 
The  colonists  took  counter-measures.  The  first  colonial  Con- 
gress met  at  Philadelphia  in  September,  at  which  twelve  colonies 
were  represented:  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  New  Hamp- 
shire, Rhode  Island,  New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania, 
Maryland,  Delaware,  Virginia,  and  North  and  South  Carolina. 
Georgia  was  not  present.  True  to  the  best  English  traditions, 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE 


837 


the  Congress  documented  its  attitude  by  a  "Declaration  of 
Rights."  Practically  this  Congress  was  an  insurrectionary 
government,  but  no  blow  was  struck  until  the  spring  of  1775. 
Then  came  the  first  shedding  of  blood. 

Two  of  the  American  leaders,  Hancock  and  Samuel  Adams, 
had  been  marked  down  by  the  British  Government  for  arrest 
and  trial  for  treason ;  they  were  known  to  be  at  Lexington,  about 


Sketch  map  to  shear 
BOSTON  & 


eleven  miles  from  Boston ;  and  in  the  night  of  April  18th,  1775, 
Gage  set  his  forces  in  motion  for  their  arrest. 

That  night  was  a  momentous  one  in  history.  The  movement 
of  Gage's  troops  had  been  observed,  signal  lanterns  were  shown 
from  a  church  tower  in  Boston,  and  two  men,  Dawes  and  Paul 
Revere,  stole  away  in  boats  across  the  Back  Bay  to  take  horse 
and  warn  the  countryside.  The  British  were  also  ferried  over 
the  water,  and  as  they  marched  through  the  night  towards 
Lexington,  the  firing  of  signal  cannon  and  the  ringing  of  church 
bells  went  before  them.  As  they  entered  Lexington  at  dawn, 
they  saw  a  little  company  of  men  drawn  up  in  military  fashion. 
It  seems  that  the  British  fired  first.  There  was  a  single  shot  and 
then  a  volley,  and  the  little  handful  decamped,  apparently  with- 
out any  answering  shots,  leaving  eight  dead  and  nine  wounded 
upon  the  village  green. 

The  British  then  marched  on  to  Concord,  ten  miles  further, 
occupied  the  village,  and  stationed  a  party  on  the  bridge  at  that 
place.  The  expedition  had  failed  in  its  purpose  of  arresting 
Hancock  and  Adams,  and  the  British  commander  seems  to  have 


838  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

been  at  a  loss  what  to  do  next.  Meanwhile  the  colonial  levies 
were  coming  up  from  all  directions,  and  presently  the  picket 
upon  the  hridge  found  itself  subjected  to  an  increasing  fire 
from  a  gathering  number  of  assailants  firing  from  behind  trees 
and  fences.  A  retreat  to  Boston  was  decided  upon.  It  was  a 
disastrous  retreat.  The  country  had  risen  behind  the  British; 
all  the  morning  the  colonials  had  been  gathering.  Both  sides 
of  the  road  were  now  swarming  with  sharpshooters  firing  from 
behind  rock  and  fence  and  building;  the  soldiers  were  in  con- 
spicuous scarlet  uniforms,  with  yellow  facings  and  white  gaiters 
and  cravats  ;  this  must  have  stood  out  very  vividly  against  the 
cold  sharp  colours  of  the  late  New  England  spring;  the  day 
was  bright,  hot,  and  dusty,  and  they  were  already  exhausted  by 
a  night  march.  Every  few  yards  a  man  fell,  wounded  or  killed. 
The  rest  tramped  on,  or  halted  to  fire  an  ineffectual  volley.  ~No 
counter-attack  was  possible.  Their  assailants  lurked  every- 
where. At  Lexington  there  were  British  reinforcements  and 
two  guns,  and  after  a  brief  rest  the  retreat  was  resumed  in 
better  order.  But  the  sharpshooting  and  pursuit  was  pressed 
to  the  river,  and  after  the  British  had  crossed  back  into  Boston, 
the  colonial  levies  took  up  their  quarters  in  Cambridge  and 
prepared  to  blockade  the  city. 


So  the  war  began.  It  was  not  a  war  that  promised  a  con- 
clusive end.  The  colonists  had  no  one  vulnerable  capital  ;  they 
were  dispersed  over  a  great  country,  with  a  limitless  wilderness 
behind  it,  and  so  they  had  great  powers  of  resistance.  They 
had  learnt  their  tactics  largely  from  the  Indians;  they  could 
fight  well  in  open  order,  and  harry  and  destroy  troops  in  move- 
ment. But  they  had  no  disciplined  army  that  could  meet  the 
British  in  a  pitched  battle,  and  little  military  equipment  ;  and 
their  levies  grew  impatient  at  a  long  campaign,  and  tended  to 
go  home  to  their  farms.  The  British,  on  the  other  hand,  had 
a  well-drilled  army,  and  their  command  of  the  sea  gave  them 
the  power  of  shifting  their  attack  up  and  down  the  long  Atlantic 
seaboard.  They  were  at  peace  with  all  the  world.  But  the 
king  was  stupid  and  greedy  to  interfere  in  the  conduct  of 
affairs  ;  the  generals  he  favoured  were  stupid  "strong  men"  or 
flighty  men  of  birth  and  fashion;  and  the  heart  of  England 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  839 

was  not  in  the  business.  He  trusted  rather  to  being  able  to 
blockade,  raid,  and  annoy  the  colonists  into  submission  than 
to  a  conclusive  conquest  and  occupation  of  the  land.  But  the 
methods  employed,  and  particularly  the  use  of  hired  German 
troops,  who  still  retained  the  cruel  traditions  of  the  Thirty 
Years'  War,  and  of  Indian  auxiliaries,  who  harried  the  out-, 
lying  settlers,  did  not  so  much  weary  the  Americans  of  the  war 
as  of  the  British.  The  Congress,  meeting  for  the  second  time 
in  1775,  endorsed  the  actions  of  the  New  England  colonists, 
and  appointed  George  Washington  the  American  commander- 
in-chief.  In  1777,  General  Burgoyne,  in  an  attempt  to  get 
down  to  New  York  from  Canada,  was  defeated  at  Freeman's 
Farm  on  the  "Upper  Hudson,  and  surrounded  and  obliged  to 
capitulate  at  Saratoga  with  his  whole  army.  This  disaster  en- 
couraged the  French  and  Spanish  to  come  into  the  struggle 
on  the  side  of  the  colonists.  The  French  sent  General  Lafayette 
to  the  States  to  assist  them  with  his  advice,  and  their  fleet  did 
much  to  minimize  the  advantage  of  the  British  at  sea.  General 
Ccrnwallis  was  caught  in  the  Yorktown  peninsula  in  Virginia 
in  1781,  and  capitulated  with  his  army.  The  British  Govern- 
ment, now  heavily  engaged  with  France  and  Spain  in  Europe, 
was  at  the  end  of  its  resources.. 

At  the  outset  of  the  war  the  colonists  in  general  seem  to  have 
been  as  little  disposed  to  repudiate  monarchy  and  claim  com- 
plete independence  as  were  the  Hollanders  in  the  opening  phase 
of  Philip  IPs  persecutions  and  follies.  The  separatists  were 
called  radicals;  they  were  mostly  extremely  democratic,  as  we 
should  say  in  England  to-day,  and  their  advanced  views  fright- 
ened many  of  the  steadier  and  wealthier  colonists,  for  whom 
class  privileges  and  distinctions  had  considerable  charm.  But 
early  in  1776  an  able  and  persuasive  Englishman,  Thomas 
Paine,  published  a  pamphlet  at  Philadelphia  with  the  title  of 
Common  Sense,  which  had  an  enormous  effect  on  public  opinion. 
Its  style  was  rhetorical  by  modern  standards.  "The  blood  of 
the  slain,  the  weeping  voice  of  Nature  cries, '  'Tis  time  to  part/  >; 
and  so  forth.  But  its  effects  were  very  great.  It  converted 
thousands  to  the  necessity  of  separation.  The  turn-over  of 
opinion,  once  it  had  begun,  was  rapid. 

Only  in  the  summer  of  1776  did  Congress  take  the  irrevocable 
step  of  declaring  for  separation.  "The  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence," another  of  those  exemplary  documents  which  it  has  been 


S40  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  peculiar  service  of  the  English  to  produce  for  mankind,  was 
drawn  up  by  Thomas  Jefferson ;  and  after  various  amendments 
and  modifications  it  was  made  the  fundamental  document  of 
the  United  States  of  America.  There  were  two  noteworthy 
amendments  to  Jefferson's  draft.  He  had  denounced  the 
•slave  trade  fiercely,  and  blamed  the  home  government  for  in- 
terfering with  colonial  attempts  to  end  it.  This  was  thrown 
out,  and  so,  too,  was  a  sentence  about  the  British:  "we  must 
endeavour  to  forget  our  former  love  for  them  ...  we  might 
have  been  a  free  and  a  great  people  together." 

Towards  the  end  of  1782,  the  preliminary  articles  of  the 
treaty  in  which  Britain  recognized  the  complete  independence 
of  the  United  States  were  signed  at  Paris.  The  end  of  the  war 
was  proclaimed  on  April  19th,  1783,  exactly  eight  years  after 
Paul  Revere's  ride,  and  the  retreat  of  Gage's  men  from  (\m- 
cord  to  Boston.  The  Treaty  of  Peace  was  finally  signed  at 
Paris  in  September. 


§  5 

From  the  point  of  view  of  human  history,  the  way  in  which 
the  Thirteen  States  became  independent  is  of  far  less  impor- 
tance than  the  fact  that  they  did  become  independent.  And 
with  the  establishment  of  their  independence  came  a  new  sort 
of  community  into  the  world.  It  was  like  something  coming 
out  of  an  egg.  It  was  a  western  European  civilization  that 
had  broken  free  from  the  last  traces  of  Empire  and  Christen- 
dom ;  it  had  not  a  vestige  of  monarchy  left  and  no  state  religion. 
It  had  no  dukes,  princes,  counts,  nor  any  sort  of  title-bearers 
claiming  to  ascendancy  or  respect  as  a  right.  Even  its  unity 
was  as  yet  a  mere  unity  for  defence  and  freedom.  It  was  in 
these  respects  such  a  clean  start  in  political  organization  as  the 
world  had  not  seen  before.  The  absence  of  any  binding  re- 
ligious tie  is  especially  noteworthy.  It  had  a  number  of  forms 
of  Christianity,  its  spirit  was  indubitably  Christian;  but  as  a 
state  document  of  1796  explicitly  declared,  "The  government 
of  the  United  States  is  not  in  any  sense  founded  on  the  Chris- 
tian religion."  1  The  new  community  had  in  fact  gone  right 
down  to  the  bare  and  stripped  fundamentals  of  human  associa- 

1  The  Tripoli  Treaty,  see  Channing,  vol.  iii,  chap,  xviii. 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE 


841 


tion,  and  it  was  building  up  a  new  sort  of  society  and  a  new 
sort  of  state  upon  those  foundations. 

Here  were  about  four  million  people  scattered  over  vast  areas 
with  very  slow  and  difficult  means  of  intercommunication,  poor 


The  UNITED  5TATE5;  showing  extent  cfsd±U- 
~  mentis 


M.H.-NEW-HAMPSHIKE 
C.  -CONNECTICUT 
a. -RHODE  ISLAND 

"N..   NEW  JERSEY 
MARYLAND 
P.   DELAWARE 


as  yet,  but  with  the  potentiality  of  limitless  wealth,  setting  out 
to  do  in  reality  on  a  huge  scale  such  a  feat  of  construction  as 
the  Athenian  philosophers  twenty-two  centuries  before  had  done 
in  imagination  and  theory. 


842  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

This  situation  marks  a  definite  stage  in  the  release  of  man 
from  precedent  and  usage,  and  a  definite  step  forward  towards 
the  conscious  and  deliberate  reconstruction  of  his  circumstances 
to  suit  his  needs  and  aims.  It  was  a  new  method  becoming 
practical  in  human  affairs.  The  modern  states  of  Europe  have 
been  evolved  institution  by  institution  slowly  and  planlessly 
out  of  preceding  things.  The  United  States  were  planned  and 
made. 

In  one  respect,  however,  the  creative  freedom  of  the  new 
nation  was  very  seriously  restricted.  This  new  sort  of  com- 
munity and  state  was  not  built  upon  a  cleared  site.  It  was  not 
even  so  frankly  an  artificiality  as  some  of  the  later  Athenian 
colonies,  which  went  out  from  the  mother  city  to  plan  and  build 
brand  new  city  states  with  brand  new  constitutions.  The  thir- 
teen colonies  by  the  end  of  the  war  had  all  of  them  constitutions 
either  like  that  of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island  dating  from 
their  original  charters  (1662)  or,  as  in  the  case  of  the  rest  of 
the  states,  where  a  British  governor  had  played  a  large  part 
in  the  administration,  re-made  during  the  conflict.  But  we  may 
well  consider  these  reconstructions  as  contributory  essays  and 
experiments  in  the  general  constructive  effort. 

Upon  the  effort  certain  ideas  stood  out  very  prominently. 
One  is  the  idea  of  political  and  social  equality.  This  idea, 
which  we  saw  coming  into  the  world  as  an  extreme  and  almost 
incredible  idea  in  the  age  between  Buddha  and  Jesus  of  Naza- 
reth, is  now  asserted  in  the  later  eighteenth  century  as  a  prac- 
tical standard  of  human  relationship.  Says  the  fundamental 
statement  of  Virginia:  "All  men  are  by  nature  equally  free 
and  independent,"  and  it  proceeds  to  rehearse  their  "rights," 
and  to  assert  that  all  magistrates  and  governors  are  but  "trustees 
and  servants"  of  the  commonweal.  All  men  are  equally  entitled 
to  the  free  exercise  of  religion.  The  king  by  right,  the  aris- 
tocrat, the  "natural  slave,"  the  god  king,  and  the  god  have  all 
vanished  from  this  political  scheme — so  far  as  these  declarations 
go.  Most  of  the  states  produced  similar  preludes  to  government. 
The  Declaration  of  Independence  said  that  "all  men  are  born 
equal."  It  is  everywhere  asserted  in  eighteenth-century  terms 
that  the  new  community  is  to  be — to  use  the  phraseology  we 
have  introduced  in  an  earlier  chapter — a  community  of  will 
and  not  a  community  of  obedience.  But  the  thinkers  of  that 
time  had  a  rather  clumsier  way  of  putting  the  thing,  they 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  843 

imagined  a  sort  of  individual  choice  of  and  assent  to  citizenship 
that  never  in  fact  occurred — the  so-called  Social  Contract.  The 
Massachusetts  preamble,  for  instance,  asserts  that  the  state  is  a 
voluntary  association,  "by  which  the  whole  people  covenants 
with  each  citizen  and  each  citizen  with  the  whole  people  that 
all  shall  be  governed  by  certain  laws  for  the  common  good." 

Now  it  will  be  evident  that  most  of  these  fundamental  state- 
ments are  very  questionable  statements.  Men  are  not  born 
equal,  they  are  not  born  free;  they  are  born  a  most  various 
multitude  enmeshed  in  an  ancient  and  complex  social  net.  N"or 
is  any  man  invited  to  sign  the  social  contract  or,  failing  that, 
to  depart  into  solitude.  These  statements,  literally  interpreted, 
are  so  manifestly  false  that  it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  the 
men  who  made  them  intended  them  to  be  literally  interpreted. 
They  made  them  in  order  to  express  certain  elusive  but  pro- 
foundly important  ideas — ideas  that  after  another  century  and 
a  half  of  thinking  the  world  is  in  a  better  position  to  express. 
Civilization,  as  this  outline  has  shown,  arose  as  a  community 
of  obedience,  and  was  essentially  a  community  of  obedience. 
But  generation  after  generation  the  spirit  was  abused  by  priests 
and  rulers.  There  was  a  continual  influx  of  masterful  will 
from  the  forests,  parklands,  and  steppes.  The  human  spirit 
had  at  last  rebelled  altogether  against  the  blind  obediences  of 
the  common  life;  it  was  seeking — and  at  first  it  was  seeking 
very  clumsily — to  achieve  a  new  and  better  sort  of  civilization 
that  should  also  be  a  community  of  will.  To  that  end  it  was 
necessary  that  every  man  should  be  treated  as  the  sovereign  of 
himself;  his  standing  was  to  be  one  of  fellowship  and  not  of 
servility.  His  real  use,  his  real  importance  depended  upon 
his  individual  quality. 

The  method  by  which  these  creators  of  political  America 
sought  to  secure  this  community  of  will  was  an  extremely  simple 
and  crude  one.  They  gave  what  was  for  the  time,  and  in  view 
of  American  conditions,  a  very  wide  franchise.  Conditions 
varied  in  the  different  states;  the  widest  franchise  was  in 
Pennsylvania,  where  every  adult  male  taxpayer  voted,  but,  com- 
pared with  Britain,  all  the  United  States  were  well  within  sight 
of  manhood  suffrage  by  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
These  makers  of  America  also  made  efforts,  considerable  for 
their  times,  but  puny  by  more  modern  standards,  to  secure  a 
widely  diffused  common  education.  The  information  of  the 


844  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

citizens  as  to  what  was  going  on  at  home  and  abroad,  they  left, 
apparently  without  any  qualms  of  misgiving,  to  public  meetings 
and  the  privately  owned  printing  press. 

The  story  of  the  various  state  constitutions,  and  of  the  con- 
stitution of  the  United  States  as  a  whole,  is  a  very  intricate 
one,  and  we  can  only  deal  with  it  here  in  the  broadest  way. 
The  most  noteworthy  point  in  a  modern  view  is  the  disregard 
of  women  as  citizens.  The  American  community  was  a  simple, 
largely  agricultural  community,  and  most  women  were  married ; 
it  seemed  natural  that  they  should  be  represented  by  their  men 
folk.  But  New  Jersey  admitted  a  few  women  to  vote  on  a 
property  qualification.  Another  point  of  great  interest  is  the 
almost  universal  decision  to  have  two  governing  assemblies, 
confirming  or  checking  each  other,  on  the  model  of  the  Lords 
and  Commons  of  Britain.  Only  Pennsylvania  had  a  single 
representative  chamber,  and  that  was  felt  to  be  a  very  danger- 
ous and  ultra-democratic  state  of  affairs.  Apart  from  the  argu- 
ment that  legislation  should  be  slow  as  well  as  sure,  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  establish  any  necessity  for  this  "bi-cameral"  arrange- 
ment. It  seems  to  have  been  a  fashion  with  constitution  plan- 
ners in  the  eighteenth  century  rather  than  a  reasonable  impera- 
tive. The  British  division  was  an  old  one ;  the  Lords,  the 
original  parliament,  was  an  assembly  of  "notables,"  the  leading 
men  of  the  kingdom ;  the  House  of  Commons  came  in  as  a  new 
factor,  as  the  elected  spokesmen  of  the  burghers  and  the  small 
landed  men.  It  was  a  little  too  hastily  assumed  in  the  eight- 
eenth century  that  the  commonalty  would  be  given  to  wild 
impulses  and  would  need  checking;  opinion  was  for  democracy, 
but  for  democracy  with  ]>owerful  brakes  always  on,  whether 
it  was  going  up  hill  or  down.  About  all  the  upper  houses  there 
was  therefore  a  flavour  of  selectness;  they  were  elected  on  a 
more  limited  franchise.  This  idea  of  making  an  upper  cham- 
ber which  shall  be  a  stronghold  for  the  substantial  man  does 
not  appeal  to  modern  thinkers  so  strongly  as  it  did  to  the  men 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  but  the  bi-cameral  idea  in  another 
form  still  has  its  advocates.  They  suggest  that  a  community 
may  with  advantage  consider  its  affairs  from  two  points  of 
view — through  the  eyes  of  a  body  elected  to  represent  trades, 
industries,  professions,  public  services,  and  the  like,  a  body 
representing  function,  and  through  the  eyes  of  a  second  body 
elected  by  localities  to  represent  communities.  For  the  mem- 


REPUBLICS  01-   AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  845 


846  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

bers  of  the  former  a  man  would  vote  by  his  calling,  for  the 
latter  by  his  district  of  residence.  They  point  out  that  the 
British  House  of  Lords  is  in  effect  a  body  representing  func- 
tion, in  which  the  land,  the  law,  and  the  church  are  no  doubt 
disproportionately  represented,  but  in  which  industrialism, 
finance,  the  great  public  services,  art,  science,  and  medicine, 
also  find  places;  and  that  the  British  House  of  Commons  is 
purely  geographical  in  its  reference.  It  has  even  been  sug- 
gested in  Britain  that  there  should  be  "labour  peers/'  selected 
from  among  the  leaders  of  the  great  industrial  trade  unions. 
But  these  are  speculations  beyond  our  present  scope. 

The  Central  Government  of  the  United  States  was  at  first  a 
very  feeble  body,  a  Congress  of  representatives  of  the  thirteen 
governments,  held  together  by  certain  Articles  of  Confederation. 
This  Congress  was  little  more  than  a  conference  of  sovereign 
representatives ;  it  had  no  control,  for  instance,  over  the  foreign 
trade  of  each  state,  it  could  not  coin  money  nor  levy  taxes  by 
its  own  authority.  When  John  Adams,  the  first  minister  from 
the  United  States  to  England,  went  to  discuss  a  commercial 
treaty  with  the  British  foreign  secretary,  he  was  met  by  a 
request  for  thirteen  representatives,  one  from  each  of  the  states 
concerned.  He  had  to  confess  his  inadequacy  to  make  binding 
arrangements.  The  British  presently  began  dealing  with  each 
state  separately  over  the  head  of  Congress?  and  they  retained 
possession  of  a  number  of  posts  in  the  American  territory  about 
the  great  lakes  because  of  the  inability  of  Congress  to  hold  these 
regions  effectually.  In  another  urgent  matter  Congress  proved 
equally  feeble.  To  the  west  of  the  thirteen  states  stretched 
limitless  lands  into  which  settlers  were  now  pushing  in  ever- 
increasing  numbers.  Each  of  the  states  had  indefinable  claims 
to  expansion  westward.  It  was  evident  to  every  clear-sighted 
man  that  the  jostling  of  these  claims  must  lead  in  the  long  run 
to  war,  unless  the  Central  Government  could  take  on  their  ap- 
portionment. The  feebleness  of  the  Central  Government,  its 
lack  of  concentration,  became  so  much  of  an  inconvenience  and 
so  manifest  a  danger  that  there  was  some  secret  discussion  of 
a  monarchy,  and  Nathaniel  Gorham  of  Massachusetts,  the  presi- 
dent of  Congress,  caused  Prince  Henry  of  Prussia,  the  brother 
of  Frederick  the  Great,  to  be  approached  on  the  subject.  Finally 
a  constitutional  convention  was  called  in  1787  at  Philadelphia, 
and  there  it  was  that  the  present  constitution  of  the  United 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  847 

States  was  in  its  broad  lines  hammered  out.  A  great  change 
of  spirit  had  gone  on  during  the  intervening  years,  a  wide- 
spread realization  of  the  need  of  unity. 

When  the  Articles  of  Confederation  were  drawn  up,  men 
had  thought  of  the  people  of  Virginia,  the  people  of  Massa- 
chusetts, the  people  of  Rhode  Island,  and  the  like;  hut  now 
there  appears  a  new  conception,  "the  people  of  the  United 
States."  The  new  government,  with  the  executive  President, 
the  senators,  congressmen,  and  the  Supreme  Court,  that  was 
now  created,  was  declared  to  be  the  government  of  "the  people 
of  the  United  States"  ;  it  was  a  synthesis  and  not  a  mere 
assembly.  It  said  "we  the  people/7  and  not  "we  the  states,"  as 
Lee  of  Virginia  bitterly  complained.  It  was  to  be  a  "federal" 
and  not  a  confederate  government. 

State  by  state  the  new  constitution  was  ratified,  and  in  the 
spring  of  1788  the  first  congress  upon  the  new  lines  assembled 
at  New  York,  under  the  presidency  of  George  Washington,  who 
had  been  the  national  commander-in-chief  throughout  the  War 
of  Independence.  The  constitution  then  underwent  considerable 
revision,  and  Washington  upon  the  Potomac  was  selected  as 
the  Federal  capital. 


In  an  earlier  chapter  we  have  described  the  Roman  republic, 
and  its  mixture  of  modern  features  with  dark  superstition  and 
primordial  savagery,  as  the  Neanderthal  anticipation  of  the 
modern  democratic  state.  A  time  may  come  when  people  will 
regard  the  contrivances  and  machinery  of  the  American  con- 
stitution as  the  political  equivalents  of  the  implements  and 
contrivances  of  Neolithic  man.  They  have  served  their  purpose 
well,  and  under  their  protection  the  people  of  the  States  have 
grown  into  one  of  the  greatest,  most  powerful,  and  most  civilized 
communities  that  the  world  has  yet  seen;  but  there  is  no  rea- 
son in  that  for  regarding  the  American  constitution  as  a  thing 
more  final  and  inalterable  than  the  pattern  of  street  railway 
that  overshadows  many  New  York  thoroughfares,  or  the  excel- 
lent and  homely  type  of  house  architecture  that  still  prevails  in 
Philadelphia.  These  things  also  have  served  a  purpose  well, 
they  have  their  faults,  and  they  can  be  improved.  Our  po- 
litical contrivances,  just  as  much  as  our  domestic  and  mechan- 


848  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ical  contrivances,  need  to  undergo  constant  revision  as  knowl- 
edge and  understanding  grow. 

Since  the  American  constitution  was  planned,  our  conception 
of  history  and  our  knowledge  of  collective  psyehology  has  un- 
dergone very  considerable  development.  We  are  beginning  to 
see  many  things  in  the  problem  of  government  to  which  the 
men  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  blind;  and,  courageous  as 
their  constructive  disposition  was  in  relation  to  whatever  po- 
litical creation  had  gone  before,  it  fell  far  short  of  the  boldness 
which  we  in  these  days  realize  to  be  needful  if  this  great  human 
problem  of  establishing  a  civilized  community  of  will  in  the 
earth  is  to  be  solved.  They  took  many  things  for  granted  that 
now  we  know  need  to  be  made  the  subject  of  the  most  exacting 
scientific  study  and  the  most  careful  adjustment.  They  thought 
it  was  only  necessary  to  set  up  schools  and  colleges,  with  a  grant 
of  land  for  maintenance,  and  that  they  might  then  be  left  to 
themselves.  But  education  is  not  a  weed  that  will  grow  lustily 
in  any  soil,  it  is  a  necessary  and  delicate  crop  that  may  easily 
wilt  and  degenerate.  We  learn  nowadays  that  the  under-de- 
velopment  of  universities  and  educational  machinery  is  like 
some  under-development  of  the  brain  and  nerves,  which  hampers 
the  whole  growth  of  the  social  body.  By  European  standards, 
by  the  standard  of  any  state  that  has  existed  hitherto,  the  level 
of  the  common  education  of  America  is  high ;  but  by  the  stand- 
ard of  what  it  might  be,  America  is  an  uneducated  country. 
And  those  fathers  of  America  thought  also  that  they  had  but 
to  leave  the  press  free,  and  everyone  would  live  in  the  light.  They 
did  not  realize  that  a  free  press  could  develop  a  sort  of  consti- 
tutional venality  due  to  its  relations  with  advertisers,  and  that 
large  newspaper  proprietors  could  become  buccaneers  of  opinion 
and  insensate  wreckers  of  good  beginnings.  And,  finally,  the 
makers  of  America  had  no  knowledge  of  the  complexities  of 
vote  manipulation.  The  whole  science  of  elections  was  beyond 
their  ken,  they  knew  nothing  of  the  need  of  the  transferable 
vote  to  prevent  the  "working"  of  elections  by  specialized  organi- 
zations, and  the  crude  and  rigid  methods  they  adopted  left 
their  political  system  the  certain  prey  of  the  great  party  ma- 
chines that  have  robbed  American  democracy  of  half  its  free- 
dom and  most  of  its  political  soul.  Politics  became  a  trade, 
and  a  very  base  trade;  decent  and  able  men,  after  the  first 
great  period,  drifted  out  of  politics  and  attended  to  "business," 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE 


849 


and  what  I  have  called  elsewhere  the  "sense  of  the  state"  l  de- 
clined. Private  enterprise  ruled  in  many  matters  of  common 
concern,  because  political  corruption  made  collective  enterprise 
impossible. 

Yet  the  defects  of  the  great  political  system  created  by  the 
Americans  of  the  revolutionary  period  did  not  appear  at  once. 
For  several  generations  the  history  of  the  United  States  was 
one  of  rapid  expansion  and  of  an  amount  of  freedom,  homely 
happiness,  and  energetic  work  unparalleled  in  the  world's  his- 
tory. And  the  record  of  America  for  the  whole  last  century 
and  a  half,  in  spite  of  many  reversions  towards  inequality,  in 
spite  of  much  rawness  and 
much  blundering,  is  never- 
theless as  bright  and  honour- 
able a  story  as  that  of  any 
other  contemporary  people. 

In  this  brief  account  of 
the  creation  of  the  United 
States  of  America  we  have 
been  able  to  do  little  more 
than  mention  the  names  of 
some  of  the  group  of  great 
men  who  made  this  new  de- 
parture in  human  history. 
We  have  named  casually  or 
we  have  not  even  named  such 
men  as  Tom  Paine,  Ben- 
jamin Franklin,  Patrick  Henry,  Thomas  Jefferson,  the  Adam 
cousins,  Madison,  Alexander  Hamilton,  and  George  Washing- 
ton. It  is  hard  to  measure  the  men  of  one  period  of  history 
with  those  in  another.  Some  writers,  even  American  writers, 
impressed  by  the  artificial  splendours  of  the  European  courts 
and  by  the  tawdry  and  destructive  exploits  of  a  Frederick  the 
Great  or  a  Great  Catherine,  display  a  snobbish  shame  of  some- 
thing homespun  about  these  makers  of  America.  They  feel  that 
Benjamin  Franklin  at  the  court  of  Louis  XVI,  with  his  long 
hair,  his  plain  clothes,  and  his  pawky  manner,  was  sadly  lacking 
in  aristocratic  distinction.  But  stripped  to  their  personalities, 
Louis  XVI  was  hardly  gifted  enough  or  noble-minded  enough 
to  be  Franklin's  valet.  If  human  greatness  is  a  matter  of  scale 

1  Wells,  The  Future  i:i  America. 


"Bcti^amuv  TranMirv- 


850 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


and  glitter,  then  no  doubt  Alexander  the  Great  is  at  the  apex  of 
human  greatness.  But  is  greatness  that  ?  Is  not  a  great  man 
rather  one  who,  in  a  great  position  or  amidst  great  opportunities 
— and  great  gifts  are  no  more  than  great  opportunities — serves 
God  and  his  fellows  with  a  humhle  heart  ?  And  quite  a  num- 
ber of  these  Americans  of  the  revolutionary  time  do  seem  to 
have  displayed  much  disinterestedness  and  devotion.  They  were 
limited  men,  fallible  men;  Washington  was,  for  example,  a 
conspicuously  indolent  man;  but  on  the  whole  they  seemed 
to  have  cared  more  for  the  commonweal  they  were  creating 
than  for  any  personal  end  or  personal  vanity. 

They  were  all  limited 
men.  They  were  limited  in 
knowledge  and  outlook;  they 
were  limited  by  the  limita- 
tions of  the  time.  And  there 
was  no  perfect  man  among 
them.  They  were,  like  all  of 
us,  men  of  mixed  motives; 
good  impulses  arose  in  their 
minds,  great  ideas  swept 
through  them,  and  also  they 
could  be  jealous,  lazy,  ob- 
stinate, greedy,  vicious.  If 
one  were  to  write  a  true, 
full,  and  particular  history 
of  the  making  of  the  United 
States,  it  would  have  to  be  written  with  charity  and  high  spirits 
as  a  splendid  comedy.  And  in  no  other  regard  do  we  find  the 
rich  tortuous  humanity  of  the  American  story  so  finely  dis- 
played as  in  regard  to  slavery.  Slavery,  having  regard  to  the 
general  question  of  labour,  is  the  test  of  this  new  soul  in  the 
world's  history,  the  American  soul. 

Slavery  began  very  early  in  the  European  history  of  America, 
and  no  European  people  who  went  to  America  can  be  held 
altogether  innocent  in  the  matter.  At  a  time  when  the  German 
is  still  the  moral  whipping-boy  of  Europe,  it  is  well  to  note 
that  the  German  record  is  in  this  respect  the  best  of  all.  Al- 
most the  first  outspoken  utterances  against  negro  slavery  came 
from  German  settlers  in  Pennsylvania.  But  the  German  set- 
tler was  working  with  free  labour  upon  a  temperate  country- 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  851 

side,  well  north  of  the  plantation  zone ;  he  was  not  under  serious 
temptation  in  this  matter.  American  slavery  began  with  the 
enslavement  of  Indians  for  gang  work  in  mines  and  upon  planta- 
tions, and  it  is  curious  to  note  that  it  was  a  very  good  and 
humane  man  indeed,  Las  Casas,  who  urged  that  negroes  should 
he  brought  to  America  to  relieve  his  tormented  Indian  proteges. 
The  need  for  labour  upon  the  plantations  of  the  West  Indies 
and  the  south  was  imperative.  When  the  supply  of  Indian 
captives  proved  inadequate,  the  planters  turned  not  only  to  the 
negro,  but  to  the  jails  and  poorhouses  of  Europe  for  a  supply 
of  toilers.  The  reader  of  Defoe's  Moll  Flanders  will  learn  how 
the  business  of  Virginian  white  slavery  looked  to  an  intelligent 
Englishman  in  the  early  eighteenth  century.  But  the  negro 
came  very  early.  The  year  (1620)  that  saw  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  landing  at  Plymouth  in  New  England,  saw  a  Dutch 
sloop  disembarking  the  first  cargo  of  negroes  at  Jamestown  in 
Virginia.  Negro  slavery  was  as  old  as  New  England;  it  had 
been  an  American  institution  for  over  a  century  and  a  half 
before  the  War  of  Independence.  It  was  to  struggle  on  for 
the  better  part  of  a  century  more. 

But  the  conscience  of  thoughtful  men  in  the  colonies  was 
never  quite  easy  upon  this  score,  and  it  was  one  of  the  accusa- 
tions of  Thomas  Jefferson  against  the  crown  and  lords  of  Great 
Britain  that  every  attempt  to  ameliorate  or  restrain  the  slave 
trade  on  the  part  of  the  colonists  had  been  checked  by  the  great 
proprietary  interests  in  the  mother  country.1  With  the  moral 
and  intellectual  ferment  of  the  revolution,  the  question  of  negro 
slavery  came  right  into  the  foreground  of  the  public  conscience. 
The  contrast  and  the  challenge  glared  upon  the  mind.  "All 
men  are  by  nature  free  and  equal,"  said  the  Virginia  Bill  of 
Rights,  and  outside  in  the  sunshine,  under  the  whip  of  the  over- 
seer, toiled  the  negro  slave. 

It  witnesses  to  the  great  change  in  human  ideas  since  the 
Roman  Imperial  system  dissolved  under  the  barbarian  inrush, 
that  there  could  be  this  heart-searching.  Conditions  of  indus- 
try, production,  and  land  tenure  had  long  prevented  any  re- 
crudescence of  gang  slavery ;  but  now  the  cycle  had  come  round 
again,  and  there  were  enormous  immediate  advantages  to  be 
reaped  by  the  owning  and  ruling  classes  in  the  revival  of  that 

1  In  1776  Lord  Dartmouth  wrote  that  the  colonists  could  not  be  allowed 
"to  check  or  discourage  a  traffic  so  beneficent  to  the  nation," 


852  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ancient  institution  in  mines,  upon  plantations,  and  upon  great 
public  works.  It  was  revived — but  against  great  opposition. 
From  the  beginning  of  the  revival  there  were  protests,  and  they 
grew.  The  revival  was  counter  to  the  new  conscience  of  man- 
kind. In  some  respects  the  new  gang  slavery  was  worse  than 
anything  in  the  ancient  world.  Peculiarly  horrible  was 
the  provocation  by  the  trade  of  slave  wars  and  man  hunts  in 
Western  Africa,  and  the  cruelties  of  the  long  transatlantic  voy- 
age. The  poor  creatures  were  packed  on  the  ships  often  with 
insufficient  provision  of  food  and  water,  without  proper  sanita- 
tion, without  medicines.  Many  who  could  tolerate  slavery  upon 
the  plantations  found  the  slave  trade  too  much  for  their  moral 
digestions.  Three  European  nations  were  chiefly  concerned  in 
this  dark  business,  Britain,  Spain,  and  Portugal,  because  they 
were  the  chief  owners  of  the  new  lands  in  America.  The  com- 
parative innocence  of  the  other  European  powers  is  to  be  as- 
cribed largely  to  their  lesser  temptations.  They  were  similar 
communities ;  in  parallel  circumstances  they  would  have  be- 
haved similarly. 

Throughout  the  middle  part  of  the  eighteenth  century  there 
was  an  active  agitation  against  negro  slavery  in  Great  Britain 
as  well  as  in  the  States.  Tt  was  estimated  that  in  1770  there 
were  fifteen  thousand  slaves  in  Britain,  mostly  brought  over 
by  their  owners  from  the  West  Indies  and  Virginia.  In  1771 
the  issue  came  to  a  conclusive  test  in  Britain  before  Lord  Mans- 
field. A  negro  named  James  Somersett  had  been  brought  to 
England  from  Virginia  by  his  owner.  He  ran  away,  was  cap- 
tured, and  violently  taken  on  a  ship  to  be  returned  to  Virginia. 
Erom  the  ship  he  was  extracted  by  a  writ  of  "habeas  corpus, 
Lord  Mansfield  declared  that  slavery  was  a  condition  unknown 
to  English  law,  an  "odious"  condition,  and  Somersett  walked 
out  of  the  court  a  free  man. 

The  Massachusetts  constitution  of  1780  had  declared  that 
"all  men  are  born  free  and  equal."  A  certain  negro,  Quaco,  put 
this  to  the  test  in  1783,  and  in  that  year  the  soil  of  Massachu- 
setts became  like  the  soil  of  Britain,  intolerant  of  slavery;  to 
tread  upon  it  was  to  become  free.  At  that  time  no  other  state 
in  the  Union  followed  this  example.  At  the  census  of  1790, 
Massachusetts,  alone  of  all  the  states,  returned  "no  slaves." 

The  state  of  opinion  in  Virginia  is  remarkable,  because  it 
brings  to  light  the  peculiar  difficulties  of  the  southern  states. 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          853 

The  great  Virginian  statesmen,  such  as  Washington  and  Jef- 
ferson, condemned  the  institution,  yet  because  there  was  no 
other  form  of  domestic  service,  Washington  owned  slaves.  There 
was  in  Virginia  a  strong  party  in  favour  of  emancipating 
slaves.  But  they  demanded  that  the  emancipated  slaves  should 
leave  the  state  within  a  year  or  he  outlawed!  They  were 
naturally  alarmed  at  the  possibility  that  a  free  barbaric  black 
community,  many  of  its  members  African-born  and  reeking  with 
traditions  of  cannibalism  and  secret  and  dreadful  religious  rites, 
should  arise  beside  them  upon  Virginian  soil.  When  we  con- 
sider that  point  of  view,  we  can  understand  why  it  was  that  a 
large  number  of  Virginians  should  be  disposed  to  retain  the 
mass  of  blacks  in  the  country  under  control  as  slaves,  while  at 
the  same  time  they  were  bitterly  opposed  to  the  slave  trade  and 
the  importation  of  any  fresh  blood  from  Africa.  The  free 
blacks,  one  sees,  might  easily  become  a  nuisance;  indeed  the 
free  state  of  Massachusetts  presently  closed  its  borders  to  their 
entry.  .  .  .  The  question  of  slavery,  which  in  the  ancient  world 
was  usually  no  more  than  a  question  of  status  between  indi- 
viduals racially  akin,  merged  in  America  with  the  different  and 
profounder  question  of  relationship  between  two  races  at  oppo- 
site extremes  of  the  human  species  and  of  the  most  contrasted 
types  of  tradition  and  culture.  If  the  black  man  had  been 
white,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that  negro  slavery,  like  white 
servitude,  would  have  vanished  from  the  United  States  within 
a  generation  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  as  a  natural 
consequence  of  the  statements  in  that  declaration. 


§  7 

We  have  told  of  the  War  of  Independence  in  America  as  the 
first  great  break  away  from  the  system  of  European  monarchies 
and  foreign  offices,  as  the  repudiation  by  a  new  community  of 
Machiavellian  statescraft  as  the  directive  form  of  human  affairs. 
Within  a  decade  there  came  a  second  and  much  more  portentous 
revolt  against  this  strange  game  of  Great  Powers,  this  tangled 
interaction  of  courts  and  policies  which  obsessed  Europe.  But 
this  time  it  was  no  breaking  away  at  the  outskirts.  In  France, 
the  nest  and  home  of  Grand  Monarchy,  the  heart  and  centre  of 
Europe,  came  this  second  upheaval.  And,  unlike  the  American 


854  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

colonists,  who  simply  repudiated  a  king,  the  French,  following 
in  the  footsteps  of  the  English  revolution,  "beheaded  one. 

Like  the  British  revolution  and  like  the  revolution  in  the 
United  States,  the  French  revolution  can  be  traced  back  to 
the  ambitious  absurdities  of  the  French  monarchy.  The  schemes 
of  aggrandisement,  the  aims  and  designs  of  the  Grand  Monarch, 
necessitated  an  expenditure  upon  war  equipment  throughout 
Europe  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  taxable  capacity  of  the  age. 
And  even  the  splendours  of  monarchy  were  enormously  costly, 
measured  by  the  productivity  of  the  time.  In  France,  just  as 
in  Britain  and  in  America,  the  first  resistance  was  made  not  to 
the  monarch  as  such  and  to  his  foreign  policy  as  such,  nor  with 
any  clear  recognition  of  these  things  as  the  roots  of  the  trouble, 
but  merely  to  the  inconveniences  and  charges  upon  the  indi- 
vidual life  caused  by  them.  The  practical  taxable  capacity  of 
France  must  have  been  relatively  much  less  than  that  of  Eng- 
land because  of  the  various  exemptions  of  the  nobility  and 
clergy.  The  burthen  resting  directly  upon  the  common  people 
was  heavier.  That  made  the  upper  classes  the  confederates  of 
the  court  instead  of  the  antagonists  of  the  court  as  they  were 
in  England,  and  so  prolonged  the  period  of  waste  further ;  but 
when  at  last  the  bursting-point  did  come,  the  explosion  was  more 
violent  and  shattering. 

During  the  years  of  the  American  War  of  Independence  there 
were  few  signs  of  any  impending  explosion  in  France.  There 
was  much  misery  among  the  lower  classes,  much  criticism  and 
satire,  much  outspoken  liberal  thinking,  but  there  was  little  to 
indicate  that  the  thing  as  a  whole,  with  all  its  customs,  usages, 
and  familiar  discords,  might  not  go  on  for  an  indefinite  time. 
It  was  consuming  beyond  its  powers  of  production,  but  as  yet 
only  the  inarticulate  classes  were  feeling  the  pinch.  Gibbon, 
the  historian,  knew  France  well ;  Paris  was  as  familiar  to  him 
as  London ;  but  there  is  no  suspicion  to  be  detected  in  the  pas- 
sage we  have  quoted  that  days  of  political  and  social  dissolution 
were  at  hand.  N~o  doubt  the  world  abounded  in  absurdities  and 
injustices,  yet  nevertheless,  from  the  point  of  view  of  a  scholar 
and  a  gentleman,  it  was  fairly  comfortable,  and  it  seemed  fairly 
secure. 

There  was  much  liberal  thought,  speech,  and  sentiment  in 
France  at  this  time.  Parallel  with  and  a  little  later  than  John 
Locke  in  England,  Montesquieu  (1689-1755)  in  France,  in  the 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  855 

earlier  half  of  the  eighteenth  century,  had  subjected  social,  po- 
litical, and  religious  institutions  to  the  same  searching  and 
fundamental  analysis,  especially  in  his  Esprit  des  Lois.  He 
had  stripped  the  magical  prestige  from  the  absolutist  monarchy 
in  France.  He  shares  with  Locke  the  credit  for  clearing  away 
many  of  the  false  ideas  that  had  hitherto  prevented  deliberate 
and  conscious  attempts  to  reconstruct  human  society.  It  was 
not  his  fault  if  at  first  some  extremely  unsound  and  imperma- 
nent shanties  were  run  up  on  the  vacant  site.  The  generation 
that  followed  him  in  the  middle  and  later  decades  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  was  boldly  speculative  upon  the  moral  and  intel- 
lectual clearings  he  had  made.  A  group  of  brilliant  writers, 
the  "Encyclopaedists,"  mostly  rebel  spirits  from  the  excellent 
schools  of  the  Jesuits,  set  themselves  under  the  leadership  of 
Diderot  to  scheme  out,  in  a  group  of  works,  a  new  world  (1766) . 
The  glory  of  the  Encylopaedists,  says  Mallet,  lay  "in  their  hatred 
of  things  unjust,  in  their  denunciation  of  the  trade  in  slaves, 
of  the  inequalities  of  taxation,  of  the  corruption  of  justice,  of 
the  wastefulness  of  wars,  in  their  dreams  of  social  progress,  in 
their  sympathy  with  the  rising  empire  of  industry  which  was 
beginning  to  transform  the  world."  Their  chief  error  seems 
to  have  been  an  indiscriminate  hostility  to  religion.  They  be- 
lieved that  man  was  naturally  just  and  politically  competent, 
whereas  his  impulse  to  social  service  and  self-forgetfulness  is 
usually  developed  only  through  an  education  essentially  re- 
ligious, and  sustained  only  in  an  atmosphere  of  honest  co-opera- 
tion. Uncoordinated  human  initiatives  lead  to  nothing  but 
social  chaos. 

Side  by  side  with  the  Encyclopaedists  were  the  Economists  or 
Physiocrats,  who  were  making  bold  and  crude  inquiries  into 
the  production  and  distribution  of  food  and  goods.  Morally, 
the  author  of  the  Code  de  la  Nature,  denounced  the  institution 
of  private  property  and  proposed  a  communistic  organization 
of  society.  He  was  tho  precursor  of  that  large  and  various 
school  of  collectivist  thinkers  in  the  nineteenth  century  who 
are  lumped  together  as  Socialists. 

Both  the  Encyclopaedists  and  the  various  Economists  and 
Physiocrats  demanded  a  considerable  amount  of  hard  thinking 
in  their  disciples.  An  easier  and  more  popular  leader  to  follow 
was  Rousseau  (1712-78).  He  displayed  a  curious  mingling 
of  logical  rigidity  and  sentimental  enthusiasm.  He  preached 


856  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  alluring  doctrine  that  the  primitive  state  of  man  was  one 
of  virtue  and  happiness,  from  which  he  had  declined  through 
the  rather  inexplicable  activities  of  priests,  kings,  lawyers,  and 
the  like.  Rousseau's  intellectual  influence  was  on  the  whole 
de-moralizing.  It  struck  not  only  at  the  existing  social  fabric, 
but  at  any  social  organization.  When  he  wrote  of  the  Social 
Contract,  he  seemed  rather  to  excuse  breaches  of  the  covenant 
than  to  emphasize  its  necessity.  Man  is  so  far  from  perfect, 
that  a  writer  who  apparently  sustained  the  thesis  that  the  al- 
most universal  disposition,  against  which  we  all  have  to  fortify 
ourselves,  to  repudiate  debts,  misbehave  sexually,  and  evade 
the  toil  and  expenses  of  education  for  ourselves  and  others,  is 
not  after  all  a  delinquency,  but  a  fine  display  of  Natural  Virtue, 
was  bound  to  have  a  large  following  in  every  class  that  could 
read  him.  Rousseau's  tremendous  vogue  did  much  to  popularize 
a  sentimental  and  declamatory  method  of  dealing  with  social 
and  political  problems. 

We  have  already  remarked  that  hitherto  no  human  commu- 
nity has  begun  to  act  upon  theory.  There  must  first  be  some 
breakdown  and  necessity  for  direction  that  lets  theory  into  her 
own.  Up  to  1788  the  republican  and  anarchist  talk  and  writing 
of  French  thinkers  must  have  seemed  as  ineffective  and  po- 
litically unimportant  as  the  aesthetic  socialism  of  William 
Morris  at  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century.  There  was  the 
social  and  political  system  going  on  with  an  effect  of  invincible 
persistence,  the  king  hunting  and  mending  his  clocks,  the  court 
and  the  world  of  fashion  pursuing  their  pleasures,  the  financiers 
conceiving  continually  more  enterprising  extensions  of  credit, 
business  blundering  clumsily  along  its  ancient  routes,  much  in- 
commoded by  taxes  and  imposts,  the  peasants  worrying,  toiling, 
and  suffering,  full  of  a  hopeless  hatred  of  the  nobleman's 
chateau.  Men  talked — and  felt  they  were  merely  talking.  Any- 
thing might  be  said,  because  nothing  would  ever  happen. 

§  8 

The  first  jar  to  this  sense  of  the  secure  continuity  of  life  in 
France  came  in  1787,  Louis  XVI  (1774-92)  was  a  dull,  ill- 
educated  monarch,  and  he  had  the  misfortune  to  be  married  to 
a  silly  and  extravagant  woman,  Marie  Antoinette,  the  sister  of 
the  Austrian  emperor.  The  question  of  her  virtue  is  one  of 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          857 

profound  interest  to  a  certain  type  of  historical  writer,  but  we 
need  not  discuss  it  here.  She  lived,  as  Paul  Wiriath  l  puts  it, 
"side  by  side,  but  not  at  the  side"  of  her  husband.  She  was 
rather  heavy-featured,  but  not  so  plain  as  to  prevent  her  posing 
as  a  beautiful,  romantic,  and  haughty  queen.  When  the  ex- 
chequer was  exhausted  by  the  war  in  America  (an  enterprise 
to  weaken  England  of  the  highest  Machiavellian  quality),  when 
the  whole  country  was  uneasy  with  discontents,  she  set  her  in- 
fluence to  thwart  the  attempts  at  economy  of  the  king's  minis- 
ters, to  encourage  every  sort  of  aristocratic  extravagance,  and 
to  restore  the  church  and  the  nobility  to  the  position  they  had 
held  in  the  great  days  of  Louis  XI\7.  Non-aristocratic  officers 
were  to  be  weeded  from  the  army ;  the  power  of  the  church  over 
private  life  was  to  be  extended.  She  found  in  an  upper-class 
official,  Calonne,  her  ideal  minister  of  finance.  From  1783-87 
this  wonderful  man  produced  money  as  if  by  magic — and  as  if 
by  magic  it  disappeared  again.  Then  in  1787  he  collapsed.  He 
had  piled  loan  on  loan,  and  now  he  declared  that  the  monarchy, 
the  Grand  Monarchy  that  had  ruled  France  since  the  days  of 
Louis  XIV,  was  bankrupt.  Xo  more  money  could  be  raised. 
There  must  be  a  gathering  of  the  notables  of  the  kingdom  to 
consider  the  situation. 

To  the  gathering  of  notables,  a  summoned  assembly  of  lead- 
ing men,  Calonne  propounded  a  scheme  for  a  subsidy  to  be 
levied  upon  all  landed  property.  This  roused  the  aristocrats  to 
a  pitch  of  great,  indignation.  They  demanded  the  summoning 
of  a  body  roughly  equivalent  to  the  British  parliament,  the 
States  General,  which  had  not  met  since  1610.  Regardless  of 
the  organ  of  opinion  they  were  creating  for  the  discontents 
below  them,  excited  only  by  the  proposal  that  they  should  bear 
part  of  the  weight  of  the  financial  burthens  of  the  country,  the 
French  notables  insisted.  And  in  May,  1789,  the  States 
General  met. 

It  was  an  assembly  of  the  representatives  of  three  orders,  the 
nobles,  the  clergy,  and  the  Third  Estate,  the  commons.  For 
the  Third  Estate  the  franchise  was  very  wide,  nearly  every  tax- 
payer of  twenty-five  having  a  vote.  (The  parish  priests  voted 
as  clergy,  the  small  noblesse  as  nobles.)  The  States  General 
was  a  body  without  any  tradition  of  procedure.  Enquiries  were 
sent  to  the  antiquarians  of  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  in  that 
1  Article  "France,"  Encyclopedia,  Britannica. 


858  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

matter.  Its  opening  deliberations  turned  on  the  question 
whether  it  was  to  meet  as  one  body  or  as  three,  each  estate  hav- 
ing an  equal  vote.  Since  the  Clergy  numbered  308,  the  Nobles 
285,  and  the  Deputies  621,  the  former  arrangement  would  put 
the  Commons  in  an  absolute  majority,  the  latter  gave  them 
one  vote  in  three.  Nor  had  the  States  General  any  meeting- 
place.  Should  it  meet  in  Paris  or  in  some  provincial  city  ? 
Versailles  was  chosen,  "because  of  the  hunting.77 

It  is  clear  that  the  king  and  .queen  meant  to  treat  this  fuss 
about  the  national  finance  as  a  terrible  bore,  and  to  allow  it  to 
interfere  with  their  social  routine  as  little  as  possible.  We 
find  the  meetings  going  on  in  salons  that  were  not  wanted,  in 
orangeries  and  tennis-courts,  and  so  forth. 

The  question  whether  the  voting  was  to  be  by  the  estates  or 
by  head  was  clearly  a  vital  one.  It  was  wrangled  over  for  six 
weeks.  The  Third  Estate,  taking  a  leaf  from  the  book  of  the 
English  House  of  Commons,  then  declared  that  it  alone  repre- 
sented the  nation,  and  that  no  taxation  must  be  levied  hence- 
forth without  its  consent.  Whereupon  the  king  closed  the  hall 
in  which  it  was  sitting,  and  intimated  that  the  deputies  had 
better  go  home.  Instead,  the  deputies  met  in  a  convenient  ten- 
nis-court, and  there  took  oath,  the  Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court, 
not  to  separate  until  they  had  established  a  constitution  in 
France. 

The  king  took  a  high  line,  and  attempted  to  disperse  the 
Third  Estate  by  force.  The  soldiers  refused  to  act.  On  that 
the  king  gave  in  with  a  dangerous  suddenness,  and  accepted 
the  principle  that  the  Three  Estates  should  all  deliberate  and 
vote  together  as  one  National  Assembly.  Meanwhile,  appar- 
ently at  the  queen's  instigation,  foreign  regiments  in  the  French 
service,  who  could  be  trusted  to  act  against  the  people,  were 
brought  up  from  the  provinces  under  the  Marshal  de  Broglie, 
and  the  king  prepared  to  go  back  upon  his  concessions.  Where- 
upon Paris  and  France  revolted.  Broglie  hesitated  to  fire  on 
the  crowds.  A  provisional  city  government  was  set  up  in  Paris 
and  in  most  of  the  other  large  cities,  and  a  new  armed  force, 
the  National  Guard,  a  force  designed  primarily  and  plainly 
to  resist  the  forces  of  the  crown,  was  brought  into  existence  by 
these  municipal  bodies. 

The  revolt  of  July  1789  was  really  the  effective  French  revo- 
lution. The  grim-looking  prison  of  the  Bastille,  very  feebly 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          859 

defended,  was  stormed  by  the  people  of  Paris,  and  the  insur- 
rection spread  rapidly  throughout  France.  In  the  east  and 
north-west  provinces  many  chateaux  belonging  to  the  nobility 
were  burnt  by  the  peasants,  their  title-deeds  carefully  destroyed, 
and  the  owners  murdered  or  driven  away.  The  insurrection 
spread  throughout  France.  In  a  month  the  ancient  and  decayed 
system  of  the  aristocratic  order  had  collapsed.  Many  of  the 
leading  princes  and  courtiers  of  the  queen's  party  fled  abroad. 
The  National  Assembly  found  itself  called  upon  to  create  a  new 
political  and  social  system  for  a  new  age. 

§  9 

The  French  National  Assembly  was  far  less  fortunate  in  the 
circumstances  of  its  task  than  the*  American  Congress.  The 
latter  had  half  a  continent  to  itself,  with  no  possible  antagonist 
but  the  British  Government.  Its  religious  and  educational 
organizations  were  various,  collectively  not  very  powerful,  and 
on  the  whole  friendly.  King  George  was  far  away  in  England, 
and  sinking  slowly  towards  an  imbecile  condition.  Neverthe- 
less, it  took  the  United  States  several  years  to  hammer  out  a 
working  constitution.  The  French,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
surrounded  by  aggressive  neighbours  with  Machiavellian  ideas, 
they  were  encumbered  by  a  king  and  court  resolved  to  make 
mischief,  and  the  church  was  one  single  great  organization  in- 
extricably bound  up  with  the  ancient  order.  The  queen  was  in 
close  correspondence  with  the  Count  of  Artois,  the  Duke  of 
Bourbon,  and  the  other  exiled  princes  who  were  trying  to  induce 
Austria  and  Prussia  to  attack  the  new  French  nation.  More- 
over, France  was  already  a  bankrupt  country,  while  the  United 
States  had  limitless  undeveloped  resources ;  and  the  revolution, 
by  altering  the  conditions  of  land  tenure  and  marketing,  had 
produced  an  economic  disorganization  that  has  no  parallel  in 
the  case  of  America. 

These  were  the  unavoidable  difficulties  of  the  situation.  But 
in  addition  the  Assembly  made  difficulties  for  itself.  There 
was  no  orderly  procedure.  The  English  House  of  Commons  had 
had  more  than  five  centuries  of  experience  in  its  work,  and 
Mirabeau,  one  of  the  great  leaders  of  the  early  Revolution,  tried 
in  vain  to  have  the  English  rules  adopted.  But  the  feeling  of 
the  times  was  all  in  favour  of  outcries,  dramatic  interruption^, 


800  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  such-like  manifestations  of  ^Natural  Virtue.  And  the  dis- 
order did  not  come  merely  from  the  assembly.  There  was  a 
great  gallery,  much  too  great  a  gallery,  for  strangers ;  but  who 
would  restrain  the  free  citizens  from  having  a  voice  in  the  na- 
tional control  ?  This  gallery  swarmed  with  people  eager  for  a 
"scene,"  ready  to  applaud  or  shout  down  the  speakers  below. 
The  abler  speakers  were  obliged  to  play  to  the  gallery,  and  take 
a  sentimental  and  sensational  line.  It  was  easy  at  a  crisis  to 
bring  in  a  mob  to  kill  debate. 

So  encumbered,  the  Assembly  set  about  its  constructive  task. 
On  the  Fourth  of  August  it  achieved  a  great  dramatic  success. 
Led  by  several  of  the  liberal  nobles,  it  made  a  series  of  resolu- 
tions, abolishing  serfdom,  privileges,  tax  exemptions,  tithes,  ana 
feudal  courts.  (In  many  parts  of  the  country,  however,  these 
resolutions  were  not  carried  into  effect  until  three  or  four  years 
later.)  Titles  went  with  these  other  renunciations.  Long  be- 
fore France  was  a  republic  it  was  an  offence  for  a  nobleman  to 
sign  his  name  with  his  title.  For  six  weeks  the  Assembly  de- 
voted itself,  with  endless  opportunities  for  rhetoric,  to  the 
formulation  of  a  Declaration  of  the  Rights  of  Man — on  the 
lines  of  the  Bills  of  Eights  that  were  the  English  preliminaries 
to  organized  change.  Meanwhile  the  court  plotted  for  reaction, 
and  the  people  felt  that  the  court  was  plotting.  The  story  is 
complicated  here  by  the  scoundrelly  schemes  of  the  king's 
cousin,  Philip  of  Orleans,  who  hoped  to  use  the  discords  of 
the  time  to  replace  Louis  on  the  French  throne.  His  gardens 
at  the  Palais  Royal  were  thrown  open  to  the  public,  and  became 
a  great  centre  of  advanced  discussion.  His  agents  did  much 
to  intensify  the  popular  suspicion  of  the  king.  And  things  were 
exacerbated  by  a  shortage  of  provisions — for  which  the  king's 
government  was  held  guilty. 

Presently  the  loyal  Flanders  regiment  appeared  at  Versailles 
The  royal  family  was  scheming  to  get  farther  away  from  Paris 
— in  order  to  undo  all  that  had  been  done,  to  restore  tyranny 
and  extravagance.  Such  constitutional  monarchists  as  General 
Lafayette  were  seriously  alarmed.  And  just  at  this  time  oc- 
curred an  outbreak  of  popular  indignation  at  the  scarcity  of 
food,  that  passed  by  an  easy  transition  into  indignation  against 
the  threat  of  royalist  reaction.  It  was  believed  that  there  was 
an  abundance  of  provisions  at  Versailles;  that  food  was  being 
kept  there  away  from  the  people.  The  public  mind  had  been 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE  861 

much  disturbed  by  reports,  possibly  by  exaggerated  reports,  of  a 
recent  banquet  at  Versailles,  hostile  to  the  nation.  Here  are  some 
extracts  from  Carlyle  descriptive  of  that  unfortunate  feast. 

"The  Hall  of  the  Opera  is  granted ;  the  Salon  d'Hercule  shall 
be  drawing-room.  "Not  only  the  Officers  of  Flandre,  but  of  the 
Swiss,  of  the  Hundred  Swiss;  nay  of  the  Versailles  National 
Guard,  such  of  them  as  have  any  loyalty,  shall  feast ;  it  will  be 
a  Repast  like  few. 

"And  now  suppose  this  Repast,  the  solid  part  of  it,  trans- 
acted ;  and  the  first  bottle  over.  Suppose  the  customary  loyal 
toasts  drunk;  the  King's  health,  the  Queen's  with  deafening 
vivats;  that  of  the  nation  'omitted,'  or  even  'rejected.'  Suppose 
champagne  flowing;  with  pot-valorous  speech,  with  instrumental 
music;  empty  featherheads  growing  ever  the  noisier,  in  their 
own  emptiness,  in  each  other's  noise.  Her  Majesty,  who  looks 
unusually  sad  to-night  (His  Majesty  sitting  dulled  with  the 
day's  hunting),  is  told  that  the  sight  of  it  would  cheer  her. 
Behold !  She  enters  there,  issuing  from  her  State-rooms,  like 
the  Moon  from  clouds,  this  fairest  unhappy  Queen  of  Hearts ; 
royal  Husband  by  her  side,  young  Dauphin  in  her  arms !  She 
descends  from  the  Boxes,  amid  splendour  and  acclaim;  walks 
queen-like  round  the  Tables;  gracefully  nodding;  her  looks 
full  of  sorrow,  yet  of  gratitude  and  daring,  with  the  hope  of 
France  on  her  mother-bosom !  And  now,  the  band  striking  up, 
0  Richard,  0  mon  Eoif  I'univers  t'abandonne  (Oh  Richard,  O 
my  king,  the  world  is  all  forsaking  thee),  could  man  do  other 
than  rise  to  height  of  pity,  of  loyal  valour?  Could  feather- 
headed  young  ensigns  do  other  than,  by  white  Bourbon  Cock- 
ades, handed  them  from  fair  fingers;  by  waving  of  swords, 
drawn  to  pledge  the  Queen's  health ;  by  trampling  of  National 
Cockades;  by  scaling  the  Boxes,  whence  intrusive  murmurs 
may  come ;  by  vociferation,  sound,  fury  and  distraction,  within 
doors  and  without — testify  what  tempest-tost  state  of  vacuity 
they  are  in  ?  ... 

"A  natural  Repast;  in  ordinary  times,  a  harmless  one:  now 
fatal.  .  .  .  Poor  ill-advised  Marie  Antoinette ;  with  a  woman's 
vehemence,  not  with  a  sovereign's  foresight !  It  was  so  natural, 
yet  so  unwise.  Next  day,  in  public  speech  of  ceremony,  her 
Majesty  declares  herself  'delighted  with  Thursday.' ' 

And  here  to  set  against  this  is  Carlyle's  picture  of  the  mood 
of  the  people. 


862  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

"In  squalid  garret,  on  Monday  morning  Maternity  awakes,  to 
hear  children  weeping  for  bread.  Maternity  must  forth  to  the 
streets,  to  the  herb-makers  and  bakers'-queues ;  meets  there  with 
hunger-stricken  Maternity,  sympathetic,  exasperative.  O  we 
unhappy  women !  But,  instead  of  bakers'-queues,  why  not  to 
Aristocrats'  palaces,  the  root  of  the  matter?  Allans!  Let  us 
assemble.  To  the  H6tel-de-Ville ;  to  Versailles.  .  .  ." 

There  was  much  shouting  and  coming  and  going  in  Paris  be- 
fore this  latter  idea  realized  itself.  One  Maillard  appeared 
with  organizing  power,  and  assumed  a  certain  leadership.  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  the  revolutionary  leaders,  and  partic- 
ularly General  Lafayette,  used  and  organized  this  outbreak 
to  secure  the  king,  before  he  could  slip  away — as  Charles  I 
did  to  Oxford — to  begin  a  civil  war.  As  the  afternoon  wore  on, 
the  procession  started  on  its  eleven  mile  tramp.  .  .  . 

Again  we  quote  Carlyle: 

"Maillard  has  halted  his  draggled  Menads  on  the  last  hill- 
top; and  now  Versailles,  and  the  Chateau  of  Versailles,  and 
far  and  wide  the  inheritance  of  Royalty  opens  to  the  wondering 
eye.  From  far  on  the  right,  over  Marly  and  Saint-Germain- 
en-Laye;  round  towards  Rambouillet,  on  the  left,  beautiful 
all;  softly  embosomed;  as  if  in  sadness,  in  the  dim  moist 
weather!  And  near  before  us  is  Versailles,  New  and  Old; 
with  that  broad  frondent  Avenue  de  Versailles  between — stately 
frondent,  broad,  three  hundred  feet  as  men  reckon,  with  its 
four  rows  of  elms ;  and  then  the  Chateau  de  Versailles,  ending 
in  royal  parks  and  pleasances,  gleaming  lakelets,  arbours,  laby- 
rinths, the  Menagerie,  and  Great  and  Little  Trianon.  High- 
towered  dwellings,  leafy  pleasant  places;  where  the  gods  of 
this  lower  world  abide:  whence,  nevertheless,  black  care  cannot 
be  excluded;  whither  Menadic  hunger  is  even  now  advancing, 
armed  with  pike-thyrsi !" 

Rain  fell  as  the  evening  closed. 

"Behold  the  Esplanade,  over  all  its  spacious  expanse,  is  cov- 
ered with  groups  of  squalid  dripping  women ;  of  lank-haired 
male  rascality,  armed  with  axes,  rusty  pikes,  old  muskets,  iron- 
shod  clubs  (batons  ferres,  which  end  in  knives  or  swordblades, 
a  kind  of  extempore  billhook)  ;  looking  nothing  but  hungry  re- 
volt. The  rain  pours;  Gardes-du-Corps  so  caracoling  through 
the  groups  'amid  hisses';  irritating  and  agitating  what  is  but 
dispersed  here  to  reunite  there.  ,  ,  . 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          863 

"Innumerable  squalid  women  beleaguer  the  President  and 
Deputation;  insist  on  going  with  him:  has  not  his  Majesty  him- 
self, looking  from  the  window,  sent  out  to  ask,  What  we  wanted  ? 
'Bread,  and  speech  with  the  King,'  that  was  the  answer.  Twelve 
women  are  clamourously  added  to  the  deputation;  and  march 
with  it,  across  the  Esplanade ;  through  dissipated  groups,  cara- 
coling bodyguards  and  the  pouring  rain." 

"Bread  and  not  too  much  talking !"    Natural  demands. 

"One  learns  also  that  the  royal  Carriages  are  getting  yoked, 
as  if  for  Metz.  Carriages,  royal  or  not,  have  verily  showed 
themselves  at  the  back  gates.  They  even  produced,  or  quoted,  a 
written  order  from  our  Versailles  Municipality — which  is  a 
monarchic  not  a  democratic  one.  However,  Versailles  patrols 
drove  them  in  again;  as  the  vigilant  Lecointre  had  strictly 
charged  them  to  do.  ... 

"So  sink  the  shadows  of  night,  blustering,  rainy;  and  all 
paths  grow  dark.  Strangest  night  ever  seen  in  these  regions; 
perhaps  since  the  Bartholomew  Night,  when  Versailles,  as 
Bassompierre  writes  of  it,  was  a  chetif  chateau. 

"O  for  the  lyre  of  some  Orpheus,  to  constrain,  with  touch  of 
melodious  strings,  these  mad  masses  into  Order !  For  here  all 
seems  fallen  asunder,  in  wide-yawning  dislocation.  The  high- 
est, as  in  down-rushing  of  a  world,  is  come  in  contact  with  the 
lowest:  the  rascality  of  France  beleaguering  the  royalty  of 
France;  'iron-shod  batons'  lifted  round  the  diadem,  not  to 
guard  it !  With  denunciations  of  bloodthirsty  anti-national 
body-guards,  are  heard  dark  growlings  against  a  queenly 
name. 

"The  Court  sits  tremulous,  powerless:  varies  with  the  vary- 
ing temper  of  the  Esplanade,  with  the  varying  colour  of  the 
rumours  from  Paris.  Thick-coming  rumours;  now  of  peace, 
now  of  war.  Necker  and  all  the  Ministers  consult;  with  a 
blank  issue.  The  (Eil-de-Boeuf  is  one  tempest  of  whispers :  We 
will  fly  to  Metz;  we  will  not  fly.  The  royal  carriages  again 
attempt  egress — though  for  trial  merely ;  they  are  again  driven 
in  by  Lecointre's  patrols." 

But  we  must  send  the  reader  to  Carlyle  to  learn  of  the  com- 
ing of  the  National  Guard  in  the  night  under  General  Lafayette 
himself,  the  bargaining  between  the  Assembly  and  the  King, 
the  outbreak  of  fighting  in  the  morning  between  the  bodyguard 
and  the  hungry  besiegers,  and  how  the  latter  stormed  into  the 


8G4  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

palace  and  came  near  to  a  massacre  of  the  royal  family.  Lafay- 
ette and  his  troops  turned  out  in  time  to  prevent  that,  and  timely 
cartloads  of  loaves  arrive  from  Paris  for  the  crowd. 

At  last  it  was  decided  that  the  king  should  come  to  Paris. 

"Processional  marches  not  a  few  our  world  has  seen ;  Roman 
triumphs  and  ovations,  Cabiric  cymbal-heatings,  Royal  prog- 
resses, Irish  funerals ;  but  this  of  the  French  Monarchy  march- 
ing to  its  bed  remained  to  be  seen.  Miles  long,  and  of  breadth 
losing  itself  in  vagueness,  for  all  the  neighbouring  country 
crowds  to  see.  Slow:  stagnating  along,  like  shoreless  Lake, 
yet  with  a  noise  like  Niagara,  like  Babel  and  Bedlam.  A 
splashing  and  a  tramping;  a  hurrahing,  uproaring,  musket- 
volleying  ;  the  truest  segment  of  Chaos  seen  in  these  latter  Ages ! 
Till  slowly  it  disembogue  itself,  in  the  thickening  dusk,  into 
expectant  Paris,  through  a  double  row  of  faces  all  the  way  from 
Passy  to  the  H6tel-de-Ville. 

"Consider  this:  Vanguard  of  National  troops;  with  trains 
of  artillery;  of  pikemen  and  pikewomen,  mounted  on  cannons, 
on  carts,  hackney-coaches,  or  on  foot.  .  .  .  Loaves  stuck  on 
the  points  of  bayonets,  green  boughs  stuck  in  gun-barrels.  Next, 
as  main-march,  'fifty  cart-loads  of  corn,'  which  have  been 
lent,  for  peace,  from  the  stores  of  \7'ersailles.  Behind  which 
follow  stragglers  of  the  Garde-du-Corps ;  all  humiliated,  in 
Grenadier  bonnets.  Close  on  these  comes  the  royal  carriage; 
come  royal  carriages ;  for  there  are  a  hundred  national  deputies 
too,  among  whom  sits  Mirabeau — his  remarks  riot  given.  Then 
finally,  pell-mell,  as  rear-guard,  Flandre,  Swiss,  Hundred  Swiss, 
other  bodyguards,  brigands,  whosoever  cannot  get  before.  Be- 
tween and  among  all  which  masses  flows  without  limit  Saint- 
Antoine  and  the  Menadic  cohort.  Menadic  especially  about 
the  royal  carriage.  .  .  .  Covered  with  tricolor;  singing  'al- 
lusive songs' ;  pointing  with  one  hand  to  the  royal  carriage, 
which  the  allusions  hit,  and  pointing  to  the  provision-wagons 
with  the  other  hand,  and  these  words :  'Courage,  Friends ! 
We  shall  not  want  bread  now ;  we  are  bringing  you  the  Baker, 
the  Bakeress  and  Baker's  boy.'  .  .  . 

"The  wet  day  draggles  the  tricolor,  but  the  joy  is  unextin- 
guishable.  Is  not  all  well  now  ?  'Ah  Madame,  noire  bonne 
Reine,'  said  some  of  these  Strong-women  some  days  hence, 
'Ah,  Madame,  our  good  Queen,  don't  be  a  traitor  any  more 
and  we  will  all  love  von !' 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          865 

This  was  October  the  sixth,  1789.  For  nearly  two  years  the 
royal  family  dwelt  unmolested  in  the  Tuileries.  Had  the  court 
kept  common  faith  with  the  people,  the  king  might  have  died 
there,  a  king. 

From  1789  to  1791  the  early  Kevolution  held  its  own;  France 
was  a  limited  monarchy,  the  king  kept  a  diminished  state  in 
the  Tuileries,  and  the  National  Assembly  ruled  a  country  at 
peace.  The  reader  who  will  glance  back  to  the  maps  of  Poland 
we  have  given  in  the  previous  chapter  will  realize  what  occu- 
pied Russia,  Prussia,  and  Austria  at  this  time.  While  France 
experimented  with  a  crowned  republic  in  the  west,  the  last 
division  of  the  crowned  republic  of  the  east  was  in  progress. 
France  could  wait. 

When  we  consider  its  inexperience,  the  conditions  under 
which  it  worked,  and  the  complexities  of  its  problems,  one  must 
concede  that  the  Assembly  did  a  very  remarkable  amount  of 
constructive  work.  Much  of  that  work  was  sound  and  still  en- 
dures, much  was  experimental  and  has  been  undone.  Some 
was  disastrous.  There  was  a  clearing  up  of  the  penal  code; 
torture,  arbitrary  imprisonment,  and  persecutions  for  heresy 
were  abolished.  The  ancient  provinces  of  France,  Normandy, 
Burgundy,  and  the  like  gave  place  to  eighty  departments.  Pro- 
motion to  the  highest  ranks  in  the  army  was  laid  open  to  men 
of  every  class.  An  excellent  and  simple  system  of  law  courts 
was  set  up,  but  its  value  was  much  vitiated  by  having  the  judges 
appointed  by  popular  election  for  short  periods  of  time.  This 
made  the  crowd  a  sort  of  final  court  of  appeal,  and  the  judges, 
like  the  members  of  the  Assembly,  were  forced  to  play  to  the 
gallery.  And  the  whole  vast  property  of  the  church  was  seized 
and  administered  by  the  state ;  religious  establishments  not  en- 
gaged in  education  or  works  of  charity  were  broken  up,  and  the 
salaries  of  the  clergy  made  a  charge  upon  the  nation.  This 
in  itself  was  not  a  bad  thing  for  the  lower  clergy  in  France, 
who  were  often  scandalously  underpaid  in  comparison  with  the 
richer  dignitaries.  But  in  addition  the  choice  of  priests  and 
bishops  was  made  elective,  which  struck  at  the  very  root  idea 
of  the  Roman  church,  which  centred  everything  upon  the 
Pope,  and  in  which  all  authority  is  from  above  downward. 
Practically  the  National  Assembly  wanted  at  one  blow  to  make 
the  church  in  France  Protestant,  in  organization  if  not  in 
doctrine.  Everywhere  there  were  disputes  and  conflicts  between 


866  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  state  priests  created  by  the  National  Assembly  and  the 
recalcitrant  (non-juring)  priests  who  were  loyal  to  Rome.  .  .  . 
One  curious  thing  the  National  Assembly  did  which  greatly 
weakened  its  grip  on  affairs.  It  decreed  that  no  member  of 
the  Assembly  should  be  an  executive  minister.  This  was  in 
imitation  of  the  American  constitution,  where  also  ministers 
are  separated  from  the  legislature.  The  British  method  has  been 
to  have  all  ministers  in  the  legislative  body,  ready  to  answer 
questions  and  account  for  their  interpretation  of  the  laws  and 
their  conduct  of  the  nation's  business.  If  the  legislature  repre- 
sents the  sovereign  people,  then  it  is  surely  necessary  for  the 
ministers  to  be  in  the  closest  touch  with  their  sovereign.  This 
severance  of  the  legislature  and  executive  in  France  caused  mis- 
understandings and  mistrust ;  the  legislature  lacked  control  and 
the  executive  lacked  moral  force.  This  led  to  such  an  ineffective- 
ness in  the  central  government  that  in  many  districts  at  this 
time,  communes  and  towns  were  to  be  found  that  were  prac- 
tically self-governing  communities;  they  accepted  or  rejected 
the  commands  of  Paris  as  they  thought  fit,  declined  the  pay- 
ment of  taxes,  and  divided  up  the  church  lands  according  to 
their  local  appetites. 

§  10 

It  is  quite  possible  that  with  the  loyal  support  of  the  crown 
and  a  reasonable  patriotism  on  the  part  of  the  nobility,  the 
National  Assembly,  in  spite  of  its  noisy  galleries,  its  Rousseau- 
ism,  and  its  inexperience,  might  have  blundered  through  to  a 
stable  form  of  parliamentary  government  for  France.  In  Mira- 
beau  it  had  a  statesman  with  clear  ideas  of  the  needs  of  the 
time ;  he  knew  the  strength  and  the  defects  of  the  British  sys- 
tem, and  apparently  he  had  set  himself  to  establish  in  France 
a  parallel  political  organization  upon  a  wider,  more  honest 
franchise.  He  had,  it  is  true,  indulged  in  a  sort  of  Ruritanian 
flirtation  with  the  queen,  seen  her  secretly,  pronounced  her  very 
solemnly  the  "only  man"  about  the  king,  and  made  rather  a 
fool  of  himself  in  that  matter,  but  his  schemes  were  drawn 
upon  a  much  larger  scale  than  the  scale  of  the  back  stairs  of  the 
Tuileries.  By  his  death  in  1791  France  certainly  lost  one  of 
her  most  constructive  statesmen,  and  the  National  Assembly 
its  last  chance  of  any  co-operation  with  the  king.  When  there 
is  a  court  there  is  usually  a  conspiracy,  and  royalist  schemes 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE 


867 


and  royalist  mischief -making  were  the  last  straw  in  the  balance 
against  the  National  Assembly.  The  royalists  did  not  care  for 
Mirabeau,  they  did  not  care 
for  France ;  they  wanted  to  be 
back  in  their  lost  paradise  of 
privilege,  haughtiness,  and 
limitless  expenditure,  and  it 
seemed  to  them  that  if  only 
they  could  make  the  govern- 
ment of  the  National  Assem- 
bly impossible,  then  by  a  sort 
of  miracle  the  dry  bones  of 
the  ancient  regime  would  live 
again.  They  had  no  sense  of 
the  other  possibility,  the  gulf 
of  the  republican  extremists, 
that  yawned  at  their  feet. 

One  June  night  in  1791, 
between  eleven  o'clock  and 
midnight,  the  king  and  queen 
and  their  two  children  slipped 
out  of  the  Tuileries  disguised, 
threaded  their  palpitating 
way  through  Paris,  circled 
round  from  the  north  of  the 
city  to  the  east,  and  got  at  last 
into  a  travelling-carriage  that 
was  waiting  upon  the  road  to 
Chalons.  They  were  flying  to 
the  army  of  the  east.  The 
army  of  the  east  was  "loyal," 
that  is  to  say,  its  general  and 
officers  at  least  were  prepared 
to  betray  France  to  the  king 
and  court.  Here  was  adven- 
ture at  last  after  the  queen's 
heart,  and  one  can  understand 
the  pleasurable  excitement  of 
the  little  party  as  the  miles 
lengthened  between  themselves  and  Paris.  Away  over  the  hills 
were  reverence,  deep  bows,  and  the  kissing  of  hands.  Then  back 


8G8  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  Versailles.  A  little  shooting  of  the  mob  in  Paris — artillery, 
if  need  be.  A  few  executions — but  not  of  the  sort  of  people  who 
matter.  A  White  Terror  for  a  few  months.  Then  all  would  be 
well  again.  Perhaps  Calonne  might  return,  too,  with  fresh 
financial  expedients.  He  was  busy  just  then  gathering  support 
among  the  German  princes.  There  were  a  lot  of  chateaux  to  re- 
build, but  the  people  who  burnt  them  down  could  hardly  com- 
plain if  the  task  of  rebuilding  them  pressed  rather  heavily  upon 
their  grimy  necks.  .  .  . 

All  such  bright  anticipations  were  cruelly  dashed  that,  night 
at  Varennes.  The  king  had  been  recognized  at  Sainte  Mene- 
hould  by  the  landlord  of  the  post  house,  and  as  the  night  fell, 
the  eastward  roads  clattered  with  galloping  messengers  rousing 
the  country,  and  trying  to  intercept  the  fugitives.  There  were 
fresh  horses  waiting  in  the  upper  village  of  Varennes — the 
young  officer  in  charge  had  given  the  king  up  for  the  night  and 
gone  to  bed — while  for  half  an  hour  in  the  lower  village  the 
poor  king,  disguised  as  a  valet,  disputed  with  his  postillions,  who 
had  expected  reliefs  in  the  lower  village  and  refused  to  go 
further.  Finally  they  consented  to  go  on.  They  consented  too 
late.  The  little  party  found  the  postmaster  from  Sainte  Mene- 
hould,  who  had  ridden  past  while  the  postillions  wrangled,  and 
a  number  of  worthy  republicans  of  Varennes  whom  he  had 
gathered  together,  awaiting  them  at  the  bridge  between  the  two 
parts  of  the  town.  The  bridge  was  barricaded.  Muskets  were 
thrust  into  the  carriage :  "Your  passports  ?" 

The  king  surrendered  without  a  struggle.  The  little  party 
was  taken  into  the  house  of  some  village  functionary.  "Well," 
said  the  king,  "here  you  have  me!"  Also  he  remarked  that 
he  was  hungry.  At  dinner  he  commended  the  wine,  "quite 
excellent  wine."  What  the  queen  said  is  not  recorded.  There 
were  royalist  troops  at  hand,  but  they  attempted  no  rescue. 
The  tocsin  began  to  ring,  and  the  village  "illuminated  itself," 
to  guard  against  surprise.  .  .  . 

A  very  crestfallen  coachload  of  royalty  returned  to  Paris, 
and  was  received  by  vast  crowds — in  silence.  The  word  had 
gone  forth  that  whoever  insulted  the  king  should  be  thrashed, 
and  whoever  applauded  him  should  be  killed.  .  .  . 

It  was  only  after  this  foolish  exploit  that  the  idea  of  a  re- 
public took  hold  of  the  French  mind.  Before  this  flight  to 
Varennes  there  was  no  doubt  much  abstract  republican  senti- 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          869 

ment,  but  there  was  scarcely  any  expressed  disposition,  to  abol- 
ish monarchy  in  France.  Even  in  July,  a  month  after  the 
flight,  a  great  meeting  in  the  Champ  de  Mars,  supporting  a 
petition  for  the  dethronement  of  the  king,  was  dispersed  by  the 
authorities,  and  many  people  were  killed.  But  such  displays 
of  firmness  could  not  prevent  the  lesson  of  that  flight  soaking 
into  men's  minds.  Just  as  in  England  in  the  days  of 
Charles  I,  so  now  in  France  men  realized  that  the  king  could 
not  be  trusted — he  was  dangerous.  The  Jacobins  grew  rapidly 
in  strength.  Their  leaders,  Robespierre,  Danton,  Marat,  who 
had  hitherto  been  figured  as  impossible  extremists,  began  to 
dominate  French  affairs. 

These  Jacobins  were  the  equivalents  of  the  American 
radicals,  men  with  untrammelled  advanced  ideas.  Their 
strength  lay  in  the  fact  that  they  were  unencumbered  and 
downright.  They  were  poor  men  with  nothing  to  lose.  The 
party  of  moderation,  of  compromise  with  the  relics  of  the  old 
order,  was  led  by  such  men  of  established  position  as  General 
Lafayette,  the  general  who  had  represented  France  in  America, 
and  Mirabeau,  an  aristocrat  who  was  ready  to  model  himself 
on  the  rich  and  influential  aristocrats  of  England.  But  Robes- 
pierre was  a  needy  but  clever  young  lawyer  from  Arras,  whose 
most  precious  possession  was  his  faith  in  Rousseau;  Danton 
was  a  scarcely  more  wealthy  barrister  in  Paris,  a  big,  gesticulat- 
ing, rhetorical  figure;  Marat  was  an  older  man,  a  Swiss  of 
very  great  scientific  distinction,  but  equally  unembarrassed  by 
possessions.  On  Marat's  scientific  standing  it  is  necessary  to 
lay  stress  because  there  is  a  sort  of  fashion  among  JEnglish 
writers  to  misrepresent  the  leaders  of  great  revolutionary  move- 
ments as  ignorant  men.  This  gives  a  false  view  of  the  mental 
processes  of  revolution;  and  it  is  the  task  of  the  historian  to 
correct  it.  Marat,  we  find,  was  conversant  with  English,  Span- 
ish, German,  and  Italian ;  he  had  spent  several  years  in  England, 
he  was  made  an  honorary  M.D.  of  St.  Andrew's,  and  had  pub- 
lished some  valuable  contributions  to  medical  science  in  English. 
Both  Benjamin  Franklin  and  Goethe  were  greatly  interested 
in  his  work  in  physics.  This  is  the  man  who  is  called  by  Car- 
lyle  "rabid  dog,"  "atrocious,"  "squalid,"  and  "Dog-leech"-- 
this  last  by  way  of  tribute  to  his  science. 

The  revolution  called  Marat  to  politics,  and  his  earliest  con- 
tributions to  the  great  discussion  were  fine  and  sane.  There 


870  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

was  a  prevalent  delusion  in  France  that  England  was  a  land  of 
liberty.  His  Tableau  des  vices  de  la  constitution  d'Angleterre 
showed  the  realities  of  the  English  position.  His  last  years 
were  maddened  by  an  almost  intolerable  skin  disease  which 
he  caught  while  hiding  in  the  sewers  of  Paris  to  escape  the 
consequences  of  his  denunciation  of  the  king  as  a  traitor  after 
the  flight  to  Yarennes.  Only  by  sitting  in  a  hot  bath  could 
he  collect  his  mind  to  write.  He  had  been  treated  hardly  and 
suffered,  and  he  became  hard;  nevertheless  he  stands  out  in 
history  as  a  man  of  rare,  unblemished  honesty.  His  poverty 
seems  particularly  to  have  provoked  the  scorn  of  Carlyle. 

"What  a  road  he  has  travelled;  and  sits  now,  about  half- 
past  seven  of  the  clock,  stewing  in  slipper-bath;  sore  afflicted; 
ill  of  Revolution  Eever.  .  .  .  Excessively  sick  and  worn,  poor 
man:  with  precisely  elevenpence  halfpenny  of  ready-money,  in 
paper;  with  slipper-bath;  strong  three-footed  stool  for  writing 
on,  the  while:  and  a  squalid  Washerwoman  for  his  sole  house- 
hold •  .  .  that  is  his  civic  establishment  in  Medical-School 
Street;  thither  and  not  elsewhere  has  his  road  led  him.  .  .  . 
Hark,  a  rap  again!  A  musical  woman's  voice,  refusing  to  be 
rejected:  it  is  the  Citoyenne  who  would  do  France  a  service. 
Marat,  recognizing  from  within,  cries,  Admit  her.  Charlotte 
Corday  is  admitted." 

The  young  heroine — for  republican  leaders  are  fair  game, 
and  their  assassins  are  necessarily  heroines  and  their  voices 
"musical" — offered  to  give  him  some  necessary  information 
about  the  counter-revolution  at  Caen,  and  as  he  was  occupied 
in  making  a  note  of  her  facts,  she  stabbed  him  with  a  large 
sheath  knife  (1792).  .  .  . 

Such  was  the  quality  of  most  of  the  leaders  of  the  Jacobin 
party.  They  were  men  of  no-  property — untethered  men. 
They  were  more  dissociated  and  more  elemental,  there- 
fore, than  any  other  party;  and  they  were  ready  to  push  the 
ideas  of  freedom  and  equality  to  a  logical  extremity.  Their 
standards  of  patriotic  virtue  were  high  and  harsh.  There  was 
something  inhuman  even  in  their  humanitarian  zeal.  They 
saw  without  humour  the  disposition  of  the  moderates  to  ease 
things  down,  to  keep  the  common  folk  just  a  little  needy  and 
respectful,  and  royalty  (and  men  of  substance)  just  a  little 
respected.  They  were  blinded  by  the  formula  of  feousseauism 
to  the  historical  truth  that  man  is  by  nature  oppressor  and 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          871 

oppressed,  and  that  it  is  only  slowly  by  law,  education,  and  the 
spirit  of  love  in  the  world  that  men  can  be  made  happy  and 
free. 

And  while  in  America  the  formulas  of  eighteenth-century 
democracy  were  on  the  whole  stimulating  and  helpful  because 
it  was  already  a  land  of  open-air  practical  equality  so  far  as 
white  men  were  concerned,  in  France  these  formulae  made  a 
very  heady  and  dangerous  mixture  for  the  town  populations, 
because  considerable  parts  of  the  towns  of  France  were  slums 
full  of  dispossessed,  demoralized,  degraded,  and  bitter-spirited 
people.  The  Parisian  crowd  was  in  a  particularly  desperate 
and  dangerous  state,  because  the  industries  of  Paris  had  been 
largely  luxury  industries,  and  much  of  her  employment  parasitic 
on  the  weaknesses  and  vices  of  fashionable  life.  Now  the  fash- 
ionable world  had  gone  over  the  frontier,  travellers  were  re- 
stricted, business  disordered,  and  the  city  full  of  unemployed 
and  angry  people. 

But  the  royalists,  instead  of  realizing  the  significance  of  these 
Jacobins  with  their  dangerous  integrity  and  their  dangerous 
grip  upon  the  imagination  of  the  mob,  had  the  conceit  to  think 
they  could  make  tools  of  them.  The  time  for  the  replacement 
of  the  National  Assembly  under  the  new-made  constitution  by 
the  "Legislative  Assembly"  was  drawing  near;  and  when  the 
Jacobins,  with  the  idea  of  breaking  up  the  moderates,  proposed 
to  make  the  members  of  the  National  Assembly  ineligible  for 
the  Legislative  Assembly,  the  royalists  supported  them  with 
great  glee,  and  carried  the  proposal.  They  perceived  that  the 
Legislative  Assembly,  so  clipped  of  all  experience,  must  certainly 
be  a  politically  incompetent  body.  They  would  "extract  good 
from  the  excess  of  evil,"  and  presently  France  would  fall  back 
helpless  into  the  hands  of  her  legitimate  masters.  So  they 
thought.  And  the  royalists  did  more  than  this.  They  backed 
the  election  of  a  Jacobin  as  Mayor  of  Paris.  It  was  about  as 
clever  as  if  a  man  brought  home  a  hungry  tiger  to  convince 
his  wife  of  her  need  of  him.  There  stood  another  body  ready 
at  hand  with  which  these  royalists  did  not  reckon,  far  better 
equipped  than  the  court  to  step  in  and  take  the  place  of  an 
ineffective  Legislative  Assembly,  and  that  was  the  strongly 
Jacobin  Commune  of  Paris  installed  at  the  Hotel  de  Yille. 

So  far  France  had  been  at  peace.     None  of  her  neighbours 


872  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

had  attacked  her,  because  she  appeared  to  be  weakening  herself 
by  her  internal  dissensions.  It  was  Poland  that  suffered  by  the 
distraction  of  France.  But  there  seemed  no  reason  why  they 
should  not  insult  and  threaten  her,  and  prepare  the  way  for 
a  later  partition  at  their  convenience.  At  Pillnitz,  in  1791, 
the  King  of  Prussia  and  the  Emperor  of  Austria  met,  and 
issued  a  declaration  that  the  restoration  of  order  and  monarchy 
in  France  was  a  matter  of  interest  to  all  sovereigns.  And 
an  army  of  emigres,  French  nobles  and  gentlemen,  an  army 
largely  of  officers,  was  allowed  to  accumulate  close  to  the 
frontier. 

It  was  France  that  declared  war  against  Austria.  The  mo- 
tives of  those  who  supported  this  step  were  conflicting.  Many 
republicans  wanted  it  because  they  wished  to  see  the  kindred 
people  of  Belgium  liberated  from  the  Austrian  yoke.  Many 
royalists  wanted  it  because  they  saw  in  war  a  possibility  of 
restoring  the  prestige  of  the  crown.  Marat  opposed  it  bitterly 
in  his  paper  L'Ami  du  Peuple,  because  he  did  not  want  to  see 
republican  enthusiasm  turned  into  war  fever.  His  instinct 
warned  him  of  Napoleon.  On  April  20th,  1792,  the  king  came 
down  to  the  Assembly  and  proposed  war  amidst  great  applause. 

The  war  began  disastrously.  Three  French  armies  entered 
Belgium,  two  were  badly  beaten,  and  the  third,  under  Lafayette, 
retreated.  Then  Prussia  declared  war  in  support  of  Austria, 
and  the  allied  forces,  tinder  the  Duke  of  Brunswick,  prepared 
to  invade  France.  The  duke  issued  one  of  the  most  foolish 
proclamations  in  history;  he  was,  he  said,  invading  France  to 
restore  the  royal  authority.  Any  further  indignity  shown  the 
king  he  threatened  to  visit  upon  the  Assembly  and  Paris 
with  "military  execution."  This  was  surely  enough  to  make 
the  most  royalist  Frenchman  a  republican — at  least  for  the 
duration  of  the  war. 

The  new  phase  of  revolution,  the  Jacobin  revolution,  was 
the  direct  outcome  of  this  proclamation.  It  made  the  Legisla- 
tive Assembly,  in  which  orderly  republicans  (Girondins)  and 
royalists  prevailed,  it  made  the  government  which  had  put 
down  that  republican  meeting  in  the  Champ  de  Mars  and  hunted 
Marat  into  the  sewers,  impossible.  The  insurgents  gathered 
at  the  Hotel  de  \7ille,  and  on  the  tenth  of  August  the  Commune 
launched  an  attack  on  the  palace  of  the  Tuileries. 

The  king  behaved  with  a  clumsy  stupidity,  and  with  that 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          873 

disregard  for  others  which  is  the  prerogative  of  kings.  He 
had  with  him  a  Swiss  guard  of  nearly  a  thousand  men  as  well 
as  National  Guards  of  uncertain  loyalty.  He  held  out  vaguely 
until  firing  began,  and  then  he  went  off  to  the  adjacent  Assem- 
bly to  place  himself  and  his  family  under  its  protection,  leaving 
his  Swiss  fighting.  No  doubt  he  hoped  to  antagonize  Assem- 
bly and  Commune,  but  the  Assembly  had  none  of  the  fighting 
spirit  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  The  royal  refugees  were  placed 
in  a  box  reserved  for  journalists  (out  of  which  a  small  room 
opened),  and  there  they  remained  for  sixteen  hours  while  the 
Assembly  debated  their  fate.  Outside  there  were  the  sounds 
of  a  considerable  battle;  every  now  and  then  a  window  would 
break.  The  unfortunate  Swiss  were  fighting  with  their  backs 
to  the  wall  because  there  was  now  nothing  else  for  them  to 
do.  ... 

The  Assembly  had  no  stomach  to  back  the  government's  ac- 
tion of  July  in  the  Champ  de  Mars.  The  fierce  vigour  of  the 
Commune  dominated  it.  The  king  found  no  comfort  what- 
ever in  the  Assembly.  It  scolded  him  and  discussed  his  "sus- 
pension." The  Swiss  fought  until  they  received  a  message  from 
the  king  to  desist,  and  then — the  crowd  being  savagely  angry 
at  the  needless  bloodshed  and  out  of  control — they  were  for 
the  most  part  massacred. 

The  long  and  tedious  attempt  to  "Merovingianize"  Louis, 
to  make  an  honest  crowned  republican  out  of  a  dull  and  in- 
adaptable  absolute  monarch,  was  now  drawing  to  its  tragic 
close.  The  Commune  of  Paris  was  practically  in  control  of 
France.  The  Legislative  Assembly — which  had  apparently  un- 
dergone a  change  of  heart — decreed  that  the  king  was  suspended 
from  his  office,  confined  him  in  the  Temple,  replaced  him  by 
an  executive  commission,  and  summoned  a  National  Conven- 
tion to  frame  a  new  constitution. 

The  tension  of  patriotic  and  republican  France  was  now 
becoming  intolerable.  Such  armies  as  she  had  were  rolling 
back  helplessly  towards  Paris.  Longwy  had  fallen,  the  great 
fortress  of  Verdun  followed,  and  nothing  seemed  likely  to  stop 
the  march  of  the  allies  upon  the  capital.  The  sense  of  royalist 
treachery  rose  to  panic  cruelty.  At  any  rate  the  royalists  had 
to  be  silenced  and  stilled  and  scared  out  of  sight.  The  Com- 
mune set  itself  to  hunt  out  every  royalist  that  could  be  found, 
until  the  prisons  of  Paris  were  full.  Marat  saw  the  danger  of 


874 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


a  massacre.  Before  it  was  too  late  he  tried  to  secure  the  estab- 
lishment of  emergency  tribunals  to  filter  the  innocent  from  the 
guilty  in  this  miscellaneous  collection  of  schemers,  suspects,  and 
harmless  gentlefolk.  He  was  disregarded,  and  early  in  Sep- 
tember the  inevitable  massacre  occurred. 

Suddenly,  first  at  one  prison  and  then  at  others,  bands  of 
insurgents  took  possession.     A  sort  of  rough  court  was  consti- 


TVordi  Eastern  Frontier 

TRA7MCE- 


tuted,  and  outside  gathered  a  wild  mob  armed  with  sabres, 
pikes,  and  axes.  One  by  one  the  prisoners,  men  and  women 
alike,  were  led  out  from  their  cells,  questioned  briefly,  pardoned 
with  the  cry  of  "Vive  la  Nation/7  or  thrust  out  to  the  mob  at 
the  gates.  There  the  crowd  jostled  and  fought  to  get  a  slash 
or  thrust  at  a  victim.  The  condemned  were  stabbed,  hacked, 
and  beaten  to  death,  their  heads  hewn  off,  stuck  on  pikes,  and 
carried  about  the  town,  their  torn  bodies  thrust  aside.  Among 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          875 

others,  the  Princesse  de  Lamballe,  whom  the  king  and  queen 
had  left  behind  in  the  Tuileries,  perished.  Her  head  was  car- 
ried on  a  pike  to  the  Temple  for  the  queen  to  see. 

In  the  queen's  cell  were  two  National  Guards.  One  would 
have  had  her  look  out  and  see  this  grisly  sight.  The  other,  in 
pity,  would  not  let  her  do  so. 

Even  as  this  red  tragedy  was  going  on  in  Paris,  the  French 
general  Dumouriez,  who  had  rushed  an  army  from  Flanders 
into  the  forests  of  the  Argonne,  was  holding  up  the  advance 
of  the  allies  beyond  Verdun.  On  September  20th  occurred  a 
battle,  mainly  an  artillery  encounter,  at  Valmy.  A  not  very 
resolute  Prussian  advance  was  checked,  the  French  infantry 
stood  firm,  their  artillery  was  better  than  the  allied  artillery. 
For  ten  days  after  this  repulse  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  hesi- 
tated, and  then  he  began  to  fall  back  towards  the  Rhine.  This 
battle  at  Yalmy — it  was  little  more  than  a  cannonade — was 
one  of  the  decisive  battles  in  the  world's  history.  The  Revo- 
lution was  saved. 

The  National  Convention  met  on  September  21st,  1792, 
and  immediately  proclaimed  a  republic.  The  trial  and  execu- 
tion of  the  king  followed  with  a  sort  of  logical  necessity  upon 
these  things.  He  died  rather  as  a  symbol  than  as  a  man.  There 
was  nothing  else  to  be  done  with  him ;  poor  man,  he  cumbered 
the  earth.  France  could  not  let  him  go  to  hearten  the  emi- 
grants, could  not  keep  him  harmless  at  home;  his  existence 
threatened  her.  Marat  had  urged  this  trial  relentlessly,  yet 
with  that  acid  clearness  of  his  he  would  not  have  the  king 
charged  with  any  offence  committed  before  he  signed  the  consti- 
tution, because  before  then  he  was  a  real  monarch,  super-legal, 
and  so  incapable  of  being  illegal.  N"or  would  Marat  permit 
attacks  upon  the  king's  counsel.  .  .  .  Throughout  Marat  played 
a  bitter  and  yet  often  a  just  part;  he  was  a  great  man,  a  fine 
intelligence,  in  a  skin  of  fire;  wrung  with  that  organic  hate 
in  the  blood  that  is  not  a  product  of  the  mind  but  of  the 
body. 

Louis  was  beheaded  in  January,  1793.  He  was  guillotined — 
for  since  the  previous  August  the  guillotine  had  been  in  use  as 
the  official  instrument  in  French  executions. 

Danton,  in  his  leonine  role,  was  very  fine  upon  this  occasion. 
"The  kings  of  Europe  would  challenge  us,"  he  roared.  "We 
throw  them  the  head  of  a  king !" 


876  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


And  now  followed  a  strange  phase  in  the  history  of  the  French 
people.  There  arose  a  great  flame  of  enthusiasm  for  France 
and  the  Republic.  There  was  to  be  an  end  to  compromise  at 
home  and  abroad;  at  home  royalists  and  every  form  of  dis- 
loyalty were  to  be  stamped  out;  abroad  France  was  to  be  the 
protector  and  helper  of  all  revolutionaries.  All  Europe,  all 
the  world,  was  to  become  republican.  The  youth  of  France 
poured  into  the  Republican  armies  ;  a  new  and  wonderful  song- 
spread  through  the  land,  a  song  that  still  warms  the  blood  like 
wine,  the  Marseillaise.  Before  that  chant  and  the  leaping  col- 
umns of  French  bayonets  and  their  enthusiastically  served  guns 
the  foreign  armies  rolled  back;  before  the  end  of  1792  the 
French  armies  had  gone  far  beyond  the  utmost  achievements 
of  Louis  XIV;  everywhere  they  stood  on  foreign  soil.  They 
were  in  Brussels,  they  had  overrun  Savoy,  they  had  raided  to 
Mayence;  they  had  seized  the  Scheldt  from  Holland.  Then 
the  French  Government  did  an  unwise  thing.  It  had  been  ex- 
asperated by  the  expulsion  of  its  representative  from  England 
upon  the  execution  of  Louis,  and  it  declared  war  against  Eng- 
land. It  was  an  unwise  thing  to  do,  because  the  revolution 
which  had  given  France  a  new  enthusiastic  infantry  and  a  bril- 
liant artillery,  released  from  its  aristocratic  officers  and  many 
cramping  traditions,  had  destroyed  the  discipline  of  its  navy, 
and  the  English  were  supreme  upon  the  sea.  And  this  provo- 
cation united  all  England  against  France,  whereas  there  had 
been  at  first  a  very  considerable  liberal  movement  in  Great 
Britain  in  sympathy  with  the  revolution. 

Of  the  fight  that  France  made  in  the  next  few  years  against 
a  European  coalition  we  cannot  tell  in  any  detail.  She  drove 
the  Austrians  for  ever  out  of  Belgium,  and  made  Holland  a 
republic.  The  Dutch  fleet,  frozen  in  the  Texel,  surrendered 
to  a  handful  of  cavalry  without  firing  its  guns.  For  some 
time  the  French  thrust  towards  Italy  was  hung  up,  and  it  was 
only  in  1796  that  a  new  general,  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  led  the 
ragged  and  hungry  republican  armies  in  triumph  across  Pied- 
mont to  Mantua  and  Verona.  An  Outline  of  History  cannot 
map  out  campaigns  ;  but  of  the  new  quality  that  had  come  into 
war,  it  is  bound  to  take  note.  The  old  professional  armies  had 
fought  for  the  fighting,  as  slack  as  workers  paid  by  the  hour; 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          877 

these  wonderful  new  armies  fought,  hungry  and  thirsty,  for  vic- 
tory. Their  enemies  called  them  the  "New  French."  Says 
C.  F.  Atkinson,1  "What  astonished  the  Allies  most  of  all  was 
the  number  and  the  velocity  of  the  Republicans.  These  im- 
provised armies  had  in  fact  nothing  to  delay  them.  Tents  were 
unprocurable  for  want  of  money,  untransportable  for  want  of 
the  enormous  number  of  wagons  that  would  have  been  required, 
and  also  unnecessary,  for  the  discomfort  that  would  have  caused 
wholesale  desertion  in  professional  armies  was  cheerfully  borne 
by  the  men  of  1793-94.  Supplies  for  armies  of  then  unheard-of 
size  could  not  be  carried  in  convoys,  and  the  French  soon  be- 
came familiar  with  'living  on  the  country.'  Thus  1793  saw 
the  birth  of  the  modern  system  of  war — rapidity  of  movement, 
full  development  of  national  strength,  bivouacs,  requisitions 
and  force  as  against  cautious  manoeuvring,  small  professional 
armies,  tents  and  full  rations,  and  chicane.  The  first  rep- 
resented the  decision-compelling  spirit,  the  second  the  spirit  of 
risking  little  to  gain  a  little.  .  .  ." 

And  while  these  ragged  hosts  of  enthusiasts  were  chanting 
the  Marseillaise  and  fighting  for  La,  France,  manifestly  never 
quite  clear  in  their  minds  whether  they  were  looting  or  liberat- 
ing the  countries  into  which  they  poured,  the  republican  en- 
thusiasm in  Paris  was  spending  itself  in  a  far  less  glorious 
fashion.  Marat,  the  one  man  of  commanding  intelligence  among 
the  Jacobins,  was  now  frantic  with  an  incurable  disease,  and 
presently  he  was  murdered;  Danton  was  a  series  of  patriotic 
thunderstorms;  the  steadfast  fanaticism  of  Robespierre  domi- 
nated the  situation.  This  man  is  difficult  to  judge;  he  was 
a  man  of  poor  physique,  naturally  timid,  and  a  prig.  But 
he  had  that  most  necessary  gift  for  power,  faith.  He  believed 
not  in  a  god  familiar  to  men,  but  in  a  certain  Supreme  Being, 
and  that  Rousseau  was  his  prophet.  He  set  himself  to  save 
the  republic  as  he  conceived  it,  and  he  imagined  it  could  be 
saved  by  no  other  man  than  he.  So  that  to  keep  in  power  was 
to  save  the  republic.  The  living  spirit  of  the  republic,  it 
seemed,  had  sprung  from  a  slaughter  of  royalists  and  the  execu- 
tion of  the  king.  There  were  insurrections:  one  in  the  west, 
in  the  district  of  La  Vendee,  where  the  people  rose  against 
the  conscription  and  against  the  dispossession  of  the  orthodox 

1  In  his  article,  "French  Revolutionary  Wars,"  in  the  Encyclopedia, 
Britannica. 


878  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

clergy,  and  were  led  by  noblemen  and  priests ;  one  in  the  south, 
where  Lyons  and  Marseilles  had  risen  and  the  royalists  of 
Toulon  had  admitted  an  English  and  Spanish  garrison.  To 
which  there  seemed  no  more  effectual  reply  than  to  go  on 
killing  royalists. 

Nothing  could  have  better  pleased  the  fierce  heart  of  the 
Paris  slums.  The  Revolutionary  Tribunal  went  to  work,  and 
a  steady  slaughtering  began.1  The  invention  of  the  guillotine 
was  opportune  to  this  mood.  The  queen  was  guillotined,  most 
of  Robespierre's  antagonists  were  guillotined,  atheists  who 
argued  that  there  was  no  Supreme  Being  were  guillotined, 
Danton  was  guillotined  because  he  thought  there  was  too  much 
guillotine ;  day  by  day,  week  by  week,  this  infernal  new  machine 
chopped  off  heads  and  more  heads  and  more.  The  reign  of 
Robespierre  lived,  it  seemed,  on  blood,  and  needed  more  and 
more,  as  an  opium-taker  needs  more  and  more  opium. 

Danton  was  still  Danton,  leonine  and  exemplary  upon  the 
guillotine.  "Danton,"  he  said,  "no  weakness !" 

And  the  grotesque  thing  about  the  story  is  that  Robespierre 
was  indubitably  honest.  He  was  far  more  honest  than  any  of 
the  group  of  men  who  succeeded  him.  He  was  inspired  by 
a  consuming  passion  for  a  new  order  of  human  life.  So  far 
as  he  could  contrive  it,  the  Committee  of  Public  Safety,  the 
emergency  government  of  twelve  which  had  now  thrust  aside 
the  Convention,  constructed.  The  scale  on  which  it  sought  to 
construct  was  stupendous.  All  the  intricate  problems  with 
which  we  still  struggle  to-day  were  met  by  swift  and  shallow 
solutions.  Attempts  were  made  to  equalize  property.  "Opu- 
lence," said  St.  Just,  "is  infamous."  The  property  of  the  rich 
was  taxed  or  confiscated  in  order  that  it  should  be  divided 
among  the  poor.  Every  man  was  to  have  a  secure  house,  a 
living,  a  wife  and  children.  The  labourer  was  worthy  of  his 
hire,  but  not  entitled  to  an  advantage.  There  was  an  attempt 
to  abolish  profit  altogether,  the  rude  incentive  of  most  human 
commerce  since  the  beginning  of  society.  Profit  is  the  economic 
riddle  that  still  puzzles  us  to-day.  There  were  harsh  laws 
against  "profiteering"  in  France  in  1793 — England  in  1919 
found  it  necessary  to  make  quite  similar  laws.  And  the  Jac- 
obien  government  not  only  replanned — in  eloquent  outline — • 

*In  the  thirteen  months  before  June    1794,  there  ware  1,220  executions; 
in  the  following  seven  weeks  there  were  1,376. — P.  G. 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          879 

the  economic,  but  also  the  social  system.  Divorce  was  made  as 
easy  as  marriage ;  the  distinction  of  legitimate  and  illegitimate 
children  was  abolished.  ...  A  new  calendar  was  devised,  with 
new  names  for  the  months,  a,  week  of  ten  days,  and  the  like — 
that  has  long  since  been  swept  away ;  but  also  the  clumsy  coin- 
age and  the  tangled  weights  and  measures  of  old  France  gave 
place  to  the  simple  and  lucid  decimal  system  that  still  en- 
dures. .  .  .  There  was  a  proposal  from  one  extremist  group  to 
abolish  God  among  other  institutions  altogether,  and  to  substi- 
tute the  worship  of  Reason.  There  was,  indeed,  a  Feast  of 
Reason  in  the  cathedral  of  Notre-Dame,  with  a  pretty  actress  as 
the  goddess  of  Reason.  But  against  this  Robespierre  set  his 
face;  he  was  no  atheist,  "Atheism,"  he  said,  "is  aristocratic. 
The  idea  of  a  Supreme  Being  who  watches  over  oppressed  inno- 
cence and  punishes  triumphant  crime  is  essentially  the  idea  of 
the  people." 

So  he  guillotined  Hebert,  who  had  celebrated  the  Feast  of 
Reason,  and  all  his  party. 

A  certain  mental  disorder  became  perceptible  in  Robespierre 
as  the  summer  of  1794  drew  on.  He  was  deeply  concerned 
with  his  religion.  (The  arrests  and  executions  of  suspects  were 
going  on  now  as  briskly  as  ever.  Through  the  streets  of  Paris 
every  day  rumbled  the  Terror  with  its  carts  full  of  condemned 
people.)  He  induced  the  Convention  to  decree  that  France 
believed  in  a  Supreme  Being,  and  in  that  comforting  doctrine, 
the  immortality  of  the  soul.  In  June  he  celebrated  a  great  fes- 
tival, the  festival  of  his  Supreme  Being.  There  was  a  proces- 
sion to  the  Champ  de  Mars,  which  he  headed,  brilliantly  ar- 
rayed, bearing  a  great  bunch  of  flowers  and  wheat  ears.  Fig- 
ures of  inflammatory  material,  representing  Atheism  and  Vice, 
were  solemnly  burnt;  then,  by  an  ingenious  mechanism,  and 
with  some  slight  creakings,  an  incombustible  statue  of  "Wis- 
dom rose  in  their  place.  There  were  discourses — Robespierre 
delivered  the  chief  one — but  apparently  no  worship.  .  .  . 

Thereafter  Robespierre  displayed  a  disposition  to  brood  aloof 
from  affairs.  For  a  month  he  kept  away  from  the  Convention. 

One  day  in  July  he  reappeared  and  delivered  a  strange  speech 
that  clearly  foreshadowed  fresh  prosecutions.  "Gazing  on 
the  multitude  of  vices  which  the  torrent  of  Revolution  has 
rolled  down,"  he  cried,  in  his  last  great  speech  in  the  Con- 
vention, "I  have  sometimes  trembled  lest  I  should  be  soiled 


880  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

by  the  impure  neighbourhood  of  wicked  men.  ...  I  know 
that  it  is  easy  for  the  leagued  tyrants  of  the  world  to  over- 
whelm a  single  individual;  but  I  know  also  what  is  the  duty 
of  a  man  who  can  die  in  the  defence  of  humanity."  .  .  . 

And  so  on  to  vague  utterances  that  seemed  to  threaten 
everyone. 

The  Convention  heard  this  speech  in  silence;  then  when  a 
proposal  was  made  to  print  and  circulate  it,  broke  into  a  re- 
sentful uproar  and  refused  permission.  Robespierre  went  off  in 
bitter  resentment  to  the  club  of  his  supporters,  and  re-read  his 
speech  to  them! 

That  night  was  full  of  talk  and  meetings  and  preparations 
for  the  morrow,  and  the  next  morning  the  Convention  turned 
upon  Robespierre.  One  Tallien  threatened  him  with  a  dagger. 
When  he  tried  to  speak,  he  was  shouted  down,  and  the  Presi- 
dent jingled  the  bell  at  him.  "President  of  Assassins/'  cried 
Robespierre,  "I  demand  speech !"  It  was  refused  him.  His 
voice  deserted  him;  he  coughed  and  spluttered.  "The  blood 
of  Danton  chokes  him,"  cried  someone. 

He  was  accused  and  arrested  there  and  then  with  his  chief 
supporters. 

Whereupon  the  Hotel  de  Ville,  still  stoutly  Jacobin,  rose 
against  the  Convention,  and  Robespierre  and  his  companions 
were  snatched  out  of  the  hands  of  their  captors.  There  was  a 
night  of  gathering,  marching,  counter-marching;  and  at  last, 
about  three  in  the  morning,  the  forces  of  the  Convention  faced 
the  forces  of  the  Commune  outside  the  Hotel  de  Ville.  Henriot, 
the  Jacobin  commander,  after  a  busy  day  was  drunk  upstairs ; 
a  parley  ensued,  and  then,  after  some  indecision,  the  soldiers 
of  the  Commune  went  over  to  the  Government.  There  was  a 
shouting  of  patriotic  sentiments,  and  someone  looked  out  from 
the  Hotel  de  Ville.  Robespierre  and  his  last  companions  found 
themselves  betrayed  and  trapped. 

Two  or  three  of  these  men  threw  themselves  out  of  a  window, 
and  injured  themselves  frightfully  on  the  railings  below  with- 
out killing  themselves.  Others  attempted  suicide.  Robespierre, 
it  seems,  was  shot  in  the  lower  jaw  by  a  gendarme.  He  was 
found,  his  eyes  staring  from  a  pale  face  whose  lower  part  was 
blood. 

Followed  seventeen  hours  of  agony  before  his  end.  He  spoke 
never  a  word  during  that  time,  his  jaw  being  bound  up  roughly 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          881 

in  dirty  linen.  He  and  his  companions,  and  the  broken,  dying 
bodies  of  those  who  had  jumped  from  the  windows,  twenty-two 
men  altogether,  were  taken  to  the  guillotine  instead  of  the  con- 
demned appointed  for  that  day.  Mostly  his  eyes  were  closed, 
but,  says  Carlyle,  he  opened  them  to  see  the  great  knife  rising 
above  him,  and  struggled.  Also  it  would  seem  he  screamed  when 
the  executioner  removed  his  bandages.  Then  the  knife  came 
down,  swift  and  merciful. 

The  Terror  was  at  an  end.     From  first  to  last  there  had  been 
condemned  and  executed  about  four  thousand  people. 


It  witnesses  to  the  immense  vitality  and  the  profound  right- 
ness  of  the  flood  of  new  ideals  and  intentions  that  the  French 
Revolution  had  released  into  the  world  of  practical  endeavour, 
that  it  could  still  flow  in  a  creative  torrent  after  it  had  been 
caricatured  and  mocked  in  the  grotesque  personality  and  career 
of  Robespierre.  He  had  shown  its  deepest  thoughts,  he  had 
displayed  anticipations  of  its  methods  and  conclusions  ;  through 
the  green  and  distorting  lenses  of  his  preposterous  vanity  and 
egotism,  he  had  smeared  and  blackened  all  its  hope  and  promise 
with  blood  and  horror,  and  the  power  of  these  ideas  was  not 
destroyed.  They  stood  the  extreme  tests  of  ridiculous  and  hor- 
rible presentation.  After  his  downfall,  the  Republic  still  ruled 
unassailable.  Leaderless,  for  his  successors  were  a  group  of 
crafty  or  commonplace  men,  the  European  republic  struggled 
on,  and  presently  fell  and  rose  again,  and  fell  and  rose  and 
still  struggles,  entangled  but  invincible. 

And  it  is  well  to  remind  the  reader  here  of  the  real  dimensions 
of  this  phase  of  the  Terror,  which  strikes  so  vividly  upon  the 
imagination  and  which  has  therefore  been  enormously  exag- 
gerated relatively  to  the  rest  of  the  revolution.  From  1789  to 
late  in  1791  the  French  Revolution  was  an  orderly  process,  and 
from  the  summer  of  1794  the  Republic  was  an  orderly  and 
victorious  state.  The  Terror  was  not  the  work  of  the  whole 
country,  but  of  the  town  mob  which  owed  its  existence  and 
its  savagery  to  the  misrule  and  social  injustice  of  the  ancient 
regime;  and  the  explosion  of  the  Terror  could  have  happened 
only  through  the  persistent  treacherous  disloyalty  of  the  royalists 
which,  while  it  raised  the  extremists  to  frenzy,  disinclined  the 


882  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

mass  of  moderate  republicans  from  any  intervention.  The 
best  men  were  busy  fighting  the  Austrians  and  royalists  on 
the  frontier.  Altogether,  we  must  remember,  the  total  of  the 
killed  in  the  Terror  amounted  to  a  few  thousands,  and  among 
those  thousands  there  were  certainly  a  great  number  of  active 
antagonists  whom  the  Kepublic,  by  all  the  standards  of  that  time, 
was  entitled  to  kill.  It  included  such  traitors  and  mischief- 
makers  as  Philip,  Duke  of  Orleans  of  the  Palais  Royal,  who 
had  voted  for  the  death  of  Louis  XVI.  More  lives  were  wasted 
by  the  British  generals  alone  on  the  opening  day  of  what  is 
known  as  the  Somme  offensive  of  July,  1916,  than  in  the  whole 
French  revolution  from  start  to  finish.  We  hear  so  much  about 
the  martyrs  of  the  French  Terror  because  they  were  notable, 
well-connected  people,  and  because  there  has  been  a  sort  of  prop- 
aganda of  their  sufferings.  But  let  us  balance  against  them  in 
our  minds  what  was  going  on  in  the  prisons  of  the  world  gen- 
erally at  that  time.  In  Britain  and  America,  while  the  Terror 
ruled  in  France,  far  more  people  were  slaughtered  for  of- 
fences— very  often  quite  trivial  offences — against  property  than 
were  condemned  by  the  Revolutionary  Tribunal  for  treason 
against  the  State.  Of  course,  they  were  very  common  people 
indeed,  but  in  their  rough  way  they  suffered.  A  girl  was  hanged 
in  Massachusetts  in  1789  for  forcibly  taking  the  hat,  shoes, 
and  buckles  of  another  girl  she  had  met  in  the  street.1  Again, 
Howard  the  philanthropist  (about  1773)  found  a  number  of 
perfectly  innocent  people  detained  in  the  English  prisons  who 
had  been  tried  and  acquitted,  but  were  unable  to  pay  the  gaoler's 
fees.  And  these  prisons  were  filthy  places  under  no  effective 
control.  Torture  was  still  in  use  in  the  Hanoverian  dominions 
of  his  Britannic  majesty  King  George  III.  It  had  been  in  use 
in  France  up  to  the  time  of  the  National  Assembly.  These 
things  mark  the  level  of  the  age.  It  is  not  on  record  that  any- 
one was  deliberately  tortured  by  the  French  revolutionaries 
during  the  Terror.  Those  few  hundreds  of  French  gentlefolk 
fell  into  a  pit  that  most  of  them  had  been  well  content  should 
exist  for  others.  It  was  tragic,  but  not,  by  the  scale  of  uni- 
versal history,  a  great  tragedy.  The  common  man  in  France 
was  more  free,  better  off,  and  happier  during  the  "Terror" 
than  he  had  been  in  1787. 

The  story  of  the  Republic  after  the  summer  of  1794  be- 
1Channing,  vol.  iii.  chap,  xviii. 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          883 

comes  a  tangled  story  of  political  groups  aiming  at  everything 
from  a  radical  republic  to  a  royalist  reaction,  but  pervaded  by 
a  general  desire  for  some  definite  working  arrangement  even 
at  the  price  of  considerable  concessions.  There  was  a  series 
of  insurrections  of  the  Jacobins  and  of  the  royalists,  there  seems 
to  have  been  what  we  should  call  nowadays  a  hooligan  class 
in  Paris  which  was  quite  ready  to  turn  out  to  fight  and  loot  on 
either  side ;  nevertheless  the  Convention  produced  a  government, 
the  Directory  of  five  members,  which  held  France  together  for 
five  years.  The  last,  most  threatening  revolt  of  all,  in  October, 
1795,  was  suppressed  with  great  skill  and  decision  by  a  rising 
young  general,  Napoleon  Bonaparte. 

The  Directory  was  victorious  abroad,  but  uncreative  at  home ; 
its  members  were  far  too  anxious  to  stick  to  the  sweets  and 
glories  of  office  to  prepare  a  constitution  that  would  supersede 
them,  and  far  too  dishonest  to  handle  the  task  of  financial  and 
economic  reconstruction  demanded  by  the  condition  of  France. 
We  need  only  note  two  of  their  names,  Carnot,  who  was  an 
honest  republican,  and  Barras,  who  was  conspicuously  a  rogue. 
Their  reign  of  five  years  formed  a  curious  interlude  in  this 
history  of  great  changes.  They  took  things  as  they  found 
them.  The  propagandist  zeal  of  the  revolution  carried  the 
French  armies  into  Holland,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  south  Ger- 
many, and  north  Italy.  Everywhere  kings  were  expelled  and 
republics  set  up.  But  such  propagandist  zeal  as  animated 
the  Directorate  did  not  prevent  the  looting  of  the  treasures  of 
the  liberated  peoples  to  relieve  the  financial  embarrassment  of 
the  French  Government.  Their  wars  became  less  and  less 
the  holy  war  of  freedom,  and  more  and  more  like  the  aggres- 
sive wars  of  the  ancient  regime.  The  last  feature  of  Grand 
Monarchy  that  France  was  disposed  to  discard  was  her  tradi- 
tion of  foreign  policy,  grasping,  aggressive,  restless,  French- 
centred.  One  discovers  it  still  as  vigorous  under  the  Directorate 
as  if  there  had  been  no  revolution. 

§  13 

The  ebb  of  this  tide  of  Revolution  in  the  world,  this  tide  which 
had  created  the  great  Republic  of  America  and  threatened  to 
submerge  all  European  monarchies,  was  now  at  hand.  It  is  as  if 
something  had  thrust  up  from  beneath  the  surface  of  human 


884  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

affairs,  made  a  gigantic  effort,  and  for  a  time  spent  itself.  It 
swept  many  obsolescent  and  evil  things  away,  but  many  evil 
and  unjust  things  remained.  It  solved  many  problems,  and 
it  left  the  desire  for  fellowship  and  order  face  to  face  with 
much  vaster  problems  that  it  seemed  only  to  have  revealed. 
Privilege  of  certain  types  had  gone,  many  tyrannies,  much  re- 
ligious persecution.  When  these  things  of  the  ancient  regime 
had  vanished,  it  seemed  as  if  they  had  never  mattered.  What 
did  matter  was  that  for  all  their  votes  and  enfranchisement, 
and  in  spite  of  all  their  passion  and  effort,  common  men  were 
still  not  free  and  not  enjoying  an  equal  happiness;  that  the 
immense  promise  and  air  of  a  new  world  with  which  the  Revo- 
lution had  come,  remained  unfulfilled. 

Yet,  after  all,  this  wave  of  revolution  had  realized  nearly 
everything  that  had  been  clearly  thought  out  before  it  came. 
It  was  not  failing  now  for  want  of  impetus,  but  for  want  of 
finished  ideas.  Many  things  that  had  oppressed  mankind  were 
swept  away  for  ever.  Now  that  they  were  swept  away  it  be- 
came apparent  how  unprepared  men  were  for  the  creative  op- 
portunities this  clearance  gave  them.  And  periods  of  revolu- 
tion are  periods  of  action;  in  them  men  reap  the  harvests  of 
ideas  that  have  grown  during  phases  of  interlude,  and  they 
leave  the  fields  cleared  for  a  new  season  of  growth,  but  they 
cannot  suddenly  produce  ripened  new  ideas  to  meet  an  un- 
anticipated riddle. 

The  sweeping  away  of  king-  and  lord,  of  priest  and  inquisitor, 
of  landlord  and  taxgatherer  and  task-master,  left  the  mass  of 
men  face  to  face  for  the  first  time  with  certain  very  fundamental 
aspects  of  the  social  structure,  relationships  they  had  taken 
for  granted,  and  had  never  realized  the  need  of  thinking  hard 
and  continuously  about  before.  Institutions  that  had  seemed 
to  be  in  the  nature  of  things,  and  matters  that  had  seemed  to 
happen  by  the  same  sort  of  necessity  that  brought  round  the 
dawn  and  springtime,  were  discovered  to  be  artificial,  control- 
lable, were  they  not  so  perplexingly  intricate,  and — now  that 
the  old  routines  were  abolished  and  done  away  with — in  urgent 
need  of  control.  The  ISTew  Order  found  itself  confronted  with 
three  riddles  which  it  was  quite  unprepared  to  solve:  Prop- 
erty, Currency,  and  International  Relationship. 

Let  us  take  these  three  problems  in  order,  arid  ask  what 
they  are  and  how  they  arose  in  human  affairs.  Every  human 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          885 

life  is  deeply  entangled  in  them,  and  concerned  in  their  solu- 
tion. The  rest  of  this  history  becomes  more  and  more  clearly 
the  development  of  the  effort  to  solve  these  problems;  that  is 
to  say,  so  to  interpret  property,  so  to  establish  currency,  and 
so  to  control  international  reactions  as  to  render  possible  a 
world-wide,  progressive,  and  happy  community  of  will.  They 
are  the  three  riddles  of  the  sphinx  of  fate,  to  which  the  human 
commonweal  must  find  an  answer  or  perish. 

The  idea  'of  property  arises  out  of  the  combative  instincts  of 
the  species.  Long  before  men  were  men,  the  ancestral  ape  was 
a  proprietor.  Primitive  property  is  what  a  beast  will  fight 
for.  The  dog  and  his  bone,  the  tigress  and  her  lair,  the  roar- 
ing stag  and  his  herd,  these  are  proprietorship  blazing.  No 
more  nonsensical  expression  is  conceivable  in  sociology  than 
the  term  "primitive  communism."  The  Old  Man  of  the  family 
tribe  of  early  palaeolithic  times  insisted  upon  his  proprietorship 
in  his  wives  and  daughters,  in  his  tools,  in  his  visible  universe. 
If  any  other  man  wandered  into  his  visible  universe  he  fought 
him,  and  if  he  could  he  slew  him.  The  tribe  grew  in  the  course 
of  ages,  as  Atkinson  showed  convincingly  in  his  Primal  Law, 
by  the  gradual  toleration  by  the  Old  Man  of  the  existence  of 
the  younger  men,  and  of  their  proprietorship  in  the  wives  they 
captured  from  outside  the  tribe,  and  in  the  tools  and  orna- 
ments they  made  and  the  game  they  slew.  Human  society 
grew  by  a  compromise  between  this  one's  property  and  that. 
It  was  largely  a  compromise  and  an  alliance  forced  upon  men 
by  the  necessity  of  driving  some  other  tribe  out  of  its  visible 
universe.  If  the  hills  and  forests  and  streams  were  not  your 
land  or  my  land,  it  was  because  they  had  to  be  our  land.  Each 
of  us  would  have  preferred  to  have  it  my  land,  but  that  would 
not  work.  In  that  case  the  other  fellows  would  have  destroyed 
us.  Society,  therefore,  is  from  its  beginnings  the  mitigation 
of  ownership.  Ownership  in  the  beast  and  in  the  primitive 
savage  was  far  more  intense  a  thing  than  it  is  in  the  civilized 
world  to-day.  It  is  rooted  more  strongly  in  our  instincts  than 
in  our  reason. 

In  the  natural  savage  and  in  the  untutored  man  to-day — 
for  it  is  well  to  keep  in  mind  that  no  man  to-day  is  more  than 
four  hundred  generations  from  the  primordial  savage — there 
is  no  limitation  to  the  sphere  of  ownership.  Whatever  you 
can  fight  for,  you  can  own ;  women-folk,  spared  captive,  cap- 


886  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tured  beast,  forest  glade,  stone  pit  or  what  not.  As  the  com- 
munity grew  and  a  sort  of  law  came  to  restrain  internecine 
fighting,  men  developed  rough  and  ready  methods  of  settling 
proprietorship.  Men  could  own  what  they  were  the  first  to 
make  or  capture  or  claim.  It  seemed  natural  that  a  debtor 
who  could  not  pay  up  should  become  the  property  of  his  cred- 
itor. Equally  natural  was  it  that,  after  claiming  a  patch  of 
land  ("Bags  I,"  as  the  schoolboy  says),  a  man  should  exact 
payments  and  tribute  from  anyone  else  who  wanted  to  use  it. 
It  was  only  slowly,  as  the  possibilities  of  organized  life  dawned 
on  men,  that  this  unlimited  property  in  anything  whatever  began 
to  be  recognized  as  a  nuisance.  Men  found  themselves  born 
into  a  universe  all  owned  and  claimed,  nay!  they  found  them- 
selves born  owned  and  claimed.  The  social  struggles  of  the 
earlier  civilization  are  difficult  to  trace  now,  but  the  history  we 
have  told  of  the  Roman  republic  shows  a  community  waking 
up  to  the  idea  that  they  may  become  a  public  inconvenience 
and  should  then  be  repudiated,  and  that  the  unlimited  owner- 
ship of  land  is  also  an  inconvenience.  We  find  that  later  Baby- 
lonia severely  limited  the  rights  of  property  in  slaves.  Finally, 
we  find  in  the  teaching  of  that  great  revolutionist,  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  such  an  attack  upon  property  as  had  never  been 
before.  Easier  it  was,  he  said,  for  a  camel  to  go  through  the 
eye  of  a  needle  than  for  the  owner  of  great  possessions  to 
enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  A  steady,  continuous  criticism 
of  the  permissible  scope  of  property  seems  to  have  been  going 
on  in  the  world  for  the  last  twenty-five  or  thirty  centuries. 
Nineteen  hundred  years  after  Jesus  of  Nazareth  we  find  all 
the  world  that  has  come  under  the  Christian  teaching  per- 
suaded that  there  could  be  no  property  in  persons.  There  has 
been  a  turn-over  in  the  common  conscience  in  that  matter. 
And  also  the  idea  that  "a  man  may  do  what  he  likes  with  his 
own"  was  clearly  very  much  shaken  in  relation  to  other  sorts 
of  property.  But  this  world  of  the  closing  eighteenth  century 
was  still  only  in  the  interrogative  stage  in  this  matter.  It 
had  got  nothing  clear  enough,  much  less  settled  enough,  to  act 
upon.  One  of  its  primary  impulses  was  to  protect  property 
against  the  greed  and  waste  of  kings  and  the  exploitation  of 
noble  adventurers.  It  was  to  protect  private  property  that  the 
Revolution  began.  But  its  equalitarian  formula?  carried  it 
into  a  criticism  of  the  very  property  it  had  risen  to  protect. 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          887 

How  can  men  be  free  and  equal  when  numbers  of  them  have 
no  ground  to  stand  upon  and  nothing  to  eat,  and  the  owners 
will  neither  feed  nor  lodge  them  unless  they  toil  ?  Exces- 
sively— the  poor  complained. 

To  which  riddle  the  Jacobin  reply  was  to  set  about  "divid- 
ing up."  They  wanted  to  intensify  and  universalize  property. 
Aiming  at  the  same  end  by  another  route,  there  were  already 
in  the  eighteenth  century  certain  primitive  socialists — or,  to 
be  more  exact,  communists — who  wanted  to  "abolish"  private 
property  altogether.  The  state  (a  democratic  state  was  of 
course  understood)  was  to  own  all  property.  It  was  only  as 
the  nineteenth  century  developed  that  men  began  to  realize  that 
property  was  not  one  simple  thing,  but  a  great  complex  of 
ownerships  of  different  values  and  consequences,  that  many 
things  (such  as  human  beings,  the  implements  of  an  artist, 
clothing,  tooth-brushes)  are  very  profoundly  and  incurably 
personal  property,  and  that  there  is  a  very  great  range  of 
things,  railways,  machinery  of  various  sorts,  homes,  cultivated 
gardens,  pleasure-boats,  for  example,  which  need  each  to  be 
considered  very  particularly  to  determine  how  far  and  under 
what  limitations  it  may  come  under  private  ownership,  and 
how  far  it  falls  into  the  public  domain  and  may  be  administered 
and  let  out  by  the  state  in  the  collective  interest.  On  the  prac- 
tical side  these  questions  pass  into  politics,  and  the  problem 
of  making  and  sustaining  efficient  state  administration.  They 
open  up  issues  in  social  psychology,  and  interact  with  the  en- 
quiries of  educational  science.  We  have  to-day  the  advantage 
of  a  hundred  and  thirty  years  of  discussion  over  the  first  revo- 
lutionary generation,  but  even  now  this  criticism  of  property 
is  still  a  vast  and  passionate  ferment  rather  than  a  science. 
Under  the  circumstances  it  was  impossible  that  eighteenth- 
century  France  should  present  any  other  spectacle  than  that  of 
vague  and  confused  popular  movements  seeking  to  dispossess 
owners,  and  classes  of  small  and  large  owners  holding  on  grimly, 
demanding,  before  everything  else,  law,  order,  and  security, 
and  seeking  to  increase  their  individual  share  of  anything  what- 
ever that  could  be  legally  possessed. 

Closely  connected  with  the  vagueness  of  men's  ideas  about 
property  was  the  vagueness  of  their  ideas  about  currency.  Both 
the  American  and  the  French  republics  fell  into  serious  trou- 
ble upon  this  score.  Here,  again,  we  deal  with  something 


888  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

that  is  not  simple,  a  tangle  of  usages,  conventions,  laws,  and 
prevalent  mental  habits,  out  of  which  arise  problems  which 
admit  of  no  solution  in  simple  terms,  and  which  yet  are  of 
vital  importance  to  the  everyday  life  of  the  community.  The 
validity  of  the  acknowledgment  a  man  is  given  for  a  day's 
work  is  manifestly  of  quite  primary  importance  to  the  work- 
ing of  the  social  machine.  The  growth  of  confidence  in  the 
precious  metals  and  of  coins,  until  the  assurance  became 
practically  universal  that  good  money  could  be  trusted  to 
have  its  purchasing  power  anywhere,  must  have  been 
a  gradual  one  in  human  history.  And  being  fairly  estab- 
lished, this  assurance  was  subjected  to  very  considerable  strains 
and  perplexities  by  the  action  of  governments  in  debasing  cur- 
rency and  in  substituting  paper  promises  to  pay  for  the  actual 
metallic  coins.  Every  age  produced  a  number  of  clever  people 
intelligent  enough  to  realize  the  opportunities  for  smart  opera- 
tions afforded  by  the  complex  of  faiths  and  fictions  upon  which 
the  money  system  rested,  and  sufficiently  unsound  morally  to 
give  their  best  energies  to  growing  rich  and  so  getting  people 
to  work  for  them,  through  tricks  and  tampering  with  gold, 
coinage,  and  credit  So  soon  as  serious  political  and  social 
dislocation  occurred,  the  money  mechanism  began  to  work  stiffly 
and  inaccurately.  The  United  States  and  the  French  Republic 
both  started  their  careers  in  a  phase  of  financial  difficulty. 
Everywhere  governments  had  been  borrowing  and  issuing  paper 
promises  to  pay  interest,  more  interest  than  they  could  con- 
veniently raise.  Both  revolutions  led  to  much  desperate  pub- 
lic spending  and  borrowing,  and  at  the  same  time  to  an  in- 
terruption of  cultivation  and  production  that  further  dimin- 
ished real  taxable  wealth.  Both  governments,  being  unable 
to  pay  their  way  in  gold,  resorted  to  the  issue  of  paper  money, 
promising  to  pay  upon  the  security  of  undeveloped  land  (in 
America)  or  recently  confiscated  church  lands  (France).  In 
both  cases  the  amount  of  issue  went  far  beyond  the  confidence 
of  men  in  the  new  security.  Gold  was  called  in,  hidden  by  the 
cunning  ones,  or  went  abroad  to  pay  for  imports;  and  people 
found  themselves  with  various  sorts  of  bills  and  notes  in  the 
place  of  coins,  all  of  uncertain  and  diminishing  value. 

However  complicated  the  origins  of  currency,  its  practical 
effect  and  the  end  it  has  to  serve  in  the  community  may  be 
stated  roughly  in  simple  terms.  The  money  a  man  receives  for 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          889 

his  work  (mental  or  bodily)  or  for  relinquishing  his  property 
in  some  consumable  good,  must  ultimately  be  able  to  purchase 
for  him  for  his  use  a  fairly  equivalent  amount  of  consumable 
goods.  ("Consumable  goods"  is  a  phrase  we  would  have  under- 
stood in  the  widest  sense  to  represent  even  such  things  as  a 
journey,  a  lecture  or  theatrical  entertainment,  housing,  medical 
advice,  and  so  forth.)  When  everyone  in  a  community  is  as- 
sured of  this,  and  assured  that  the  money  will  not  deteriorate 
in  purchasing  power,  then  currency — and  the  distribution  of 
goods  by  trade — is  in  a  healthy  and  satisfactory  state.  Then 
men  will  work  cheerfully,  and  only  then.  The  imperative 
need  for  that  steadfastness  and  security  of  currency  is  the  fixed 
datum  from  which  the  scientific  study  and  control  of  currency 
must  begin.  But  under  the  most  stable  conditions  there  will 
always  be  fluctuations  in  currency  value.  The  sum  total  of 
saleable  consumable  goods  in  the  world  and  in  various  coun- 
tries varies  from  year  to  year  and  from  season  to  season ;  autumn 
is  probably  a  time  of  plenty  in  comparison  with  spring;  with 
an  increase  in  the  available  goods  in  the  world,  the  purchasing 
power  of  currency  will  increase,  unless  there  is  also  an  increase 
in  the  amount  of  currency.  On  the  other  hand,  if  there  is  a 
diminution  in  the  production  of  consumable  goods  or  a  great  and 
unprofitable  destruction  of  consumable  goods,  such  as  occurs 
in  a  war,  the  share  of  the  total  of  consumable  goods  repre- 
sented by  a  sum  of  money  will  diminish  and  prices  and  wages 
will  rise.  In  modern  war  the  explosion  of  a  single  big  shell, 
even  if  it  hits  nothing,  destroys  labour  and  material  roughly 
equivalent  to  a  comfortable  cottage  or  a  year's  holiday  for  a 
man.  If  the  shell  hits  anything,  then  that  further  destruction 
has  to  be  added  to  the  diminution  of  consumable  goods.  Every 
shell  that  burst  in  the  recent  war  diminished  by  a  little  fraction 
the  purchasing  value  of  every  coin  in  the  whole  world.  If 
there  is  also  an  increase  of  currency  during  a  period  when  con- 
sumable goods  are  being  used  up  and  not  fully  replaced — and 
the  necessities  of  revolutionary  and  war-making  governments 
almost  always  require  this — then  the  enhancement  of  prices 
and  the  fall  in  the  value  of  the  currency  paid  in  wages  is  still 
greater.  Usually  also  governments  under  these  stresses  borrow 
money;  that  is  to  say,  they  issue  interest-bearing  paper,  se- 
cured on  the  willingness  and  ability  of  the  general  community 
to  endure  taxation.  Such  operations  would  be  difficult  enough 


890  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

if  they  were  carried  out  frankly  by  perfectly  honest  men,  in 
the  full  light  of  publicity  and  scientific  knowledge.  But  hith- 
erto this  has  never  been  the  case ;  at  every  point  the  clever 
egotist,  the  bad  sort  of  rich  man,  is  trying  to  deflect  things  a 
little  to  his  own  advantage.  Everywhere,  too,  one  finds  the 
stupid  egotist  ready  to  take  fright  and  break  into  panic.  Con- 
sequently we  presently  discover  the  state  encumbered  by  an 
excess  of  currency,  which  is  in  effect  a  non-interest-paying 
debt,  and  also  with  a  great  burthen  of  interest  upon  loans. 
Both  credit  and  currency  begin  to  fluctuate  wildly  with 
the  evaporation  of  public  confidence.  They  are,  we  say, 
demoralized. 

The  ultimate  consequence  of  an  entirely  demoralized  currency 
would  be  to  end  all  work  and  all  trade  that  could  not  be  carried 
on  by  payment  in  kind  and  barter.  Men  would  refuse  to 
work  except  for  food,  clothing,  housing,  and  payment  in  kind. 
The  immediate  consequence  of  a  partially  demoralized  cur- 
rency is  to  drive  up  prices  and  make  trading  feverishly  adven- 
turous and  workers  suspicious  and  irritable.  A  sharp  man 
wants  under  such  conditions  to  hold  money  for  as  brief  a 
period  as  possible ;  he  demands  the  utmost  for  his  reality,  and 
buys  a  reality  again  as  soon  as  possible  in  order  to  get  this  per- 
ishable stuff,  the  currency  paper,  off  his  hands.  All  who  have 
fixed  incomes  and  saved  accumulations  suffer  by  the  rise  in 
prices,  and  the  wage-earners  find,  with  a  gathering  fury,  that 
the  real  value  of  their  wages  is  continually  less.  Here  is  a 
state  of  affairs  where  the  duty  of  every  clever  person  is  evi- 
dently to  help  adjust  and  reassure.  But  all  the  traditions 
of  private  enterprise,  all  the  ideas  of  the  later  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, went  to  justify  the  action  of  acute-minded  and  dex- 
terous people  who  set  themselves  to  accumulate  claims,  titles, 
and  tangible  property  in  the  storms  and  dislocations  of  this 
currency  breakdown.  The  number  of  understanding  people 
in  the  world  who  were  setting  themselves  sincerely  and  simply 
to  restore  honest  and  workable  currency  and  credit  conditions 
were  few  and  ineffectual.  Most  of  the  financial  and  specu- 
lative people  of  the  time  were  playing  the  part  of  Cornish 
wreckers — not  apparently  with  any  conscious  dishonesty,  but 
with  the  completest  self-approval  and  the  applause  of  tjieir 
fellow-men.  The  aim  of  every  clever  person  was  to  accumulate 
as  much  as  he  could  of  really  negotiable  wealth,  and  then, 


REPUBLICS  OF  AMERICA  AND  FRANCE          891 

and  only  then,  to  bring  about  some  sort  of  stabilizing  political 
process  that  would  leave  him  in  advantageous  possession  of 
his  accumulation.  Here  were  the  factors  of  a  bad  economic 
atmosphere,  suspicious,  feverish,  greedy,  and  speculative.  .  .  . 

In  the  third  direction  in  which  the  Eevolution  had  been 
unprepared  with  clear  ideas,  the  problem  of  international  re- 
lationships, developments  were  to  occur  that  interacted  dis- 
astrously with  this  state  of  financial  and  economic  adventure, 
this  scramble  and  confusion,  this  preoccupation  of  men's  minds 
with  the  perplexing  slipperiness  of  their  private  property  and 
their  monetary  position  at  home.  The  Eepublic  at  its  birth 
found  itself  at  war.  For  a  time  that  war  was  waged  by  the 
new  levies  with  a  patriotism  and  a  zeal  unparalleled  in  the 
world's  history.  But  that  could  not  go  on.  The  Directory  found 
itself  at  the  head  of  a  conquering  country,  intolerably  needy 
and  embarrassed  at  home,  and  in  occupation  of  rich  foreign 
lands,  full  of  seizable  wealth  and  material  and  financial  op- 
portunity. We  have  all  double  natures,  and  the  French  in 
particular  seem  to  be  developed  logically  and  symmetrically 
on  both  sides..  Into  these  conquered  regions  France  came  as  a 
liberator,  the  teacher  of  Republicanism  to  mankind.  Holland 
and  Belgium  became  the  Batavian  Republic,  Genoa  and  its 
Riviera  the  Ligurian  Republic,  north  Italy  the  Cisalpine  Re- 
public, Switzerland  was  rechristened  the  Helvetian  Republic, 
Miilhausen,  Rome,  and  Naples  vjere  designated  republics. 
Grouped  about  France,  these  republics  were  to  be  a  constellation 
of  freedom  leading  the  world.  That  was  the  ideal  side.  At 
the  same  time  the  French  government,  and  French  private 
individuals  in  concert  with  the  government,  proceeded  to  a 
complete  and  exhaustive  exploitation  of  the  resources  of  these 
liberated  lands. 

So  within  ten  years  of  the  meeting  of  the  States  General, 
New  France  begins  to  take  on  a  singular  likeness  to  the  old. 
It  is  more  flushed,  more  vigorous ;  it  wears  a  cap  of  liberty  in- 
stead of  a  crown ;  it  has  a  new  army — but  a  damaged  fleet ;  it 
has  new  rich  people  instead  of  the  old  rich  people,  a  new  peas- 
antry working  even  harder  than  the  old  and  yielding  more  taxes, 
a  new  foreign  policy  curiously  like  the  old  foreign  policy 
disrobed,  and — there  is  no  Millennium. 


XXXVII 
THE  CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE 

§  1.  The  Bonaparte  Family  in  Corsica.  §  2.  Bonaparte  as 
a  Republican  General.  §  3.  Napoleon  First  Consul,  1799- 
1804.  §  4.  Napoleon  I.  Emperor,  1804-14.  §  5.  The  Hun- 
dred Days.  §  6.  The  Map  of  Europe  in  1815. 


AND  now  we  come  to  one  of  the  most  illuminating  figures 
in  modern  history,  the  figure  of  an  adventurer  and  a 
wrecker,  whose  story  seems  to  display  with  an  extraor- 
dinary vividness  the  universal  subtle  conflict  of  egotism,  van- 
ity, and  personality  with  the  weaker,  wider  claims  of  the  com- 
mon good.  Against  this  background  of  confusion  and  stress 
and  hope,  this  strained  and  heaving  France  and  Europe,  this 
stormy  and  tremendous  dawn,  appears  this  dark  little  archaic 
personage,  hard,  compact,  capable,  unscrupulous,  imitative,  and 
neatly  vulgar.  He  was  born  (1769)  in  the  still  half-barbaric 
island  of  Corsica,  the  son  of  a  rather  prosaic  father,  a  lawyer 
who  had  been  first  a  patriotic  Corsican  against  the  French 
monarchy  which  was  trying  to  subjugate  Corsica,  and  who  had 
then  gone  over  to  the  side  of  the  invader.  His  mother  was 
of  sturdier  stuff,  passionately  patriotic  and  a  strong  and  man- 
aging woman.  (She  birched  her  sons;  on  one  occasion  she 
birched  Napoleon  when  he  was  sixteen.)  There  were  numerous 
brothers  and  sisters,  and  the  family  pursued  the  French  author- 
ities with  importunities  for  rewards  and  jobs.  Except  for 
Napoleon  it  seems  to  have  been  a  thoroughly  commonplace, 
"hungry"  family.  He  was  clever,  bad-tempered,  and  overbear- 
ing. From  his  mother  he  had  acquired  a  romantic  Corsican 
patriotism. 

Through  the  patronage  of  the  French  governor  of  Corsica 
he  got  an  education  first  at  the  military  school  of  Brienne  and 
then  at  the  military  school  of  Paris,  from  which  he  passed 

S92 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     893 

into  the  artillery  in  1785.  He  was  an  industrious  student 
both  of  mathematics  and  history,  his  memory  was  prodigiously 
good,  and  he  made  copious  note-books  which  still  exist.  These 
note-books  show  no  very  exceptional  intelligence,  and  they  con- 
tain short  pieces  of  original  composition — upon  suicide  and 
similar  adolescent  topics.  He  fell  early  under  the  spell  of 
Rousseau ;  he  developed  sensibility  and  a  scorn  for  the  corrup- 
tions of  civilization.  In  1786  he  wrote  a  pamphlet  against  a 
Swiss  pastor  who  had  attacked  Rousseau.  It  was  a  very  ordi- 
nary adolescent  production,  rhetorical  and  imitative.  He 
dreamt  of  an  independent  Corsica,  freed  from  the  French. 
With  the  revolution,  he  became  an  ardent  republican  and  a 
supporter  of  the  new  French  regime  in  Corsica.  For  some 
years,  until  the  fall  of  Robespierre,  he  remained  a  Jacobin. 

§  2 

He  soon  gained  the  reputation  of  a  useful  aiscl  capable  officer, 
and  it  was  through  Robespierre's  younger  brother  that  he  got 
his  first  chance  of  distinction  at  Toulon.  Toulon  had  been 
handed  over  to  the  British  and  Spanish  by  the  Royalists,  and 
an  allied  fleet  occupied  its  harbour.  Bonaparte  was  given  the 
command  of  the  artillery,  and  under  his  direction  the  French 
forced  the  allies  to  abandon  the  port  and  town. 

He  was  next  appointed  commander  of  the  artillery  in  Italy, 
but  he  had  not  taken  up  his  duties  when  the  death  of  Robespierre 
seemed  likely  to  involve  his  own;  he  was  put  under  arrest  as 
a  Jacobin,  and  for  a  time  he  was  in  danger  of  the  guillotine. 
That  danger  passed.  He  was  employed  as  artillery  commander 
in  an  abortive  raid  upon  Corsica,  and  then  went  to  Paris  (1795) 
rather  down  at  heel.  Madame  Junot  in  her  Memoirs  describes 
his  lean  face  and  slovenly  appearance  at  this  time,  "his  ill- 
combed,  ill-powdered  hair  hanging  down  over  his  grey  over- 
coat," his  gloveless  hands  and  badly  blacked  boots.  It  was  a 
time  of  exhaustion  and  reaction  after  the  severities  of  the 
Jacobite  republic.  "In  Paris/'  says  Holland  Rose,  "the  star 
of  Liberty  was  paling  before  Mercury,  Mars,  and  Venus" 
— finance,  uniforms,  and  social  charm.  The  best  of  the  common 
men  were  in  the  armies,  away  beyond  the  frontiers.  We  have 
already  noted  the  last  rising  of  the  royalists  in  this  year  (1795). 
^Napoleon  had  the  luck  to  be  in  Paris,  and  found  his  second 


894  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

opportunity  in  this  affair.     He  saved  the  Republic — of  the 
Directory. 

His  abilities  greatly  impressed  Carnot,  the  most  upright  of 
the  Directors.  Moreover,  he  married  a  charming  young  widow, 
Madame  Josephine  de  Beauharnais,  who  had  great  influence 
with  Barras.  Both  these  things  probably  helped  him  to  secure 
the  command  in  Italy. 

We  have  no  space  here  for  the  story  of  his  brilliant  campaigns 
in  Italy  (1796-97),  but  of  the  spirit  in  which  that  invasion  of 
Italy  was  conducted  we  must  say  a  word  or  two,  because  it 
illustrates  so  vividly  the  double  soul  of  France  and  of  Napoleon, 
and  how  revolutionary  idealism  was  paling  before  practical 
urgencies.  He  proclaimed  to  the  Italians  that  the  French  were 
coming  to  break  their  chains — and  they  were!  He  wrote  to 
the  Directory:  "We  will  levy  20,000,000  francs  in  exactions 
in  this  country;  it  is  one  of  the  richest  in  the  world."  To  his 
soldiers  he  said,  "You  are  famished  and  nearly  naked.  .  .  . 
I  lead  you  into  the  most  fertile  plain  in  the  world.  There  you 
will  find  great  towns,  rich  provinces,  honour,  glory,  riches.  .  .  ." 

We  are  all  such  mixed  stuff  as  this ;  in  all  of  us  the  intimations 
of  a  new  world  and  a  finer  duty  struggle  to  veil  and  control  the 
ancient  greeds  and  lusts  of  our  inherited  past;  but  these  pas- 
sages, written  by  a  young  man  of  twenty-seven,  seem  to  show 
the  gilt  of  honourable  idealism  rubbed  off  at  an  unusually  early 
age.  These  are  the  bribes  of  an  adventurer  who  has  brought 
whatever  impulse  of  devotion  to  a  great  cause  once  stirred 
within  him  well  under  the  control  of  his  self-love. 

His  successes  in  Italy  were  brilliant  and  complete;  they 
enormously  stimulated  his  self-confidence  and  his  contempt  for 
the  energy  and  ability  of  his  fellow-creatures.  He  had  wanted 
to  go  into  Italy  because  there  lay  the  most  attractive  task — 
he  had  risked  his  position  in  the  army  by  refusing  to  take  up 
the  irksome  duties  of  a  command  against  the  rebels  in  La 
Vendee — and  there  are  clear  signs  of  a  vast  expansion  of  his 
vanity  with  his  victories.  He  had  been  a  great  reader  of 
Plutarch's  Lives  and  of  Roman  history,  and  his  extremely  ac- 
tive but  totally  uncreative  imagination  was  now  busy  with 
dreams  of  a  revival  of  the  eastern  conquests  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  He  got  the  republic  of  Venice  out  of  his  way  by  cut- 
ting it  up  between  the  French  and  Austria,  securing  the  Ionian 
islands  and  the  Venetian  fleet  for  France.  This  peace,  the  peace 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     895 

of  Campo  Formio,  was  for  both  sides  a  thoroughly  scoun- 
drelly and  ultimately  a  disastrous  bargain.  The  new  republic 
of  France  assisted  in  the  murder  of  an  ancient  republic — Na- 
poleon carried  his  point  against  a  considerable  outcry  in  France 
— and  Austria  got  Venetia,  in  which  land  in  1918  she  was 
destined  to  bleed  to  death.  There  were  also  secret  clauses  by 
which  both  France  and  Austria  were  later  to  acquire  south 
German  territory.  And  it  was  not  only  the  Roman  push  east- 
ward that  was  now  exciting  Napoleon's  brain.  This  was  the 
land  of  Csesar — and  Caesar  was  a  bad  example  for  the  suc- 
cessful general  of  a  not  very  stable  republic. 

Csesar  had  come  back  to  Rome  from  Gaul  a  hero  and  con- 
queror. His  new  imitator  would  come  back  from  Egypt  and 
India — Egypt  and  India  were  to  be  his  Gaul.  There  was  really 
none  of  the  genius  about  which  historians  write  so  glibly  in 
this  decision.  It  was  a  tawdry  and  ill-conceived  imitation. 
The  elements  of  failure  stared  him  in  the  face.  The  way  to 
Egypt  and  India  was  by  sea,  and  the  British,  in  spite  of  two 
recent  naval  mutinies,  whose  importance  Napoleon  exaggerated, 
were  stronger  than  the  French  at  sea.  Moreover,  Egypt  was 
a  part  of  the  Turkish  empire,  by  no  means  a  contemptible  power 
in  those  days.  Nevertheless  he  persuaded  the  Directory,  which 
was  dazzled  by  his  Italian  exploits,  to  let  him  go.  An  Armada 
started  from  Toulon  in  May,  1798,  captured  Malta,  and  had  the 
good  luck  to  evade  the  British  fleet  and  arrive  at  Alexandria. 
He  landed  his  troops  hurriedly,  and  the  battle  of  the  Pyramids 
made  him  master  of  Egypt. 

The  main  British  fleet  at  that  time  was  in  the  Atlantic  out- 
side Cadiz,  but  the  admiral  had  detached  a  force  of  his  best 
ships,  under  Vice-Admiral  Nelson — as  great  a  genius  in  naval 
affairs  as  was  Napoleon  in  things  military — to  chase  and  en- 
gage the  French  flotilla.  For  a  time  Nelson  sought  the  French 
fleet  in  vain ;  finally,  on  the  evening  of  the  first  of  August,  he 
found  it  at  anchor  in  Aboukir  bay.  He  had  caught  it  una- 
wares; many  of  the  men  were  ashore  and  a  council  was  being 
held  in  the  flag-ship.  He  had  no  charts,  and  it  was  a  hazardous 
thing  to  sail  into  the  shallow  water  in  a  bad  light.  The 
French  admiral  concluded,  therefore,  that  his  adversary  would 
not  attack  before  morning,  and  so  made  no  haste  in  recalling 
his  men  aboard  until  it  was  too  late  to  do  so.  Nelson,  however, 
struck  at  once — against  the  advice  of  some  of  his  captains. 


896  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

One  ship  only  went  aground.  She  marked  the  shoal  for  the 
rest  of  the  fleet.  He  sailed  to  the  attack  in  a  double  line 
about  sundown,  putting  the  French  between  two  fires.  Night 
fell  as  the  battle  was  joined;  the  fight  thundered  and  crashed 
in  the  darkness,  until  it  was  lit  presently  by  the  flames  of 
burning  French  ships,  and  then  by  the  flare  of  the  French 
flag-ship,  the  Orient,  blowing  up.  .  .  .  Before  midnight  the 
battle  of  the  Nile  was  over,  and  Napoleon's  fleet  was  destroyed. 
Napoleon  was  cut  off  from  France. 

Says  Holland  Rose,  quoting  Thiers,  this  Egyptian  expedi- 
tion was  "the  rashest  attempt  history  records."  Napoleon  was 
left  in  Egypt  with  the  Turks  gathering  against  him  and  his 
army  infected  with  the  plague.  Nevertheless,  with  a  stupid  sort 
of  persistence,  he  went  on  for  a  time  with  this  Eastern  scheme. 
He  gained  a  victory  at  Jaffa,  and,  being  short  of  provisions, 
massacred  all  his  prisoners.  Then  he  tried  to  take  Acre,  where 
his  own  siege  artillery,  just  captured  at  sea  by  the  English, 
was  used  against  him.  Returning  baffled  to  Egypt,  he  gained 
a  brilliant  victory  over  a  Turkish  force  at  Aboukir,  and  then, 
deserting  the  army  of  Egypt — it  held  on  until  1801,  when  it 
capitulated  to  a  British  force — made  his  escape  back  to  France 
(1799),  narrowly  missing  capture  by  a  British  cruiser  off  Sicily. 

Here  was  muddle  and  failure  enough  to  discredit  any  gen- 
eral— had  it  been  known.  But  the  very  British  cruisers  which 
came  so  near  to  catching  him,  helped  him  by  preventing  any 
real  understanding  of  the  Egyptian  situation  from  reaching 
the  French  people.  He  could  make  a  great  flourish  over  the 
battle  of  Aboukir  and  conceal  the  shame  and  loss  of  Acre. 
Things  were  not  going  well  with  France  just  then.  There  had 
been  military  failures  at  several  points;  much  of  Italy  had 
been  lost,  Bonaparte's  Italy,  and  this  turned  men's  minds  to 
him  as  the  natural  saviour  of  that  situation;  moreover,  there 
had  been  much  peculation,  and  some  of  it  was  coming  to  light ; 
France  was  in  one  of  her  phases  of  financial  scandal,  and  Na- 
poleon had  not  filched;  the  public  was  in  that  state  of  moral 
fatigue  when  a  strong  and  honest  man  is  called  for,  a  wonder- 
ful, impossible  healing  man  who  will  do  everything  for  every- 
body. People,  poor  lazy  souls,  persuaded  themselves  that  this 
specious  young  man  with  the  hard  face,  so  providentially  back 
from  Egypt,  was  the  strong  and  honest  man  required — another 
Washington. 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE 


897 


With  Julius  Caesar  rather  than  Washington  at  the  back  of 
his  mind,  Napoleon  responded  to  the  demand  of  his  time.  A 
conspiracy  was  carefully  engineered  to  replace  the  Birectory 
by  three  "Consuls" — everybody  seems  to  have  been  reading  far 
too  much  Roman  history  just  then — of  whom  Napoleon  was 
to  be  the  chief.  The  working  of  that  conspiracy  is  too  intricate 
a  story  for  our  space;  it  involved  a  Cromwell-like  dispersal  of 
the  Lower  House  (the  Council  of  Five  Hundred),  and  in  this 


affair  Napoleon  lost  his  nerve.  The  deputies  shouted  at  him 
and  hustled  him,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  very  much  fright- 
ened. He  nearly  fainted,  stuttered,  and  could  say  nothing,  but 
the  situation  was  saved  by  his  brother  Lucien,  who  brought  in 
the  soldiers  and  dispersed  the  council.  This  little  hitch  did  not 
affect  the  final  success  of  the  scheme.  The  three  Consuls  were 
installed  at  the  Luxembourg  palace,  with  two  commissioners, 
to  reconstruct  the  constitution. 

With  all  his  confidence  restored  and  sure  of  the  support  of 
the  people,  who  supposed  him  to  be  honest,  patriotic,  repub- 
lican, and  able  to  bring  about  a  good  peace,  Napoleon  took  a 
high  hand  with  his  colleagues  and  the  commissioners.  A  con- 
stitution was  produced  in  which  the  chief  executive  officer 
was  to  be  called  the  First  Consul,  with  enormous  powers. 
He  was  to  be  Napoleon ;  this  was  part  of  the  constitution.  He 
was  to  be  re-elected  or  replaced  at  the  end  of  ten  years.  He  was 


898  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  be  assisted  by  a  Council  of  State,  appointed  by  himself, 
which  was  to  initiate  legislation  and  send  its  proposals  to  two 
bodies,  the  Legislative  Body  (which  could  vote,  but  not  dis- 
cuss) and  the  Tribunate  (which  could  discuss,  but  not  vote), 
which  were  selected  by  an  appointed  Senate  from  a  special 
class,  the  "notabilities  of  France,"  who  were  elected  by  the 
"notabilities  of  the  departments,"  who  were  elected  by  the  "nota- 
bilities of  the  commune,"  who  were  elected  by  the  common 
voters.  The  suffrage  for  the  election  of  the  notabilities  of  the 
commune  was  universal.  This  was  the  sole  vestige  of  democ- 
racy in  the  astounding  pyramid.  This  constitution  was  chiefly 
the  joint  production  of  a  worthy  philosopher,  Sieyes,  who  was 
one  of  the  three  consuls,  and  Bonaparte.  But  so  weary  was 
France  with  her  troubles  and  efforts,  and  so  confident  were  men 
in  the  virtue  and  ability  of  this  adventurer  from  Corsica,  that 
when,  at  the  birth  of  the  nineteenth  century,  this  constitution 
was  submitted  to  the  country,  it  was  carried  by  3,011,007  votes 
to  1,562.  France  put  herself  absolutely  in  Bonaparte's  hands, 
and  prepared  to  be  peaceful,  happy,  and  glorious. 

§3 

Now  surely  here  was  opportunity  such  as  never  came  to  man 
before.  Here  was  a  position  in  which  a  man  might  well  bow 
himself  in  fear  of  himself,  and  search  his  heart  and  serve  God 
and  man  to  the  utmost.  The  old  order  of  things  was  dead  or 
dying ;  strange  new  forces  drove  through  the  world  seeking  form 
and  direction ;  the  promise  of  a  world  republic  and  an  enduring 
world  peace  whispered  in  a  multitude  of  startled  minds.  Had 
this  man  any  profundity  of  vision,  any  power  of  creative  imagi- 
nation, had  he  been  accessible  to  any  disinterested  ambition, 
he  might  have  done  work  for  mankind  that  would  have  made 
him  the  very  sun  of  history.  All  Europe  and  America,  stirred 
by  the  first  promise  of  a  new  age,  was  waiting  for  him.  Not 
France  alone.  France  was  in  his  hand,  his  instrument,  to  do 
with  as  he  pleased,  willing  for  peace,  but  tempered  for  war  like 
an  exquisite  sword.  There  lacked  nothing  to  this  great  occa- 
sion but  a  noble  imagination.  And  failing  that,  Napoleon 
could  do  no  more  than  strut  upon  the  crest  of  this  great  moun- 
tain of  opportunity  like  a  cockerel  on  a  dunghill.  The  figure 
he  makes  in  history  is  one  of  almost  incredible  self-conceit,  of 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE      899 

vanity,  greed,  and  cunning,  of  callous  contempt  and  disregard 
of  all  who  trusted  him,  and  of  a  grandiose  aping  of  Caesar, 
Alexander,  and  Charlemagne  which  would  be  purely  comic  if 
it  were  not  caked  over  with  human  blood.  Until,  as  Victor 
Hugo  said  in  his  tremendous  way,  "God  was  bored  by  him," 
and  he  was  kicked  aside  into  a  corner  to  end  his  days,  explain- 
ing and  explaining  how  very  clever  his  worst  blunders  had  been, 
prowling  about  his  dismal  hot  island  shooting  birds  and  squab- 
bling meanly  with  an  underbred  gaoler  who  failed  to  show  him 
proper  "respect." 

His  career  as  First  Consul  was  perhaps  the  least  dishonour- 
able phase  in  his  career.  He  took  the  crumbling  military  affairs 
of  the  Directory  in  hand,  and  after  a  complicated  campaign  in 
North  Italy  brought  matters  to  a  head  in  the  victory  of  Marengo, 
near  Alessandria  (1800).  It  was  a  victory  that  at  some  mo- 
ments came  very  near  disaster.  In  the  December  of  the  same 
year  General  Moreau,  in  the  midst  of  snow,  mud,  and  altogether 
abominable  weather,  inflicted  an  overwhelming  defeat  upon  the 
Austrian  army  at  Hohenlinden.  If  N"apoleon  had  gained  this 
battle,  it  would  have  counted  among  his  most  characteristic  and 
brilliant  exploits.  These  things  made  the  hoped-for  peace  possi- 
ble. In  1801  the  preliminaries  of  peace  with  England  and 
Austria  were  signed.  Peace  with  England,  the  Treaty  of 
Amiens,  was  concluded  in  1802,  and  N"apoleon  was  free  to  give 
himself  to  the  creative  statecraft  of  which  France,  and  Europe 
through  France,  stood  in  need.  The  war  had  given  the  country 
extended  boundaries,  the  treaty  with  England  restored  the 
colonial  empire  of  France  and  left  her  in  a  position  of  security 
beyond  the  utmost  dreams  of  Louis  XIV.  It  was  open  to 
Napoleon  to  work  out  and  consolidate  the  new  order  of  things, 
to  make  a  modern  state  that  should  become  a  beacon  and  in- 
spiration to  Europe  and  all  the  world. 

He  attempted  nothing  of  the  sort.  He  did  not  realize  that 
there  were  such  things  as  modern  states  in  the  scheme  of  possi- 
bility. His  little  imitative  imagination  was  full  of  a  deep  cun- 
ning dream  of  being  Csesar  over  again — as  if  this  universe 
would  ever  tolerate  anything  of  that  sort  over  again !  He  was 
scheming  to  make  himself  a  real  emperor,  with  a  crown  upon 
his  head  and  all  his  rivals  and  school-fellows  and  friends  at 
his  feet.  This  could  give  him  no  fresh  power  that  he  did  not 
already  exercise,  but  it  would  be  more  splendid — it  would 


900  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

astonish  his  mother.  What  response  was  there  in  a  head  of 
that  sort  for  the  splendid  creative  challenge  of  the  time  ?  But 
first  France  must  be  prosperous.  France  hungry  would  cer- 
tainly not  endure  an  emperor.  He  set  himself  to  carry  out  an 
old  scheme  of  roads  that  Louis  XV  had  approved ;  he  developed 
canals  in  imitation  of  the  English  canals;  he  reorganized  the 
police  and  made  the  country  safe ;  and,  preparing  the  scene  for 
his  personal  drama,  he  set  himself  to  make  Paris  look  like  Rome, 
with  classical  a>rches,  with  classical  columns.  Admirable 
schemes  for  hanking  development  were  available,  and  he  made 
use  of  them.  In  all  these  things  he  moved  with  the  times,  they 
would  have  happened — with  less  autocracy,  with  less  centraliza- 
tion, if  he  had  never  been  born.  And  he  set  himself  to  weaken 
the  republicans  whose  fundamental  convictions  he  was  planning 
to  outrage.  He  recalled  the  emigres,  provided  they  gave  satis- 
factory assurances  to  respect  the  new  regime.  Many  were  very 
willing  to  come  back  on  such  terms,  and  let  Bourbons  be  by- 
gones. And  he  worked  out  a  great  reconciliation,  a  Concordat, 
with  Rome.  Rome  was  to  support  him,  and  he  was  to  restore 
the  authority  of  Rome  in  the  parishes.  France  would  never 
be  obedient  and  manageable,  he  thought ;  she  would  never  stand 
a  new  monarchy,  without  religion.  "How  can  you  have  order 
in  a  state,"  he  said,  "without  religion?  Society  cannot  exist 
without  inequality  of  fortunes,  which  cannot  endure  apart  from 
religion.  When  one  man  is  dying  of  hunger  near  another  who 
is  ill  of  surfeit,  he  cannot  resign  himself  to  this  difference,  un- 
less there  is  an  authority  which  declares — 'God  wills  it  thus: 
there  must  be  poor  and  rich  in  the  world:  but  hereafter  and 
during  all  eternity  the  division  of  things  will  take  place  dif- 
ferently.' "  Religion — especially  of  the  later  Roman  brand- 
was,  he  thought,  excellent  stuff  for  keeping  the  common  people 
quiet.  In  his  early  Jacobin  days  he  had  denounced  it  for  that 
very  reason. 

Another  great  achievement  which  marks  his  imaginative 
scope  and  his  estimate  of  human  nature  was  the  institution  of 
the  Legion  of  Honour,  a  scheme  for  decorating  Frenchmen 
with  bits  of  ribbon  which  was  admirably  calculated  to  divert 
ambitious  men  from  subversive  proceedings. 

And  also  Napoleon  interested  himself  in  Christian  propa- 
ganda. Here  is  the  Napoleonic  view  of  the  political  uses  of 
Christ,  a  view  that  has  tainted  all  French  missions  from  that 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     901 

time  forth.  "It  is  my  wish  to  re-establish  the  institution  for 
foreign  missions;  for  the  religious  missionaries  may  be  very 
useful  to  me  in  Asia,  Africa,  and  America,  as  I  shall  make 
them  reconnoitre  all  the  lands  they  visit.  The  sanctity  of  their 
dress  will  not  only  protect  them,  but  serve  to  conceal  their  po- 
litical and  commercial  investigations.  The  head  of  the  mis- 
sionary establishment  shall  reside  no  longer  at  Rome,  but  in 
Paris." 

These  are  the  ideas  of  a  roguish  merchant  rather  than  a 
statesman.  His  treatment  of  education  shows  the  same  nar- 
row vision,  the  same  blindness  to  the  realities  of  the  dawn  about 
him.  Elementary  education  he  neglected  almost  completely; 
he  left  it  to  the  conscience  of  the  local  authorities,  and  he  pro- 
vided that  the  teachers  should  be  paid  out  of  the  fees  of  the 
scholars ;  it  is  clear  he  did  not  want  the  common  people  to  be 
educated ;  he  had  no  glimmering  of  any  understanding  why  they 
should  be;  but  he  interested  himself  in  the  provision  of  tech- 
nical and  higher  schools  because  his  state  needed  the  services 
of  clever,  self-seeking,  well-informed  men.  This  was  an  astound- 
ing retrogression  from  the  great  scheme,  drafted  by  Condorcet 
for  the  Republic  in  1792,  for  a  complete  system  of  free  educa- 
tion for  the  entire  nation.  Slowly  but  steadfastly  the  project 
of  Condorcet  comes  true;  the  great  nations  of  the  world  are 
being  compelled  to  bring  it  nearer  and  nearer  to  realization, 
and  the  cheap  devices  of  Napoleon  pass  out  of  our  interest.  As 
for  the  education  of  the  mothers  and  wives  of  our  race,  this 
was  the  quality  of  Napoleon's  wisdom:  "I  do  not  think  that 
we  need  trouble  ourselves  with  any  plan  of  instruction  for 
young  females,  they  cannot  be  better  brought  up  than  by  their 
mothers.  Public  education  is  not  suitable  for  them,  because 
they  are  never  called  upon  to  act  in  public.  Manners  are  all 
in  all  to  them,  and  marriage  is  all  fhey  look  to." 

The  First  Consul  was  no  kinder  to  women  in  the  Code  Napo- 
leon. A  wife,  for  example,  had  no  control  over  her  own  prop-- 
erty ;  she  was  in  her  husband's  hands.  This  code  was  the  work 
very  largely  of  the  Council  of  State.  Napoleon  seems  rather 
to  have  hindered  than  helped  its  deliberations.  He  would  in- 
vade the  session  without  notice,  and  favour  its  members  with 
lengthy  and  egotistical  monologues,  frequently  quite  irrelevant 
to  the  matter  in  hand.  The  Council  listened  with  profound 
respect ;  it  was  all  the  Council  could  do.  He  would  keep  his 


902  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

councillors  up  to  unearthly  hours,  and  betray  a  simple  pride 
in  his  superior  wakefulness.  He  recalled  these  discussions  with 
peculiar  satisfaction  in  his  later  years,  and  remarked  on  one 
occasion  that  his  glory  consisted  not  in  having  won  forty  battles, 
but  in  having  created  the  Code  Napoleon.  ...  So  far  as  it 
substituted  plain  statements  for  inaccessible  legal  mysteries  his 
Code  was  a  good  thing ;  it  gathered  together,  revised,  and  made 
clear  a  vast  disorderly  accumulation  of  laws,  old  and  new.  Like 
all  his  constructive  work,  it  made  for  immediate  efficiency,  it 
defined  things  and  relations  so  that  men  could  get  to  work  upon 
them  without  further  discussion.  It  was  of  less  immediate 
practical  importance  that  it  frequently  defined  them  wrongly. 
There  was  no  intellectual  power,  as  distinguished  from  intel- 
lectual energy,  behind  this  codification.  It  took  everything 
that  existed  for  granted.  ("Sa  Majeste  ne  croit  que  ce  qui 
est."  *)  The  fundamental  ideas  of  the  civilized  community 
and  of  the  terms  of  human  co-operation  were  in  process  of  re- 
construction all  about  Napoleon — and  he  never  perceived  it. 
He  accepted  a  phase  of  change,  and  tried  to  fix  it  for  ever.  To 
this  day  France  is  cramped  by  this  early  nineteenth-century 
strait-waistcoat  into  which  he  clapped  her.  He  fixed  the  status 
of  women,  the  status  of  labourers,  the  status  of  the  peasant; 
they  all  struggle  to  this  day  in  the  net  of  his  hard  definitions. 

So  briskly  and  forcibly  Napoleon  set  his  mind,  hard,  clear, 
and  narrow,  to  brace  up  France.  That  bracing  up  was  only  a 
part  of  the  large  egotistical  schemes  that  dominated  him.  His 
imagination  was  set  upon  a  new  Csesarism.  In  1802  he  got 
himself  made  First  Consul  for  life  with  the  power  of  appoint- 
ing a  successor,  and  his  clear  intention  of  annexing  Holland 
and  Italy,  in  spite  of  his  treaty  obligations  to  keep  them  sepa- 
rate, made  the  Peace  of  Amiens  totter  crazily  from  the  very 
beginning.  Since  his  schemes  were  bound  to  provoke  a  war 
with  England,  he  should,  at  any  cost,  have  kept  quiet  until  he 
had  brought  his  navy  to  a  superiority  over  the  British  navy. 
He  had  the  control  of  great  resources  for  ship-building,  the 
British  government  was  a  weak  one,  and  three  or  four  years 
would  have  sufficed  to  shift  that  balance.  But  in  spite  of  his 
rough  experiences  in  Egypt,  he  had  never  mastered  the  im- 
portance of  sea  power,  and  he  had  not  the  mental  steadfastness 
for  a  waiting  game  and  long  preparation.  In  1803  his  occupa- 

1  Gourgaud  quoted  by  Holland  Rose. 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     903 

tion  of  Switzerland  precipitated  a  crisis,  and  war  broke  out 
again  with  England.  The  weak  Addington  in  England  gave 
place  to  the  greater  Pitt.  The  rest  of  Napoleon's  story  turns 
upon  that  war. 

During  the  period  of  the  Consulate,  the  First  Consul  was 
very  active  in  advancing  the  fortunes  of  his  brothers  and  sisters. 
This  was  quite  human,  very  clannish  and  Corsican,  and  it  helps 
us  to  understand  just  how  he  valued  his  position  and  the  oppor- 
tunities before  him.  Few  of  us  can  live  without  an  audience, 
and  the  first  audience  of  our  childhood  is  our  family;  most  of 
us  to  the  end  of  our  days  are  swayed  by  the  desire  to  impress 
our  parents  and  brothers  and  sisters.  Few  "letters  home"  of 
successful  men  or  women  display  the  graces  of  modesty  and 
self-forgetfulness.  Only  souls  uplifted,  as  the  soul  of  Jesus  of 
N~azareth  was  uplifted,  can  say  of  all  the  world,  "Behold  my 
mother  and  my  brethren!"  A  large  factor  in  the  making  of 
Napoleon  was  the  desire  to  amaze,  astonish,  and  subdue  the 
minds  of  the  Bonaparte  family,  and  their  neighbours.  He 
promoted  his  brothers  ridiculously — for  they  wepe  the  most  or- 
dinary of  men.  The  hungry  Bonapartes  were  in  luck.  Surely 
all  Corsica  was  open-mouthed!  But  one  person  who  knew 
him  well  was  neither  amazed  nor  subdued.  This  was  his  mother. 
He  sent  her  money  to  spend  and  astonish  the  neighbours;  he 
exhorted  her  to  make  a  display,  to  live  as  became  the  mother 
of  so  marvellous,  so  world-shaking,  a  son.  But  the  good  lady, 
who  had  birched  the  Man  of  Destiny  at  the  age  of  sixteen  for 
grimacing  at  his  grandmother,  was  neither  dazzled  nor  deceived 
by  him  at  the  age  of  thirty-two.  All  France  might  worship 
him,  but  she  had  no  illusions.  She  put  by  the  money  he  sent 
her;  she  continued  her  customary  economies.  "When  it  is  all 
over,"  she  said,  "you  will  be  glad  of  my  savings." 

§4 

We  will  not  detail  the  steps  by  which  Napoleon  became 
Emperor.  His  coronation  was  the  most  extraordinary  revival 
of  stale  history  that  it  is  possible  to  imagine.  Caesar  was  no 
longer  the  model ;  Napoleon  was  playing  now  at  being  Charle- 
magne. He  was  crowned  emperor,  not  indeed  at  Rome,  but  in 
the  cathedral  of  Notre-Dame  in  Paris;  the  Pope  (Pius  VII) 
had  been  brought  from  Rome  to  perform  the  ceremony ;  and  at 


904 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


the  climax  Napoleon  I  seized  the  crown,  waved  the  Pope  aside, 
and  crowned  himself.  The  attentive  reader  of  this  Outline 
will  know  that  a  thousand  years  before  this  would  have  had 
considerable  significance;  in  1804  it  was  just  a  ridiculous  scene. 
In  1806  Napoleon  revived  another  venerable  antiquity,  and, 
following  still  the  footsteps  of  Charlemagne,  crowned  himself 
with  the  iron  crown  of  Lombardy  in  the  cathedral  of  Milan. 
All  this  mummery  was  to  have  a  wonderful  effect  upon  the 

imagination  of  western  Ger- 
many, which  was  to  remem- 
ber that  it,  too,  had  been  a 
part  of  the  empire  of  Charle- 
magne. 

The  four  daughter  repub- 
lics of  France  were  now  to 
become  kingdoms;  in  1800 
ho  set  up  brother  Louis  in 
Holland  and  brother  Joseph 
in  Naples.  But  the  story  of 
the  subordinate  kingdoms  he 
created  in  Europe,  helpful 
though  this  free  handling  of 
frontiers  was  towards  the 
subsequent  unification  of 
Italy  and  Germany,  is  too  complex  and  evanescent  for  this 
Outline. 

The  pact  between  the  new  Charlemagne  and  the  new  Leo 
did  not  hold  good  for  very  long.  In  1807  he  began  to  bully  the 
Pope,  and  in  1811  he  made  him  a  close  prisoner  at  Fontaine- 
bleau.  There  does  not  seem  to  have  been  much  reason  in  these 
proceedings.  They  estranged  all  Catholic  opinion,  as  his  coro- 
nation had  estranged  all  liberal  opinion.  He  ceased  to  stand 
either  for  the  old  or  the  new.  The  new  he  had  betrayed ;  the 
old  he  had  failed  to  win.  He  stood  at  last  for  nothing  but 
himself. 

There  seems  to  have  been  as  little  reason  in  the  foreign  policy 
that  now  plunged  Europe  into  a  fresh  cycle  of  wars.  Having 
quarrelled  with  Great  Britain  too  soon,  he  (1804)  assembled 
a  vast  army  at  Boulogne  for  the  conquest  of  England,  regard- 
less of  the  naval  situation.  He  even  struck  a  medal  and  erected 
a  column  at  Boulogne  to  commemorate  the  triumph  of  this 


IMapolcotx  a^  Emperor 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     905 

projected  invasion.  In  some  "Napoleonic"  fashion  the  British 
fleet  was  to  be  decoyed  away,  this  army  of  Boulogne  was  to  be 
smuggled  across  the  Channel  on  a  flotilla  of  rafts  and  boats, 
and  London  was  to  be  captured  before  the  fleet  returned.  At 
the  same  time  his  aggressions  in  south  Germany  forced  Austria 
and  Russia  steadily  into  a  coalition  with  Britain  against  him. 
In  1805  two  fatal  blows  were  struck  at  any  hope  he  may  have 
entertained  of  ultimate  victory,  by  the  British  Admirals  Calder 
and  Nelson.  In  July  the  former  inflicted  a  serious  reverse  upon 
the  French  fleet  in  the  Bay  of  Biscay;  in  October  the  latter 
destroyed  the  joint  fleets  of  France  and  Spain  at  the  battle  of 
Trafalgar.  Nelson  died  splendidly  upon  the  Victory,  victori- 
ous. Thereafter  Napoleon  was  left  with  Britain  in  pitiless 
opposition,  unattainable  and  unconquerable,  able  to  strike  here 
or  there  against  him  along  all  the  coasts  of  Europe. 

But  for  awhile  the  mortal  wound  of  Trafalgar  was  hidden 
from  the  French  mind  altogether.  They  heard  merely  that 
"storms  have  caused  us  to  lose  some  ships  of  the  line  after  an 
imprudent  fight."  After  Calder's  victory  he  had  snatched  his 
army  from  Boulogne,  rushed  it  across  half  Europe,  and  de- 
feated the  Austrian  and  Russian  armies  at  Ulm  and  Austerlitz. 
Under  these  inauspicious  circumstances  Prussia  came  into  the 
war  against  him,  and  was  utterly  defeated  and  broken  at  the 
battle  of  Jena  (1806).  Although  Austria  and  Prussia  were 
broken,  Russia  was  still  a  fighting  power,  and  the  next  year  was 
devoted  to  this  unnecessary  antagonist  of  the  French,  against 
whom  an  abler  and  saner  ruler  would  never  have  fought  at  all. 
We  cannot  trace  in  any  detail  the  difficulties  of  the  Polish  cam- 
paign against  Russia ;  Napoleon  was  roughly  handled  at  Pultusk 
— which  he  announced  in  Paris  as  a  brilliant  victory — and 
again  at  Eylau.  Then  the  Russians  were  defeated  at  Fried- 
land  (1807).  As  yet  he  had  never  touched  Russian  soil,  the 
Russians  were  still  as  unbeaten  as  the  British ;  but  now  came 
an  extraordinary  piece  of  good  fortune  for  Napoleon.  By  a 
mixture  of  boasting,  subtlety,  and  flattery  he  won  over  the  young 
and  ambitious  Tsar,  Alexander  I — he  was  just  thirty  years  old 
—to  an  alliance.  The  two  emperors  met  on  a  raft  in  the  middle 
of  the  Niemen  at  Tilsit,  and  there  came  to  an  understanding. 

This  meeting  was  an  occasion  for  sublime  foolishness  on  the 
part  of  both  the  principal  actors.  Alexander  had  imbibed  much 
liberalism  during  his  education  at  the  court  of  Catherine  II, 


906 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


J.F.Hi 


and  was  all  for  freedom,  education,  and  the  new  order  of  the 
world — subject  to  his  own  pre-eminence.  "He  would  gladly 
have  everyone  free/'  said  one  of  his  early  associates,  "provided 
that  everyone  was  prepared  to  do  freely  exactly  what  he 
wished."  And  he  declared  that  he  would  have  abolished  serf- 
dom if  it  had  cost  him  his  head — if  only  civilization  had  been 
more  advanced.  He  made  war  against  France,  he  said,  be- 
cause Napoleon  was  a  tyrant,  to  free  the  French  people.  After 

Friedland  he  saw  Napoleon 
in  a  different  light.  These 
two  men  met  eleven  days 
after  that,  rout;  Alexander 
no  doubt  in  the  state  of  ex- 
planatory exaltation  natural 
to  his  type  during  a  mood  of 
change. 

To  Napoleon  the  meeting 
must  have  been  extremely 
gratifying.  This  was  his 
first  meeting  with  an  em- 
peror upon  terms  of  equality. 
Like  all  men  of  limited 
vision,  this  man  was  a  snob 
to  the  bone,  his  continual 


TJrar  Alcxaaicr  I 


solicitude  for  his  titles  shows  as  much,  and  here  was  a  real 
emperor,  a  born  emperor,  taking  his  three-year-old  dignities  as 
equivalent  to  the  authentic  imperialism  of  Moscow.  Two 
imaginations  soared  together  upon  the  raft  at  Tilsit.  "What 
is  Europe?"  said  Alexander.  "We  are  Europe."  They  dis- 
cussed the  affairs  of  Prussia  and  Austria  in  that  spirit,  they 
divided  Turkey  in  anticipation,  they  arranged  for  the  conquest 
of  India,  and  indeed  of  most  of  Asia,  and  that  Russia  should 
take  Finland  from  the  Swedes;  and  they  disregarded  the  dis- 
agreeable fact  that  the  greater  part  of  the  world's  surface  is  sea, 
and  that  on  the  seas  the  British  fleets  sailed  now  unchallenged. 
Close  at  hand  was  Poland,  ready  to  rise  up  and  become  the  pas- 
sionate ally  of  France  had  Napoleon  but  willed  it  so.  But  he  was 
blind  to  Poland.  It  was  a  day  of  visions  without  vision. 
Napoleon  even  then,  it  seems,  concealed  the  daring  thought  that 
he  might  one  day  marry  a  Russian  princess,  a  real  princess.  But 
that,  he  was  to  learn  in  1810,  was  going  a  little  too  far. 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     907 

After  Tilsit  there  was  a  perceptible  deterioration  in  Napo- 
leon's quality ;  he  became  rasher,  less  patient  of  obstacles,  more 
and  more  the  fated  master  of  the  world,  more  and  more  intoler- 
able to  everyone  he  encountered. 

In  1808  he  committed  a  very  serious  blunder.  Spain  was 
his  abject  ally,  completely  under  his  control,  but  he  saw  fit 
to  depose  its  Bourbon  king  in  order  to  promote  his  brother 
Joseph  from  the  crown  of  the  two  Sicilies.  Portugal  he  had 
already  conquered,  and  the  two  kingdoms  of  Spain  and  Portugal 
were  to  be  united.  Thereupon  the  Spanish  arose  in  a  state  of 
patriotic  fury,  surrounded  a  French  army  at  Baylen,  and  com- 
pelled it  to  surrender.  It  was  an  astonishing  break  in  the 
French  career  of  victory. 

The  British  were  not  slow  to  seize  the  foothold  this  insur- 
rection gave  them.  A  British  army  under  Sir  Arthur  Welles- 
ley  (afterwards  the  Duke  of  Wellington)  landed  in  Portugal, 
defeated  the  French  at  Vimiero,  and  compelled  them  to  retire 
into  Spain.  The  news  of  these  reverses  caused  a  very  great  ex- 
citement in  Germany  and  Austria,  and  the  Tsar  assumed  a  more 
arrogant  attitude  towards  his  ally. 

There  was  another  meeting  of  these  two  potentates  at  Erfurt, 
in  which  the  Tsar  was  manifestly  less  amenable  to  the  dazzling 
tactics  of  Napoleon  than  he  had  been.  Followed  four  years 
of  unstable  "ascendancy"  for  France,  while  the  outlines  on  the 
map  of  Europe  waved  about  like  garments  on  a  clothesline  on 
a  windy  day.  Napoleon's  personal  empire  grew  by  frank  an- 
nexations to  include  Holland,  much  of  western  Germany,  much 
of  Italy,  and  much  of  the  eastern  Adriatic  coast.  But  one  by 
one  the  French  colonies  were  falling  to  the  British,  and  the 
British  armies  in  the  Spanish  peninsula,  with  the  Spanish 
auxiliaries,  slowly  pressed  the  French  northward.  All  Europe 
was  getting  very  weary  of  Napoleon  and  very  indignant  with 
him ;  his  antagonists  now  were  no  longer  merely  monarchs  and 
ministers,  but  whole  peoples  also.  The  Prussians,  after  the  dis- 
aster of  Jena  in  1806,  had  set  to  work  to  put  their  house  in 
order.  Under  the  leadership  of  Freiherr  von  Stein  they  had 
swept  aside  their  feudalism,  abolished  privilege  and  serfdom, 
organized  popular  education  and  popular  patriotism,  accom- 
plished, in  fact,  without  any  internal  struggle  nearly  everything 
that  France  had  achieved  in  1789.  By  1810  a  new  Prussia 
existed,  the  nucleus  of  a  new  Germany.  And  now  Alexander, 


908 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


inspired  it  would  seem  by  dreams  of  world  ascendancy  even 
crazier  than  his  rival's,  was  posing  again  as  the  friend  of  lib- 
erty. In  1810  fresh  friction  was  created  by  Alexander's  ob- 
jection to  Napoleon's  matrimonial  ambitions.  For  he  was  now 
divorcing  his  old  helper  Josephine,  because  she  was  childless, 
in  order  to  secure  the  "continuity-'  of  his  "dynasty."  Napo- 


EMPIRE  of  NAPOLEON  dbaot 


leon,  thwarted  of  a  Russian  princess,  snubbed  indeed  by  Alex- 
ander, turned  to  Austria,  and  married  the  arch-duchoss  Marie 
Louise.  The  Austrian  statesmen  read  him  aright.  They  were 
very  ready  to  throw  him  their  princess.  By  that  marriage 
Napoleon  was  captured  for  the  dynastic  system ;  he  might  have 
been  the  maker  of  a  new  world,  he  preferred  to  be  the  son-in- 
law  of  the  old. 

In  the  next  two  years  this  adventurer's  affairs  crumbled 
apace.  Nobody  believed  in  his  pretensions  any  more.  He  was 
no  longer  the  leader  and  complement  of  the  revolution;  no 
longer  the  embodied  spirit  of  a  world  reborn ;  he  was  just  a  new 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE 

and  nastier  sort  of  autocrat.  He  had  estranged  all  free-spirited 
men,  and  lie  had  antagonized  the  church.  Kings  and  Jacohins 
were  at  one,  'when  it  came  to  the  question  of  his  overthrow. 
Only  base  and  self-seeking  people  supported  him,  because  he 
seemed  to  have  the  secret  of  success.  Britain  was  now  his 
inveterate  enemy,  Spain  was  blazing  with  a  spirit  that  surely  a 
Corsican  should  have  understood ;  it  needed  only  a  breach  with 
Alexander  I  to  set  this  empire  of  bluff  and  stage  scenery  sway- 
ing toward  its  downfall.  The  quarrel  came.  Alexander's  feel- 
ings for  Napoleon  had  always  been  of  a  very  mixed  sort;  he 
envied  Napoleon  as  a  rival,  and  despised  him  as  an  underbred 
upstart.  Moreover,  there  was  a  kind  of  vague  and  sentimental 
greatness  about  Alexander ;  he  was  given  to  mystical  religiosity, 
he  had  the  conception  of  a  mission  for  Russia  and  himself  to 
bring  peace  to  Europe  and  the  world — by  destroying  Napoleon. 
In  that  respect  he  had  an  imaginative  greatness  Napoleon 
lacked.  But  bringing  peace  to  Europe  seemed  to  him  quite 
compatible  with  the  annexation  of  Finland,  of  most  of  Poland, 
and  of  great  portions  of  the  Turkish  empire.  This  man's  mind 
moved  in  a  luminous  fog.  And  particularly  he  wanted  to  re- 
sume trading  with  Britain,  against  which  Napoleon  had  set  his 
face.  For  all  the  trade  of  Germany  had  been  dislocated  and 
the  mercantile  classes  embittered  by  the  Napoleonic  "Con- 
tinental System/'  which  was  to  ruin  Britain  by  excluding  Brit- 
ish goods  from  every  country  in  Europe.  Russia  had  suffered 
more  even  than  Germany. 

The  breach  came  in  1811,  when  Alexander  withdrew  from 
the  "Continental  System."  In  1812  a  great  mass  of  armies, 
amounting  altogether  to  600,000  men,  began  to  move  towards 
Russia  under  the  supreme  command  of  the  new  emperor.  About 
half  this  force  was  French ;  the  rest  was  drawn  from  the  French 
allies  and  subject  peoples.  It  was  a  conglomerate  army  like  the 
army  of  Darius  or  the  army  of  Kavadh.  The  Spanish  war  was 
still  going  on;  Napoleon  made  no  attempt  to  end  it.  Alto- 
gether, it  drained  away  a  quarter  of  a  million  men  from  France. 
He  fought  his  way  across  Poland  and  Russia  to  Moscow  beforo 
the  winter — for  the  most  part  the  Russian  armies  declined  bat- 
tle— and  even  before  the  winter  closed  in  upon  him  his  posi- 
tion became  manifestly  dangerous.  He  took  Moscow,  expecting 
that  this  would  oblige  Alexander  to  make  peace.  Alexander 
would  not  make  peace,  and  Napoleon  found  himself  in  much 


010  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  same  position  as  Darius  had  been  in  2,300  years  before  in 
South  Russia.  The  Russians,  still  unconquered  in  a  decisive 
battle,  raided  his  communications,  wasted  his  army — disease 
helped  them;  even  before  Napoleon  reached  Moscow  150,000 
men  had  been  lost.  But  he  lacked  the  wisdom  of  Darius,  and 
would  not  retreat.  The  winter  remained  mild  for  an  unusually 
long  time — he  could  have  escaped ;  but  instead  he  remained  in 
Moscow,  making  impossible  plans,  at  a  loss.  He  had  been 
marvellously  lucky  in  all  his  previous  flounderings;  he  had 
escaped  undeservedly  from  Egypt,  he  had  been  saved  from  de- 
struction in  Britain  by  the  British  naval  victories;  but  now 
ho  was  in  the  net  again,  and  this  time  he  was  not  to  escape. 
Perhaps  he  would  have  wintered  in  Moscow,  but  the  Rus- 
sians smoked  him  out;  they  set  fire  to  and  burnt  most  of  the 
city. 

It  was  late  in  October,  too  late  altogether,  before  he  decided 
to  return.  He  made  an  ineffectual  attempt  to  break  through 
to  a  fresh  line  of  retreat  to  the  south-west,  and  then  turned 
the  faces  of  the  survivors  of  his  Grand  Army  towards  the  coun- 
try they  had  devastated  in  their  advance.  Immense  distances 
separated  them  from  any  friendly  territory.  The  winter  was 
in  no  hurry.  For  a  week  the  Grand  Army  struggled  through 
mud ;  then  came  sharp  frosts,  and  then  the  first  flakes  of  snow, 
and  then  snow  and  snow.  .  .  . 

Slowly  discipline  dissolved.  The  hungry  army  spread  itself 
out  in  search  of  supplies  until  it  broke  up  into  mere  bands  of 
marauders.  The  peasants,  if  only  in  self-defence,  rose  against 
them,  waylaid  them,  and  murdered  them;  a  cloud  of  light 
cavalry — Scythians  still — hunted  them  down.  That  retreat  is 
one  of  the  great  tragedies  of  history. 

.  At  last  Napoleon  and  his  staff  and  a  handful  of  guards  and 
attendants  reappeared  in  Germany,  bringing  no  army  with  him, 
followed  only  by  straggling  and  demoralized  bands.  The  Grand 
Army,  retreating  under  Murat,  reached  Konigsberg  in  a  dis- 
ciplined state,  but  only  about  a  thousand  strong  out  of  six  hun- 
dred thousand.  From  Konigsberg  Murat  fell  back  to  Posen. 
The  Prussian  contingent  had  surrendered  to  the  Russians;  tho 
Austrians  had  gone  homeward  to  the  south.  Everywhere  scat- 
tered fugitives,  ragged,  lean,  and  frost-bitten,  spread  the  news 
of  the  disaster. 

Napoleon's  magic  was  nearly  exhausted.    He  did  not  dare  to 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     911 

stay  with  his  troops  in  Germany;  he  fled  post  haste  to  Paris. 
He  began  to  order  new  levies  and  gather  fresh  armies  amidst 
the  wreckage  of  his  world  empire.  Austria  turned  against  him 
(1813)  ;  all  Europe  was  eager  to  rise  against  this  defaulting 
trustee  of  freedom,  this  mere  usurper.  He  had  betrayed  the 
new  order;  the  old  order  he  had  saved  and  revived  now  de- 
stroyed him.  Prussia  rose,  .and  the  German  "War  of  Libera- 
tion" began.  Sweden  joined  his  enemies.  Later  Holland  re- 
volted. Murat  had  rallied  about  14,000  Frenchmen  round  his 
disciplined  nucleus  in  Posen,  and  this  force  retreated  through 
Germany,  as  a  man  might  retreat  who  had  ventured  into  a 
cageful  of  drugged  lions  and  found  that  the  effects  of  the  drug 
were  evaporating.  Napoleon,  with  fresh  forces,  took  up  the 
chief  command  in  the  spring,  won  a  great  battle  at  Dresden, 
and  then  for  a  time  he  seems  to  have  gone  to  pieces  intellectually 
and  morally.  He  became  insanely  irritable,  with  moods  of  in- 
action. He  did  little  or  nothing  to  follow  up  the  Battle  of 
Dresden.  In  September  the  "Battle  of  the  Nations"  was  fought 
round  and  about  Leipzig,  after  which  the  Saxons,  who  had 
hitherto  followed  his  star,  went  over  to  the  allies.  The  end  of 
the  year  saw  the  French  beaten  back  into  France. 

1814  was  the  closing  campaign.  France  was  invaded  from 
the  east  and  the  south ;  Swedes,  Germans,  Austrians,  Russians', 
crossed  the  Rhine;  British  and  Spanish  came  through  the 
Pyrenees.  Once  more  Napoleon  fought  brilliantly,  but  now 
he  fought  ineffectually.  The  eastern  armies  did  not  so  much 
defeat  him  as  push  past  him,  and  Paris  capitulated  in  March. 
A  little  later  at  Fontainebleau  the  emperor  abdicated. 

In  Provence,  on  his  way  out  of  the  country,  his  life  was  en- 
dangered by  a  royalist  mob. 

'§5 

This  was  the  natural  and  proper  end  of  Napoleon's  career. 
So  this  raid  of  an  intolerable  egotist  across  the  disordered  be- 
ginnings of  a  new  time  should  have  closed.  At  last  he  was 
suppressed.  And  had  there  been  any  real  wisdom  in  the  conduct 
of  human  affairs,  we  should  now  have  to  tell  of  the  concentra- 
tion of  human  science  and  will  upon  the  task  his  treachery 
and  vanity  had  interrupted,  the  task  of  building  up  a  world 
system  of  justice  and  free  effort  in  the  place  of  the  bankrupt 


912 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     913 

ancient  order.  But  we  Lave  to  tell  of  nothing  of  the  sort. 
Science  and  wisdom  were  conspicuously  absent  from  the  great 
council  of  the  Allies.  Came  the  vague  humanitarianism  and 
dreamy  vanity  of  the  Tsar  Alexander,  came  the  shaken  Habs- 
burgs  of  Austria,  the  resentful  Hohenzollerns  of  Prussia,  the 
aristocratic  traditions  of  Britain,  still  badly  frightened  by  the 
revolution  and  its  conscience  all  awry  with  stolen  commons  and 
sweated  factory  children.  N"o  peoples  came  to  the  Congress, 
but  only  monarchs  and  foreign  ministers;  and  though  you  bray 
a  foreign  office  in  the  bloodiest  of  war  mortars,  yet  will  its 
diplomatic  habits  not  depart  from  it.  The  Congress  had  hardly 
assembled  before  the  diplomatists  set  to  work  making  secret 
bargains  and  treaties  behind  each  other's  backs.  Nothing  could 
exceed  the  pompous  triviality  of  the  Congress  which  gathered 
at  Vienna  after  a  magnificent  ceremonial  visit  of  the  allied 
sovereigns  to  London.  The  social  side  of  the  Congress  was  very 
strong,  pretty  ladies  abounded,  there  was  a  galaxy  of  stars 
and  uniforms,  endless  dinners  and  balls,  a  mighty  flow  of  bright 
anecdotes  and  sparkling  wit.  Whether  the  two  million  dead 
men  upon  the  battlefields  laughed  at  the  jokes,  admired  the 
assemblies,  and  marvelled  at  the  diplomatists  is  beyond  our 
knowledge.  It  is  to  be  hoped  their  poor  wraiths  got  something 
out  of  the  display.  The  brightest  spirit  of  the  gathering  was  a 
certain  Talleyrand,  one  of  Napoleon's  princes,  a  very  brilliant 
man  indeed,  who  had  been  a  pre-revolutionary  cleric,  who  had 
proposed  the  revolutionary  confiscation  of  the  church  estates, 
and  who  was  now  for  bringing  back  the  Bourbons. 

The  allies,  after  the  fashion  of  Peace  Congresses,  frittered 
away  precious  time  in  more  and  more  rapacious  disputes ;  the 
Bourbons  returned  to  France.  Back  came  all  the  remainder 
of  the  emigres  with  them,  eager  for  restitution  and  revenge. 
One  great  egotism  had  been  swept  aside — only  to  reveal  a  crowd 
of  meaner  egotists.  The  new  king  was  the  brother  of  Louis 
XVI ;  he  had  taken  the  title  of  Louis  XVIII  very  eagerly  so 
soon  as  he  learnt  that  his  little  nephew  (Louis  XVII)  was  dead 
in  the  Temple.  He  was  gouty  and  clumsy,  not  perhaps  ill- 
disposed,  but  the  symbol  of  the  ancient  system;  all  that  was 
rew  in  France  felt  the  heavy  threat  of  reaction  that  came  with 
him.  This  was  no  liberation,  only  a  new  tyranny,  a  heavy  and 
inglorious  tyranny  instead  of  an  active  and  splendid  one.  Was 
there  no  hope  for  France  but  this  ?  The  Bourbons  showed  par- 


914  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ticular  malice  against  the  veterans  of  the  Grand  Army,  and 
France  was  now  full  of  returned  prisoners  of  war,  who  found 
themselves  under  a  cloud.  Napoleon  had  been  packed  off  to  a 
little  consolation  empire  of  his  own,  upon  the  island  of  Elba. 
He  was  still  to  be  called  Emperor  and  keep  a  certain  state. 
The  chivalry  or  whim  of  Alexander  had  insisted  upon  this 
treatment  of  his  fallen  rival.  The  Habsburgs,  who  had  toadied 
to  his  success,  had  taken  away  his  Habsburg  empress — she  went 
willingly  enough — to  Vienna,  and  he  never  saw  her  again. 

After  eleven  months  at  Elba  Napoleon  judged  that  France 
had  had  enough  of  the  Bourbons;  he  contrived  to  evade  the 
British  ships  that  watched  his  island,  and  reappeared  at  Cannes 
in  France  for  his  last  gamble  against  fate.  His  progress  to 
Paris  was  a  triumphal  procession;  he  walked  on  white  Bour- 
bon cockades.  For  a  hundred  days,  "the  Hundred  Days,"  he 
was  master  of  France  again. 

His  return  created  a  perplexing  position  for  any  honest 
Frenchman.  On  the  one  hand  there  was  this  adventurer  who 
had  betrayed  the  republic;  on  the  other  the  dull  weight  of  old 
kingship  restored.  The  allies  would  not  hear  of  any  further 
experiments  in  republicanism;  it  was  the  Bourbons  or  Napo- 
leon. Is  it  any  wonder  that  on  the  whole  France  was  with 
Napoleon  ?  And  he  came  back  professing  to  be  a  changed  man  ; 
there  was  to  be  no  more  despotism ;  he  would  respect  the  con- 
stitutional regime.  .  .  . 

He  gathered  an  army,  he  made  some  attempts  at  peace  with 
the  allies;  when  he  found  these  efforts  ineffectual,  he  struck 
swiftly  at  the  British,  Dutch,  and  Prussians  in  Belgium,  hoping 
to  defeat  them  before  the  Austrians  and  Russians  could  come 
up.  He  did  very  nearly  manage  this.  He  beat  the  Prussians 
at  Ligny,  but  not  sufficiently;  and  then  he  was  hopelessly  de- 
feated by  the  tenacity  of  the  British  under  Wellington  at 
"Waterloo  (1815),  the  Prussians,  under  Bliicher,  coming  in  on 
his  right  flank  as  the  day  wore  on.  Waterloo  ended  in  a  rout ; 
it  left  Napoleon  without  support  and  without  hope.  France 
fell  away  from  him  again.  Everyone  who  had  joined  him  was 
eager  now  to  attack  him,  and  so  efface  that  error.  A  pro- 
visional government  in  Paris  ordered  him  to  leave  the  country ; 
was  for  giving  him  twenty-four  hours  to  do  it  in. 

He  tried  to  get  to  America,  but  Roohefort,  which  he  reached, 
was  watched  by  British  cruisers.  France,  now  disillusioned 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     915 

and  uncomfortably  royalist  again,  was  hot  in  pursuit  of  him. 
He  went  aboard  a  British  frigate,  the  Belleroplion,  asking  to 
be  received  as  a  refugee,  but  being  treated  as  a  prisoner.  He 
was  taken  to  Plymouth,  and  from  Plymouth  straight  to  the 
lonely  tropical  island  of  St.  Helena. 

There  he  remained  until  his  death  from  cancer  in  1821, 
devoting  himself  chiefly  to  the  preparation  of  his  memoirs, 
which  were  designed  to  exhibit  the  chief  events  of  his  life  in  a 
misleading  and  attractive  light  and  to  minimise  his  worst  blun- 
ders. One  or  two  of  the  men  with  him  recorded  his  conversa- 
tions and  set  down  their  impressions  of  him. 

These  works  had  a  great  vogue  in  France  and  Europe.  The 
Holy  Alliance  of  the  monarchs  of  Russia,  Austria,  and  Prussia 
(to  which  other  monarchs  were  invited  to  adhere)  laboured 
under  the  delusion  that  in  defeating  !N"apoleon  they  had  defeated 
the  Revolution,  turned  back  the  clock  of  fate,  and  restored 
Grand  Monarchy — on  a  sanctified  basis  for  evermore.  The- 
cardinal  document  of  the  scheme  of  the  Holy  Alliance  is  said 
to  have  been  drawn  up  under  the  inspiration  of  the  Baroness 
von  Kriidener,  who  seems  to  have  been  a  sort  of  spiritual  direc- 
tor to  the  Russian  emperor.  It  opened,  "In  the  name  of  the 
Most  Holy  and  Indivisible  Trinity,"  and  it  bound  the  partici- 
pating monarchs  "regarding  themselves  towards  their  subjects 
and  armies  as  fathers  of  families,"  and  "considering  each  other 
as  fellow-countrymen,"  to  sustain  each  other,  protect  true- 
religion,  and  urge  their  subjects  to  strengthen  and  exercise 
themselves  in  Christian  duties.  Christ,  it  was  declared,  was 
the  real  king  of  all  Christian  peoples,  a  very  Merovingian  king, 
one  may  remark,  with  these  reigning  sovereigns  as  his  mayors 
of  the  palace.  The  British  king  had  no  power  to  sign  this  docu- 
ment, the  pope  and  the  sultan  were  not  asked ;  the  rest  of  the 
European  monarchs,  including  the  king  of  France,  adhered. 
But  the  king  of  Poland  did  not  sign  because  there  was  no  king 
in  Poland;  Alexander,  in  a  mood  of  pious  abstraction,  was 
sitting  on  the  greater  part  of  Poland.  The  Holy  Alliance  never 
became  an  actual  legal  alliance  of  states ;  it  gave  place  to  a  real 
league  of  nations,  the  Concert  of  Europe,  which  France  joined 
in  1818,  and  from  which  Britain  withdrew  in  1822. 

There  followed  a  period  of  peace  and  dull  oppression  in 
Europe  over  which  Alexander  brooded  in  attitudes  of  ortho- 
doxy, piety,  and  unquenchable  self-satisfaction.  Many  people 


910  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

in  those  hopeless  days  were  disposed  to  regard  even  ]$Tapoleon 
with  charity,  and  to  accept  his  claim  that  in  some  inexplicable 
way  he  had,  in  asserting  himself,  been  asserting  the  revolution 
and  Trance.  A  cult  of  him  as  of  something  mystically  heroic 
grew  up  after  his  death. 


For  nearly  forty  years  the  idea  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  the 
Concert  of  Europe  which  arose  out  of  it,  and  the  series  of 
congresses  and  conferences  that  succeeded  the  concert,  kept  an 
insecure  peace  in  war-exhausted  Europe.  Two  main  things 
prevented  that  period  from  being  a  complete  social  and  inter- 
national peace,  and  prepared  the  way  for  the  cycle  of  wars 
between  1854  and  1871.  The  first  of  these  was  the  tendency 
of  the  royal  courts  concerned,  towards  the  restoration  of  unfair 
privilege  and  interference  with  freedom  of  thought  and  writing 
and  teaching.  The  second  was  the  impossible  system  of 
boundaries  drawn  by  the  diplomatists  of  Vienna. 

The  obstinate  disposition  of  monarchy  to  march  back  towards 
past  conditions  was  first  and  most  particularly  manifest  in 
Spain.  Here  even  the  Inquisition  was  restored.  Across  the 
Atlantic  the  Spanish  colonies  had  followed  the  example  of  the 
United  States  and  revolted  against  the  European  Great  Power 
system,  when  Napoleon  set  up  his  brother  Joseph  upon  the 
Spanish  throne  in  1810.  The  Washington  of  South  America 
was  General  Bolivar.  Spain  was  unable  to  suppress  this  revolt, 
it  dragged  on  much  as  the  United  States  War  of  Independence 
had  dragged  on,  and  at  last  the  suggestion  was  made  by  Austria 
in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  that  the 
European  monarchs  should  assist  Spain  in  this  struggle.  This 
was  opposed  by  Britain  in  Europe,  but  it  was  the  prompt  action 
of  President  Monroe  of  the  United  States  in  1823  which  con- 
clusively warned  off  this  projected  monarchist  restoration.  He 
announced  that  the  United  States  would  regard  any  extension 
of  the  European  system  in  the  Western  Hemisphere  as  a  hostile 
act.  "Thus  arose  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  which  has  kept  the  Great 
Power  system  out  of  America  for  nearly  a  hundred  years,  and 
permitted  the  new  states  of  Spanish  America  to  work  out  their 
destinies  along  their  own  lines.  But  if  Spanish  monarchism 
lost  its  colonies,  it  could  at  least,  under  the  protection  of  the 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE      917 

Concert  of  Europe,  do  what  it  chose  in  Europe.  A  popular  in- 
surrection in  Spain  was  crushed  by  a  French  army  in  1823, 
with  a  mandate  from  a  European  congress,  and  simultaneously 
Austria  suppressed  a  revolution  in  Naples.  The  moving  spirit 
in  this  conspiracy  of  governments  against  peoples  was  the  Aus- 
trian statesman,  Metternich. 

In  1824  Louis  XVIII  died,  and  was  succeeded  by  that  Count 
d'Artois  whom  we  have  seen  hovering  as  an  emigre  on  the 
French  frontiers  in  1789;  he  took  the  title  of  Charles  X. 
Charles  set  himself  to  destroy  the  liberty  of  the  press  and  uni- 
versities, and  to  restore  absolute  government;  the  sum  of  a 
billion  francs  was  voted  to  compensate  the  nobles  for  the  chateau 
burnings  and  sequestrations  of  1789.  In  1830  Paris  rose 
against  this  embodiment  of  the  ancient  regime,  and  replaced 
him  by  the  son  of  that  sinister  Philip,  Duke  of  Orleans,  whose 
execution  was  one  of  the  brightest  achievements  of  the  Terror. 
The  other  continental  monarchies,  in  face  of  the  open  approval 
of  the  revolution  by  Great  Britain  and  a  strong  liberal  ferment 
in  Germany  and  Austria,  did  not  interfere  in  this  affair.  After 
all,  France  was  still  a  monarchy.  This  young  man,  Louia 
Philippe  (1830-48),  remained  the  constitutional  king  of  Franca 
for  eighteen  years.  He  went  down  in  1848,  a  very  eventful 
year  for  Europe,  of  which  we  shall  tell  in  the  next  chapter. 

Such  were  the  uneasy  swayings  of  the  peace  of  the  Congress 
of  Vienna,  which  were  provolved  by  the  reactionary  proceedings 
to  which,  sooner  or  later,  all  monarchist  courts  seem  by  their 
very  nature  to  gravitate.  The  stresses  that  arose  from  the  un- 
scientific map-making  of  the  diplomatists  gathered  force  more 
deliberately,  but  they  were  even  more  dangerous  to  the  peace  of 
mankind.  It  is  extraordinarily  inconvenient  to  administer  to- 
gether the  affairs  of  peoples  speaking  different  languages  and 
so  reading  different  literatures  and  having  different  general 
ideas,  especially  if  those  differences  are  exacerbated  by  religious 
disputes.  Only  some  strong  mutual  interest,  such  as  the  com- 
mon defensive  needs  of  the  Swiss  mountaineers,  can  justify  a 
close  linking  of  peoples  of  dissimilar  languages  and  faiths ;  and 
even  in  Switzerland  there  is  the  utmost  local  autonomy.  Ulti- 
mately, when  the  Great  Power  tradition  is  certainly  dead  and 
buried,  those  Swiss  populations  may  gravitate  towards  their 
natural  affinities  in  Germany,  France,  and  Italy.  When,  as  in 
Macedonia,  populations  are  mixed  in  a  patchwork  of  villages 


918 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


and  districts,  the  cantonal  system  is  imperatively  needed.  But 
if  the  reader  will  look  at  the  map  of  Europe  as  the  Congress 
of  Vienna  drew  it,  he  will  see  that  this  gathering  seems  almost 
as  if  it  had  planned  the  maximum  of  local  exasperation.  It 
destroyed  the  Dutch  Republic,  quite  needlessly,  it  lumped  to- 
gether the  Protestant  Dutch  with  the  French-speaking  Catholics 


BXJROPE  after  the  (Sm&ress'  at 


Jcrbia, 
O  T  TOTvCATSI 


Boundary  of  tta  German. 
Confodera±Loix 


of  the  old  Spanish  (Austrian)  Netherlands,  and  set  up  a  king- 
dom of  the  Netherlands.  It  handed  over  not  merely  the  old 
republic  of  Venice,  but  all  of  North  Italy  as  far  as  Milan  to 
the  German-speaking  Austrians.  French-speaking  Savoy  it 
combined  with  pieces  of  Italy  to  restore  the  kingdom  of  Sar- 
dinia. Austria  and  Hungary,  already  a  sufficiently  explosive 
mixture  of  discordant  nationalities,  Germans,  Hungarians, 
Czech o-Slovaks,  Jugo-Slavs,  Rumanians,  and  now  Italians,  was 
made  still  more  impossible  by  confirming  Austria's  Polish 
acquisitions  of  1772  and  1795.  The  Polish  people,  being  catho- 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     919 

lie  and  republican-spirited,  were  chiefly  given  over  to  the  less 
civilized  rule  of  the  Greek-orthodox  Tsar,  but  important  dis- 
tricts went  to  Protestant  Prussia.  The  Tsar  was  also  confirmed 
in  his  acquisition  of  the  entirely  alien  Finns.  The  very  dis- 
similar Norwegian  and  Swedish  peoples  were  bound  together 
under  one  king.  Germany,  the  reader  will  see,  was  left  in  a 
particularly  dangerous  state  of  muddle.  Prussia  and  Austria 
were  both  partly  in  and  partly  out  of  a  German  confederation, 
which  included  a  multitude  of  minor  states.  The  King  of  Den- 
mark came  into  the  German  confederation  by  virtue  of  certain 
German-speaking  possessions  in  Holstein.  Luxembourg  was  in- 
cluded in  the  German  Confederation,  though  its  ruler  was  also 
king  of  the  Netherlands,  and  though  many  of  its  peoples  talked 
French.  Here  was  a  crazy  tangle,  an  outrage  on  the  common 
sense  of  mankind,  a  preposterous  disregard  of  the  fact  that  the 
people  who  talk  German  and  base  their  ideas  on  German  litera- 
ture, the  people  who  talk  Italian  and  base  their  ideas  on  Italian 
literature,  and  the  people  who  talk  Polish  and  base  their  ideas 
on  Polish  literature,  will  all  be  far  better  off  and  most  helpful 
and  least  obnoxious  to  the  rest  of  mankind  if  they  conduct  their 
own  affairs  in  their  own  idiom  within  the  ring-fence  of  their  own 
speech.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  one  of  the  most  popular  songs  in 
Germany  during  this  period  declared  that  wherever  the  Ger- 
man tongue  was  spoken,  there  was  the  German  Fatherland  ? 

Even  to-day  men  are  still  reluctant  to  recognize  that  areas 
of  government  are  not  matters  for  the  bargaining  and  interplay 
of  tsars  and  kings  and  foreign  offices.  There  is  a  natural  and 
necessary  political  map  of  the  world  which  transcends  these 
things.  There  is  a  best  way  possible  of  dividing  any  part  of 
the  world  into  administrative  areas,  and  a  best  possible  kind  of 
government  for  every  area,  having  regard  to  the  speech  and 
race  of  its  inhabitants,  and  it  is  the  common  concern  of  all  men 
of  intelligence  to  secure  those  divisions  and  establish  those 
forms  of  government  quite  irrespective  of  diplomacies  and  flags, 
"claims"  and  melodramatic  "loyalties'7  and  the  existing  po- 
litical map  of  the  world.  The  natural  political  map  of  the 
world  insists  upon  itself.  It  heaves  and  frets  beneath 
the  artificial  political  map  like  some  misfitted  giant.  In 
1830  French-speakng  Belgium,  stirred  up  by  the  current 
revolution  in  France,  revolted  against  its  Dutch  association  in 
the  kingdom  of  the  Netherlands.  The  Powers,  terrified  at  the 


920  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

possibility  of  a  republic  and  of  annexation  to  France,  hurried 
in  to  pacify  this  situation,  and  gave  the  Belgians  a  monarch 
from  that  rich  breeding-ground  of  monarchs,  Germany,  Leopold 
I  of  Saxe-Coburg  Gotha.  There  were  also  ineffectual  revolts 
in  Italy  and  Germany  in  1830,  and  a  much  more  serious  one 
in  Russian  Poland.  A  republican  government  held  out  in  War- 
saw for  a  year  against  Nicholas  I  (who  succeeded  Alexander 
in  1825),  and  was  then  stamped  out  of  existence  with  great 
violence  and  cruelty.  The  Polish  language  was  banned,  and 
the  Greek  Orthodox  church  was  substituted  for  the  Roman 
Catholic  as  the  State  religion.  .  .  . 

An  outbreak  of  the  natural  political  map  of  the  world,  which 
occurred  in  1821,  ultimately  secured  the  support  of  England, 
France,  and  Riissia.  This  was  the  insurrection  of  the  Greeks 
against  the  Turks.  For  six  years  they  fought  a  desperate  war, 
while  the  governments  of  Europe  looked  on.  Liberal  opinion 
protested  against  this  inactivity;  volunteers  from  every  Euro- 
pean country  joined  the  insurgents,  and  at  last  Britain,  France, 
and  Russia  took  joint  action.  The  Turkish  fleet  was  destroyed 
by  the  French  and  English  at  the  Battle  of  Navarino  (1827), 
and  the  Tsar  invaded  Turkey.  By  the  treaty  of  Adrianople 
(1829)  Greece  was  declared  free,  but  she  was  not  permitted 
to  resume  her  ancient  republican  traditions.  There  is  a  sort 
of  historical  indecency  in  a  Greek  monarchy.  But  a  Greek 
republic  would  have  been  dangerous  to  all  monarchy  in  a  Europe 
that  fretted  under  the  ideas  of  the  Holy  Alliance.  A  German 
king  was  found  for  Greece,  one  Prince  Otto  of  Bavaria,  slightly 
demented,  but  quite  royal — he  gave  way  to  delusions  about  his 
divine  right,  and  was  ejected  in  1862— and  Christian  governors 
were  set  up  in  the  Danubian  provinces  (which  are  now  Ru- 
mania) and  Serbia  (a  part  of  the  Jugo-Slav  region). 
This  was  a  partial  concession  to  the  natural  political  map,  but 
much  blood  had  still  to  run  before  the  Turk  was  altogether 
expelled  from  these  lands. 

A  little  later  the  natural  political  map  was  to  assert  itself  in 
Italy  and  Germany. 


CAREER  OF  NAPOLEON  BONAPARTE     921 


XXXVIII 

THE  EEALITIES  AND  IMAGINATIONS  OF  THE 
NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

§  1.  The  Mechanical  Revolution.  §  2.  Relation  of  the  Me- 
chanical to  the  Industrial  Revolution.  §  3.  The  Fermenta- 
tion of  Ideas,  1848.  §  4.  The  Development  of  the  Idea  of 
Socialism.  §  5.  Shortcomings  of  Socialism  as  a  Scheme  of 
Human  Society.  §  6.  How  Darwinism  Affected  Religious 
and  Political  Ideas.  §  7.  The  Idea  of  Nationalism.  §  8. 
Europe  Between  1848  and  1878.  §  9.  The  (Second) 
Scramble  for  Overseas  Empires.  §  10.  The  Indian  Prece- 
dent in  Asia.  §  11.  The  History  of  Japan.  §  12.  Close  of 
the  Period  of  Overseas  Expansion.  §  13.  The  British  Em- 
pire  in  1914. 


THE  career  and  personality  of  Napoleon  I  bulks  dispro- 
portionately in  the  nineteenth  century  histories.  He 
was  of  little  significance  to  the  broad  onward  movement 
of  human  affairs ;  he  was  an  interruption,  a  reminder  of  latent 
evils,  a  thing  Kke  the  bacterium  of  some  pestilence.  Even 
regarded  as  a  pestilence,  he  was  not  of  supreme  rank ;  he  killed 
far  fewer  people  than  the  influenza  epidemic  of  1918,  and  pro- 
duced less  political  and  social  disruption  than  the  plague  of 
Justinian.  Some  such  interlude  had  to  happen,  and  some  such 
patched-up  settlement  of  Europe  as  the  Concert  of  Europe,  be- 
cause there  was  no  worked-out  system  of  ideas  upon  which  a  new 
world  could  be  constructed.  And  even  the  Concert  of  Europe 
had  in  it  an  element  of  progress.  It  did  at  least  set  aside  the 
individualism  of  Machiavellian  monarchy  and  declare  that,  there 
was  a  human  or  at  any  rate  a  European  commonweal.  If  it 
divided  the  world  among  the  kings,  it  made  respectful  gestures 
towards  human  unity  and  the  service  of  God  and  man. 

922 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  923 

The  permanently  effective  task  before  mankind  which  had 
to  be  done  before  any  new  and  enduring  social  and  political 
edifice  was  possible,  the  task  upon  which  the  human  intelli- 
gence is,  with  many  interruptions  and  amidst  much  anger  and 
turmoil,  still  engaged,  was,  and  is,  the  task  of  working  out  and 
applying  a  Science  of  Property  as  a  basis  for  freedom  and 
social  justice,  a  Science  of  Currency  to  ensure  and  pre- 
serve an  efficient  economic  medium,  a  Science  of  Gov- 
ernment  and  Collective  Operations  whereby  in  every  community 
men  may  learn  to  pursue  their  common  interests  in  har- 
mony, a  Science  of  World  Politics,  through  which  the  stark 
waste  and  cruelty  of  warfare  between  races,  peoples,  and  nations 
may  be  brought  to  an  end  and  the  common  interests  of  mankind 
brought  under  a  common  control,  and,  above  all,  a  world-wide 
System  of  Education  to  sustain  the  will  and  interest  of  men 
in  their  common  human  adventure.  The  real  makers  of  history 
in  the  nineteenth  century,  the  people  whose  consequences  will 
be  determining  human  life  a  century  ahead,  were  those  who 
advanced  and  contributed  to  this  fivefold  constructive  effort. 
Compared  to  them,  the  foreign  ministers  and  "statesmen"  and 
politicians  of  this  period  were  no  more  than  a  number  of 
troublesome  and  occasionally  incendiary  schoolboys — and  a  few 
metal  thieves — playing  about  and  doing  transitory  mischief 
amidst  the  accumulating  materials  upon  the  site  of  a  great  build- 
ing whose  nature  they  did  not  understand. 

And  while  throughout  the  nineteenth  century  the  mind  of 
Western  civilization,  which  the  Renascence  had  released, 
gathered  itself  to  the  task  of  creative  social  and  political  re- 
construction that  still  lies  before  it,  there  swept  across  the  world 
a  wave  of  universal  change  in  human  power  and  the  material 
conditions  of  life  that  the  first  scientific  efforts  of  that  liberated 
mind  had  made  possible.  The  prophecies  of  Roger  Bacon  began 
to  live  in  reality.  The  accumulating  knowledge  and  confidence 
of  the  little  succession  of  men  who  had  been  carrying  on  the 
development  of  science,  now  began  to  bear  fruit  that  common 
men  could  understand.  The  most  obvious  firstfruit  was  the 
steam-engine.  The  first  steam-engines  in  the  eighteenth  century 
were  pumping  engines  used  to  keep  water  out  of  the  newly 
opened  coal  mines.  These  coal  mines  were  being  worked  to 
supply  coke  for  iron  smelting,  for  which  wood-charcoal  had  pre- 
viously been  employed.  It  was  James  Watt,  a  mathematical 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

instrument  maker  of  Glasgow,  who  improved  this  steam-pump- 
ing engine  and  made  it  available  for  the  driving  of  machinery. 
The  first  engine  so  employed  was  installed  in  a  cotton  mill  in 
Nottingham  in  1785.  In  1804  Trevithick  adapted  the  Watt 
engine  to  transport,  and  made  the  first  locomotive.  In  1825 
the  first  railway,  between  Stockton  and  Darlington,  was  opened 
for  traffic.  The  original  engine  (locomotive  No.  1,  1825)  still 
adorns  Darlington  platform.  By  the  middle  of  the  century  a 
network  of  railways  had  spread  all  over  Europe. 

Here  was  a  sudden  change  in  what  had  long  been  a  fixed 
condition  of  human  life,  the  maximum  rate  of  land  transport. 
After  the  Russian  disaster,  Napoleon  travelled  from  near  Vilna 
to  Paris  in  312  hours.  This  was  a  journey  of  about  1,400 
miles.  He  was  travelling  with  every  conceivable  advantage,  and 
he  averaged  under  five  miles  an  hour.  An  ordinary  traveller 
could  not  have  done  this  distance  in  twice  the  time.  These 
were  about  the  same  maximum  rates  of  travel  as  held  good  be- 
tween Rome  and  Gaul  in  the  first  century  A.D.,  or  between 
Sardis  and  Susa  in  the  fourth  century  B.C.  Then  suddenly 
came  a  tremendous  change.  The  railways  reduced  this  journey 
for  any  ordinary  traveller  to  less  than  forty-eight  hours.  That 
is  to  say,  they  reduced  the  chief  European  distances  to  about  a 
tenth  of  what  they  had  been.  They  made  it  possible  to  carry 
out  administrative  work  in  areas  ten  times  as  great  as  any  that 
had  hitherto  been  workable  under  one  administration.  The  full 
significance  of  that  possibility  in  Europe  still  remains  to  be 
realized.  Europe  is  still  netted  in  boundaries  drawn  in  the 
horse  and  road  era.  In  America  the  effects  were  immediate. 
To  the  United  States  of  America,  sprawling  westward,  it  meant 
the  possibility  of  a  continuous  access  to  Washington,  however 
far  the  frontier  travelled  across  the  continent.  It  meant  unity, 
sustained  on  a  scale  that  would  otherwise  have  been  impossible. 

The  steamboat  was,  if  anything,  a  little  ahead  of  the  steam- 
engine  in  its  earlier  phases.  There  was  a  steamboat,  the  Char- 
lotte Dundas,  on  the  Eirth  of  Clyde  Canal  in  1802,  and  in  1807 
an  American  named  Fulton  had  a  paying  steamer,  The  Cler- 
mont,  with  British-built  engines,  upon  the  Hudson  river  above 
New  York.  The  first  steamship  to  put  to  sea  was  also  an 
American,  the  Phcenix,  which  went  from  New  York  (Hoboken) 
to  Philadelphia.  So,  too,  was  the  first  ship  using  steam  (she 
also  had  sails)  to  cross  the  Atlantic,  the  Savannah  (1819).  All 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

these  were  paddle-wheel  boats,  and  paddle-wheel  boats  are  not 
adapted  to  work  in  heavy  seas.  The  paddles  smash  too  easily, 
and  the  boat  is  then  disabled.  The  screw  steamship  followed 
rather  slowly.  Many  difficulties  had  to  be  surmounted  before 
the  screw  was  a  practicable  thing.  "Not  until  the  middle  of  the 
century  did  the  tonnage  of  steamships  upon  the  sea  begin  to 
overhaul  that  of  sailing-ships.  After  that  the  evolution  in  sea 
transport  was  rapid.  For  the  first  time  men  began  to  cross 
the  seas  and  oceans  with  some  certainty  as  to  the  date  of  their 
arrival.  The  transatlantic  crossing,  which  had  been  an  uncer- 
tain adventure  of  several  weeks — which  might  stretch  to  months 
— was  accelerated,  until  in  1910  it  was  brought  down,  in  the 
case  of  the  fastest  boats,  to  under  five  days,  with  a  practically 
notifiable  hour  of  arrival.  All  over  the  oceans  there  was  the 
same  reduction  in  the  time  and  the  same  increase  in  the  cer- 
tainty of  human  communications. 

Concurrently  with  the  development  of  steam  transport  upon 
land  and  sea  a  new  and  striking  addition  to  the  facilities  of 
human  intercourse  arose  out  of  the  investigations  of  Yolta, 
Galvani,  and  Faraday  into  various  electrical  phenomena.  The 
electric  telegraph  came  into  existence  in  1835.  The  first  under- 
seas  cable  was  laid  in  1851  between  France  and  England.  In 
a  few  years  the  telegraph  system  had  spread  over  the  civilized 
world,  and  news  which  had  hitherto  travelled  slowly  from 
point  to  point  became  practically  simultaneous  throughout  the 
earth. 

These  things,  the  steam  railway  and  the  electric  telegraph, 
were  to  the  popular  imagination  of  the  middle  nineteenth  cen- 
tury the  most  striking  and  revolutionary  of  inventions,  but  they 
were  only  the  most  conspicuous  and  clumsy  firstfruits  of  a  far 
more  extensive  process.  Technical  knowledge  and  skill  were 
developing  with  an  extraordinary  rapidity,  and  to  an  extraordi- 
nary extent  measured  by  the  progress  of  any  previous  age.  Far 
less  conspicuous  at  first  in  everyday  life,  but  finally  far  more 
important,  was  the  extension  of  man's  power  over  various  struc- 
tural materials.  Before  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
iron  was  reduced  from  its  ores  by  means  of  wood-charcoal,  was 
handled  in  small  pieces,  and  hammered  and  wrought  into  shape. 
It  was  material  for  a  craftsman.  Quality  and  treatment  were 
enormously  dependent  upon  the  experience  and  sagacity  of 
the  individual  iron  worker.  The  largest  masses  of  iron  that 


926  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

could  be  dealt  with  under  those  conditions  amounted  at  most 
(in  the  sixteenth  century)  to  two  or  three  tons.  (There  was  a 
very  definite  upward  limit,  therefore,  to  the  size  of  cannon.) 
The  blast  furnace  arose  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  developed 
with  the  use  of  coke.  ~Not  before  the  eighteenth  century  do  we 
find  rolled  sheet  iron  (1728)  and  rolled  rods  and  bars  (1783). 
Nasmyth's  steam  hammer  came  as  late  as  1838.  The  ancient 
world,  because  of  its  metallurgical  inferiority,  could  not  use 
steam.  The  steam-engine,  even  the  primitive  pumping  engine, 
could  not  develop  before  sheet  iron  was  available.  The  early 
engines  seem  to  the  modern  eye  very  pitiful  and  clumsy  bits 
or  ironmongery,  but  they  were  the  utmost  that  the  metallurgical 
science  of  the  time  could  do.  As  late  as  1856  came  the  Bessemer 
process,  and  presently  (1864)  the  open-hearth  process,  in  which 
steel  and  every  sort  of  iron  could  be  melted,  purified,  and  cast 
in  a  manner  and  upon  a  scale  hitherto  unheard  of.  To-day  in 
the  electric  furnace  one  may  see  tons  of  incandescent  steel 
swirling  about  like  boiling  milk  in  a  saucepan.  Xothing  in 
the  previous  practical  advances  of  mankind  is  comparable  in 
its  consequences  to  the  complete  mastery  over  enormous  masses 
of  steel  and  iron  and  over  their  texture  and  quality  which  man 
has  now  achieved.  The  railways  and  early  engines  of  all  sorts 
were  the  mere  first  triumphs  of  the  new  metallurgical  methods. 
Presently  came  ships  of  iron  and  steel,  vast  bridges,  and  a  new 
way  of  building  with  steel  upon  a  gigantic  scale.  Men  realized 
too  late  that  they  had  planned  their  railways  with  far  too  timid 
a  gauge,  that  they  could  have  organized  their  travelling  with 
far  more  steadiness  and  comfort  upon  a  much  bigger  scale. 

Before  the  nineteenth  century  there  were  no  ships  in  the 
world  much  over  2,000  tons  burthen ;  now  there  is  nothing  won- 
derful about  a  50,000-ton  liner.  There  are  people  who  sneer 
at  this  kind  of  progress  as  being  a  progress  in  amere  size,"  but 
that  sort  of  sneering  merely  marks  the  intellectual  limitations 
of  those  who  indulge  in  it.  The  great  ship  or  the  steel-frame 
building  is  not,  as  they  imagine,  a  magnified  version  of  the 
small  ship  or  building  of  the  past ;  it  is  a  thing  different  in  kind, 
more  lightly  and  strongly  built,  of  finer  and  stronger  materials ; 
instead  of  being  a  thing  of  precedent  and  rule-of-thumb,  it  is  a 
thing  of  subtle  and  intricate  calculation.  In  the  old  house  or 
ship,  matter  was  dominant — the  material  and  its  needs  had  to 
be  slavishly  obeyed;  in  the  new,  matter  has  been  captured, 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  927 

changed,  coerced.  Think  of  the  coal  and  iron  and  sand  dragged 
out  of  the  banks  and  pits,  wrenched,  wrought,  molten,  and  cast, 
to  be  flung  at  last,  a  slender,  glittering  pinnacle  of  steel  and 
glass,  six  hundred  feet  above  the  crowded  city ! 

We  have  given  these  particulars  of  the  advance  in  man's 
knowledge  of  the  metallurgy  of  steel  and  its  results  by  way 
of  illustration.  A  parallel  story  could  be  told  of  the  metallurgy 
of  copper  and  tin,  and  of  a  multitude  of  metals,  nickel  and 
aluminium  to  name  but  two,  unknown  before  the  ninteenth  cen- 
tury dawned.  It  is  in  this  great  and  growing  mastery  over 
substances,  over  different  sorts  of  glass,  over  rocks  and  plasters 
and  the  like,  over  colours  and  textures,  that  the  main  triumphs 
of  the  mechanical  revolution  have  thus  far  been  achieved.  Yet 
we  are  still  in  the  stage  of  the  firstfruits  in  the  matter.  We 
have  the  power,  but  we  have  still  to  learn  how  to  use  our  power. 
Many  of  the  first  employments  of  these  gifts  of  science  have 
been  vulgar,  tawdry,  stupid,  or  horrible.  The  artist  and  the 
adaptor  have  still  hardly  begun  to  work  with  the  endless  variety 
of  substances  now  at  their  disposal. 

Parallel  with  this  extension  of  mechanical  possibilities  the 
new  science  of  electricity  grew  up.  It  was  only  in  the  eighties 
of  the  nineteenth  century  that  this  body  of  inquiry  began  to 
yield  results  to  impress  the  vulgar  mind.  Then  suddenly  came 
electric  light  and  electric  traction,  and  the  transmutation  of 
forces,  the  possibility  of  sending  power,  that  could  be  changed 
into  mechanical  motion  or  light  or  heat  as  one  chose,  along  a 
copper  wire,  as  water  is  sent  along  a  pipe,  began  to  come  through 
to  the  ideas  of  ordinary  people.  .  .  . 

The  British  and  the  French  were  at  first  the  leading  peoples 
in  this  great  proliferation  of  knowledge ;  but  presently  the  Ger- 
mans, who  had  learnt  humility  under  Napoleon,  showed  such 
zeal  and  pertinacity  in  scientific  inquiry  as  to  overhaul  these 
leaders.  British  science  was  largely  the  creation  of  Englishmen 
and  Scotchmen  *  working  outside  the  ordinary  centres  of 
erudition.2  We  have  told  how  in  England  the  universities  after 

1  But  note  Boyle  and  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton  as  conspicuous  scientific  men 
who  were  Irishmen. 

1  It  is  worth  noting  that  nearly  all  the  great  inventors  in  England  dur- 
ing the  eighteenth  century  were  working  men,  that  inventions  proceeded 
from  the  workshop,  and  not  from  the  laboratory.  It  is  also  worth  noting 
that  only  two  of  these  inventors  accumulated  fortunes  and  » founded 
families. — E.  B. 


928  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  reformation  ceased  to  have  a  wide  popular  appeal,  how  they 
became  the  educational  preserve  of  the  nobility  and  gentry,  and 
the  strongholds  of  the  established  church.  A  pompous  and  un- 
intelligent classical  pretentiousness  dominated  them,  and  they 
dominated  the  schools  of  the  middle  and  upper  classes.  The 
only  knowledge  recognized  was  an  uncritical  textual  knowledge 
of  a  selection  of  Latin  and  Greek  classics,  and  the  test  of  a  good 
style  was  its  abundance  of  quotations,  allusions,  and  stereotyped 
expressions.  The  early  development  of  British  science  went  on, 
therefore,  in  spite  of  the  formal  educational  organization,  and 
in  the  teeth -of  the  bitter  hostility  of  the  teaching  and  clerical 
professions.  French  education,  too,  was  dominated  by  the  clas- 
sical tradition  of  the  Jesuits,  and  consequently  it  was  not  diffi- 
cult for  the  Germans  to  organize  a  body  of  investigators,  small 
indeed  in  relation  to  the  possibilities  of  the  case,  but  large  in 
proportion  to  the  little  band  of  British  and  French  inventors 
and  experimentalists.  And  though  this  work  of  research  and 
experiment  was  making  Britain  and  France  the  most  rich  and 
powerful  countries  in  the  world,  it  was  not  making  scientific 
and  inventive  men  rich  and  powerful.  There  is  a  necessary  un- 
worldliness  about  a  sincere  scientific  man ;  he  is  too  preoccupied 
with  his  research  to  plan  and  scheme  how  to  make  money  out  of 
it.  The  economic  exploitation  of  his  discoveries  falls  very  easily 
and  naturally,  therefore,  into  the  hands  of  a  more  acquisitive 
type;  and  so  we  find  that  the  crops  of  rich  men  which  every 
fresh  phase  of  scientific  and  technical  progress  has  produced  in 
Great  Britain,  though  they  have  not  displayed  quite  the  same 
passionate  desire  to  insult  and  kill  the  goose  that  laid  the  na- 
tional golden  eggs  as  the  scholastic  and  clerical  professions, 
have  been  quite  content  to  let  that  profitable  creature  starve. 
Inventors  and  discoverers  came  by  nature,  they  thought,  for 
cleverer  people  to  profit  by. 

In  this  matter  the  Germans  were  a  little  wiser.  The  Ger- 
man "learned"  did  not  display  the  same  vehement  hatred  of 
the  new  learning.  They  permitted  its  development.  The 
German  business  man  and  manufacturer  again  had  not  quite 
the  same  contempt  for  the  man  of  science  as  had  his  British 
competitor.  Knowledge,  these  Germans  believed,  might  be  a 
cultivated  crop,  responsive  to  fertilizers.  They  did  concede, 
therefore,  a  certain  amount  of  opportunity  to  the  scientific  mind ; 
their  public  expenditure  on  scientific  work  was  relatively 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  929 

greater,  and  this  expenditure  was  abundantly  rewarded.  By 
the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  German  scientific 
worker  had  made  German  a  necessary  language  for  every  sci- 
ence student  who  wished  to  keep  abreast  with  the  latest  work 
in  his  department,  and  in  certain  branches,  and  particularly  in 
chemistry,  Germany  acquired  a  very  great  superiority  over  her 
western  neighbours.  The  scientific  effort  of  the  sixties  and 
seventies  in  Germany  began  to  tell  after  the  eighties,  and  the 
Germans  gained  steadily  upon  Britain  and  France  in  technical 
and  industrial  prosperity. 

In  an  Outline  of  History  such  as  this  it  is  impossible  to 
trace  the  network  of  complex  mental  processes  that  led  to  the 
incessant  extension  of  knowledge  and  power  that  is  now  going 
on;  all  we  can  do  here  is  to  call  the  reader's  attention  to  the 
most  salient  turning-points  that  finally  led  the  toboggan  of 
human  affairs  into  its  present  swift  ice-run  of  progress.  We 
have  told  of  the  first  release  of  human  curiosity  and  of  the  be- 
ginnings of  systematic  inquiry  and  experiment.  We  have  told, 
too,  how,  when  the  plutocratic  Eoman  system  and  its  resultant 
imperialism  had  come  and  gone  again,  this  process  of  inquiry 
was  renewed.  We  have  told  of  the  escape  of  investigation  from 
ideas  of  secrecy  and  personal  advantage  to  the  idea  of  publica- 
tion and  a  brotherhood  of  knowledge,  and  we  have  noted  the 
foundation  of  the  British  Koyal  Society,  the  Florentine  Society, 
and  their  like  as  a  consequence  of  this  socializing  of  thought. 
These  things  were  the  roots  of  the  mechanical  revolution,  and 
so  long  as  the  root  of  pure  scientific  inquiry  lives,  that  revolu- 
tion will  progress.  The  mechanical  revolution  itself  began, 
we  may  say,  with  the  exhaustion  of  the  wood  supply  for  the 
ironworks  of  England.  This  led  to  the  use  of  coal,  the  coal 
mine  led  to  the  simple  pumping  engine,  the  development  of  the 
pumping  engine  by  Watt  into  a  machine-driving  engine  led  on 
to  the  locomotive  and  the  steamship.  This  was  the  first  phase 
of  a  great  expansion  in  the  use  of  steam.  A  second  phase  in 
the  mechanical  revolution  began  with  the  application  of  elec- 
trical science  to  practical  problems  and  the  development  of  elec- 
tric lighting,  power  transmission,  and  traction. 

A  third  phase  is  to  be  distinguished  when  in  the  eighties  a 
new  type  of  engine  came  into  use,  an  engine  in  which  the  ex- 
pansive force  of  an  explosive  mixture  replaced  the  expansive 
force  of  steam.  The  light,  highly  efficient  engines  that  were 


930  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

thus  made  possible  were  applied  to  the  automobile,  and  de- 
veloped at  last  to  reach  such  a  pitch  of  lightness  and  efficiency 
as  to  render  flight — long  known  to  be  possible — a  practical 
achievement.  A  successful  flying-machine — but  not  a  machine 
large  enough  to  take  up  a  human  body — was  made  by  Professor 
Langley  of  the  Smithsonian  Institute  of  Washington  as  early 
as  1897.  By  1909  the  aeroplane  was  available  for  human  loco- 
motion. There  had  seemed  to  be  a  pause  in  the  increase  of 
human  speed  with  the  perfection  of  railways  and  automobile 
road  traction,  but  with  the  flying  machine  came  fresh  reductions 
in  the  effective  distance  between  one  point  of  the  earth's  surface 
and  another.  In  the  eighteenth  century  the  distance  from  Lon- 
don to  Edinburgh  was  an  eight  days'  journey;  in  1918  the 
British  Civil  Air  Transport  Commission  reported  that  the  jour- 
ney from  London  to  Melbourne,  half-way  round  the  earth,  would 
probably,  in  a  few  years'  time,  be  accomplished  in  that  same 
period  of  eight  days. 

Too  much  stress  must  not  be  laid  upon  these  striking  reduc- 
tions in  the  time  distances  of  one  place  from  another.  They 
are  merely  one  aspect  of  a  much  profounder  and  more  mo- 
mentous enlargement  of  human  possibility.  The  science  of 
agriculture  and  agricultural  chemistry,  for  instance,  made  quite 
parallel  advances  during  the  nineteenth  century.  Men  learnt 
so  to  fertilize  the  soil  as  to  produce  quadruple  and  quintuple 
the  crops  got  from  the  same  area  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
There  was  a  still  more  extraordinary  advance  in  medical  sci- 
ence; the  average  duration  of  life  rose,  the  daily  efficiency 
increased,  the  waste  of  life  through  ill-health  diminished. 

Now  here  altogether  we  have  such  a  change  in  human  life  as 
to  constitute  a  fresh  phase  of  history.  In  a  little  more  than 
a  century  this  mechanical  revolution  has  been  brought  about. 
In  that  time  man  made  a  stride  in  the  material  conditions  of 
his  life  vaster  than  he  had  done  during  the  whole  long  interval 
between  the  paleolithic  stage  and  the  age  of  cultivation,  or 
between  the  days  of  Pepi  in  Egypt  and  those  of  George  III. 
A  new  gigantic  material  framework  for  human  affairs  has  come 
into  existence.  Clearly  it  demands  great  readjustments  of  our 
social,  economical,  and  political  methods.  But  these  readjust- 
ments have  necessarily  waited  upon  the  development  of  the 
mechanical  revolution,  and  they  are  still  only  in  their  opening 
stage  to-day. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY        931 

§2 

There  is  a  tendency  in  many  histories  to  confuse  together 
what  we  have  here  called  the  mechanical  revolution,  which  was 
an  entirely  new  thing  in  human  experience  arising  out  of  the 
development  of  organized  science,  a  new  step  like  the  invention 
of  agriculture  or  the  discovery  of  metals,  with  something  else, 
quite  different  in  its  origins,  something  for  which  there  was 
already  an  historical  precedent,  the  social  and  financial  develop- 
ment which  is  called  the  industrial  revolution.  The  two  proc- 
esses were  going  on  together,  they  were  constantly  reacting  upon 
each  other,  but  they  were  in  root  and  essence  different.  There 
would  have  been  an  industrial  revolution  of  sorts  if  there  had 
been  no  coal,  no  steam,  no  machinery ;  but  in  that  case  it  would 
probably  have  followed  far  more  closely  upon  the  lines  of  the 
social  and  financial  developments  of  the  later  years  of  the 
Roman  republic.  It  would  have  repeated  the  story  of  dis- 
possessed free  cultivators,  gang  labour,  great  estates,  great  finan- 
cial fortunes,  and  a  socially  destructive  financial  process. 
Even  the  factory  method  came  before  power  and  machin- 
ery. Factories  were  the  product  not  of  machinery,  but 
of  the  "division  of  labour."  Drilled  and  sweated  workers  were 
making  such  things  as  millinery,  cardboard  boxes  and  furniture, 
and  colouring  maps  and  book  illustrations,  and  so  forth,  before 
even  water-wheels  had  been  used  for  industrial  processes.  There 
were  factories  in  Rome  in  the  days  of  Augustus.  New  books, 
for  instance,  were  dictated  to  rows  of  copyists  in  the  factories 
of  the  book-sellers.  The  attentive  student  of  Defoe  and  of  the 
political  pamphlets  of  Fielding  will  realize  that  the  idea  of 
herding  poor  people  into  establishments  to  work  collectively  for 
their  living  was  already  current  in  Britain  before  the  close  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  There  are  intimations  of  it  even  as 
early  as  More's  Utopia  (1516).  It  was  a  social  and  not  a 
mechanical  development. 

Up  to  past  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  social 
and  economic  history  of  western  Europe  was  in  fact  retreading 
the  path  along  which  the  Roman  State  had  gone  in  the  three 
last  centuries  B.C.  America  was  in  many  ways  a  new  Spain, 
and  India  and  China  a  new  Egypt.  But  the  political  disunions 
of  Europe,  the  political  convulsions  against  monarchy,  the  re- 
calcitrance of  the  common  folk  and  perhaps  also  the  greater 


032  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

accessibility  of  the  western  European  intelligence  to  mechanical 
ideas  and  inventions,  turned  the  process  into  quite  novel  direc- 
tions. Ideas  of  human  solidarity,  thanks  to  Christianity,  were 
far  more  widely  diffused  in  this  newer  European  world,  political 
power  was  not  so  concentrated,  and  the  man  of  energy  anxious 
to  get  rich  turned  his  mind,  therefore,  very  willingly  from  the 
ideas  of  the  slave  and  of  gang  labour  to  the  idea  of  mechanical 
power  and  the  machine. 

The  mechanical  revolution,  the  process  of  mechanical  inven- 
tion and  discovery,  was  a  new  thing  in  human  experience,  and 
it  went  on  regardless  of  the  social,  political,  economic,  and  in- 
dustrial consequences  it  might  produce.  The  industrial  revolu- 
tion, on  the  other  hand,  like  most  other  human  affairs,  was  and 
is  more  and  more  profoundly  changed  and  deflected  by  the  con- 
stant variation  in  human  conditions  caused  by  the  mechanical 
revolution.  And  the  essential  difference  between  the  amassing 
of  riches,  the  extinction  of  small  farmers  and  small  business 
men  and  the  phase  of  big  finance  in  the  latter  centuries  of  the 
Roman  Republic  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  very  similar  con- 
centration of  capital  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries 
on  the  other,  lies  in  the  profound  difference  in  the  character  of 
labour  that  the  mechanical  revolution  was  bringing  about  The 
power  of  the  old  world  was  human  power ;  everything  depended 
ultimately  upon  the  driving  power  of  human  muscle,  the  muscle 
of  ignorant  and  subjugated  men.  A  little  animal  muscle,  sup- 
plied by  draft  oxen,  horse  traction,  and  the  like,  contributed. 
Where  a  weight  had  to  be  lifted,  men  lifted  it;  where  a  rock 
had  to  be  quarried,  men  chipped  it  out;  where  a  field  had  to 
be  ploughed,  men  and  oxen  ploughed  it ;  the  Roman  equivalent 
of  the  steamship  was  the  galley  with  its  banks  of  sweating 
rowers.  A  vast  proportion  of  mankind  in  the  early  civilizations 
was  employed  in  purely  mechanical  drudgery.  At  its  onset, 
power-driven  machinery  did  not  seem  to  promise  any  release 
from  such  unintelligent  toil.  Great  gangs  of  men  were  em- 
ployed in  excavating  canals,  in  making  railway  cuttings  and 
embankments,  and  the  like.  The  number  of  miners  increased 
enormously.  But  the  extension  of  facilities  and  the  output  of 
commodities  increased  much  more.  And  as  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury went  on,  the  plain  logic  of  the  new  situation  asserted  itself 
more  clearly.  Human  beings  were  no  longer  wanted  as  a  source 
of  mere  indiscriminated  power.  What  could  be  done  mechani- 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  OSS 

cally  by  a  human  being  could  be  done  faster  and  better  by  a 
machine.  The  human  being  was  needed  now  only  where  choice 
and  intelligence  had  to  be  exercised.  Human  beings  were 
wanted  only  as  human  beings.  Th'e  drudge,  on  whom  all  the 
previous  civilizations  had  rested,  the  creature  of  mere  obedi- 
ence, the  man  whose  brains  were  superfluous,  had  become  un- 
necessary to  the  welfare  of  mankind. 

This  was  as  true  of  such  ancient  industries  as  agriculture 
and  mining  as  it  was  of  the  newest  metallurgical  processes.  For 
ploughing,  sowing,  and  harvesting,  swift  machines  came  for- 
ward to  do  the  work  of  scores  of  men.1  The  Roman  civiliza- 
tion was  built  upon  cheap  and  degraded  human  beings ;  modern 
civilization  is  being  rebuilt  upon  cheap  mechanical  power.  For 
a  hundred  years  power  has  been  getting  cheaper  and  labour 
dearer.  If  for  a  generation  or  so  machinery  has  had  to  wait 
its  turn  in  the  mine,  it  is  simply  because  for  a  time  men  were 
cheaper  than  machinery.2 

N"ow  here  was  a  change-over  of  quite  primary  importance  in 
human  affairs.  The  chief  solicitude  of  the  rich  and  of  the 
ruler  in  the  old  civilization  had  been  to  keep  up  a  supply  of 
drudges.  As  the  nineteenth  century  went  on,  it  became  more 
and  more  plain  to  the  intelligent  directive  people  that  the 
common  man  had  now  to  be  something  better  than  a  drudge. 
He  had  to  be  educated — if  only  to  secure  "industrial  efficiency." 
He  had  to  understand  what  he  was  about.  From  the  days  of 
the  first  Christian  propaganda,  popular  education  had  been 
smouldering  in  Europe,  just  as  it  has  smouldered  in  Asia  wher- 
ever Islam  has  set  its  foot,  because  of  the  necessity  of  making 
the  believer  understand  a  little  of  the  belief  by  which  he  is 
saved,  and  of  enabling  him  to  read  a  little  in  the  sacred  books 
by  which  his  belief  is  conveyed.  Christian  controversies,  with 
their  competition  for  adherents,  ploughed  the  ground  for  the 
harvest  of  popular  education.  In  England,  for  instance,  by 
the  thirties  and  forties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  disputes 
of  the  sects  and  the  necessity  of  catching  adherents  young  had 
produced  an  abundance  of  night  schools,  Sunday  schools,  and  a 
series  of  competing  educational  organizations  for  children,  the 

1  Here  America  led  the  old  world. 

2  In  Northumberland  and  Durham  in  the  early  days  of  coal  mining  they 
were  so  cheaply  esteemed  that   it   was   unusual   to  hold   inquests   on  the 
bodies  of  men  killed  in  mine  disasters. 


934  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

dissenting  British  schools,  the  church  National  Schools,  and 
even  Roman  Catholic  elementary  schools.  The  earlier,  less 
enlightened  manufacturers,  unable  to  take  a  broad  view  of  their 
own  interests,  hated  and  opposed  these  schools.  But  here  again 
needy  Germany  led  her  richer  neighbours.  The  religious 
teacher  in  Britain  presently  found  the  profit-seeker  at  his  side, 
unexpectedly  eager  to  get  the  commonalty,  if  not  educated,  at 
least  "trained"  to  a  higher  level  of  economic  efficiency. 

The  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  was  a  period  of 
rapid  advance  in  popular  education  throughout  all  the  West- 
ernized world.  There  was  no  parallel  advance  in  the  education 
of  the  upper  classes,  some  advance  no  doubt,  but  nothing  to 
correspond,  and  so  the  great  gulf  that  had  divided  that  world 
hitherto  into  the  readers  and  the  non-reading  mass  became  little 
more  than  a  slightly  perceptible  difference  in  educational  level. 
At  the  back  of  this  process  was  the  mechanical  revolution,  ap- 
parently regardless  of  social  conditions,  but  really  insisting 
inexorably  upon  the  complete  abolition  of  a  totally  illiterate 
class  throughout  the  world. 

The  economic  revolution  of  the  Roman  republic  had  never 
been  clearly  apprehended  by  the  common  people  of  Rome.  The 
ordinary  Roman  citizen  never  saw  the  changes  through  which 
he  lived,  clearly  and  comprehensively  as  we  see  them.  But  the 
industrial  revolution,  as  it  went  on  towards  the  end  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  was  more  and  more  distinctly  seen  as  one  whole 
process  by  the  common  people  it  was  affecting,  because  presently 
they  could  read  and  discuss  and  communicate,  and  because  they 
went  about  and  saw  things  as  no  commonalty  had  ever  done 
before. 

In  this  Outline  of  History  we  have  been  careful  to  indicate 
the  gradual  appearance  of  the  ordinary  people  as  a  class  with  a 
will  and  ideas  in  common.  It  is  the  writer's  belief  that  massive 
movements  of  the  "ordinary  people"  over  considerable  areas 
only  became  possible  as  a  result  of  the  propagandist  religions, 
Christianity  and  Islam,  and  their  insistence  upon  individual 
self-respect.  We  have  cited  the  enthusiasm  of  the  commonalty 
for  the  First  Crusade  as  marking  a  new  phase  in  social  history. 
But  before  the  nineteenth  century  even  these  massive  movements 
were  comparatively  restricted.  The  eqnalitarian  insurrections 
of  the  peasantry,  from  the  Wycliffe  period  onward,  were  confined 
to  the  peasant  communities  of  definite  localities,  they  spread 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  9S5 

only  slowly  into  districts  affected  by  similar  forces.  The  town 
artisan  rioted  indeed,  but  only  locally.  The  chateau-burning  of 
the  French  revolution  was  not  the  act  of  a  peasantry  who  had 
overthrown  a  government,  it  was  the  act  of  a  peasantry  released 
by  the  overthrow  of  a  government.  The  Commune  of  Paris  was 
the  first  effective  appearance  of  the  town  artisan  as  a  political 
power,  and  the  Parisian  crowd  of  the  First  Revolution  was  a 
very  mixed,  primitive-thinking,  and  savage  crowd  compared  with 
any  Western  European  crowd  after  1830. 

But  the  mechanical  revolution  was  not  only  pressing  educa- 
tion upon  the  whole  population,  it  was  leading  to  a  big-capital- 
ism and  to  a  large-scale  reorganization  of  industry  that  was  to 
produce  a  new  and  distinctive  system  of  ideas  in  the  common 
people  in  the  place  of  the  mere  uncomfortable  recalcitrance  and 
elemental  rebellions  of  an  illiterate  commonalty.  We  have  al- 
ready noted  how  the  industrial  revolution  had  split  the  manu- 
facturing class,  which  had  hitherto  been  a  middling  and  various 
sort  of  class,  into  two  sections,  the  employers,  who  became  rich 
enough  to  mingle  with  the  financial,  merchandizing,  and  land- 
owning classes,  and  the  employees,  who  drifted  to  a  status  closer 
and  closer  to  that  of  mere  gang  and  agricultural  labour.  As  the 
manufacturing  employee  sank,  the  agricultural  labourer,  by  the 
introduction  of  agricultural  machinery  and  the  increase  in  his 
individual  productivity,  rose.  By  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  Karl  Marx  (1818-83),  a  German  Jew  of  great  schol- 
arly attainments,  who  did  much  of  his  work  in  the  British 
Museum  library  in  London,  was  pointing  out  that  the  organ- 
ization of  the  working  classes  by  the  steadily  concentrating  group 
of  capitalist  owners,  was  developing  a  new  social  classification 
to  replace  the  more  complex  class  systems  of  the  past.  Prop- 
erty, so  far  as  it  was  power,  was  being  gathered  together  into 
relatively  few  hands,  the  hands  of  the  big  rich  men,  the  capitalist 
class ;  while  there  was  a  great  mingling  of  workers  with  little  or 
no  property,  whom  he  called  the  "expropriated,"  or  "prole- 
tariat"— a  misuse  of  this  word — who  were  bound  to  develop  a 
common  "class  consciousness"  of  the  conflict  of  their  interests 
with  those  of  the  rich  men.  Differences  of  education  and  tradi- 
tion between  the  various  older  social  elements  which  were  in 
process  of  being  fused  up  into  the  new  class  of  the  expropriated, 
seemed  for  a  time  to  contradict  this  sweeping  generalization; 
the  traditions  of  the  professions,  the  small  employers,  the  farmer 


936  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

peasant  and  the  like  were  all  different  from  one  another  and 
from  the  various  craftsman  traditions  of  the  workers ;  but  with 
the  spread  of  education  and  the  cheapening  of  literature,  this 
"Marxian"  generalization  becomes  now  more  and  more  accept- 
able. These  classes,  who  were  linked  at  first  by  nothing  but  a 
common  impoverishment,  were  and  are  being  reduced  or  raised 
to  the  same  standard  of  life,  forced  to  read  the  same  books  and 
share  the  same  inconveniences.  A  sense  of  solidarity  between 
all  sorts  of  poor  and  propertyless  men,  as  against  the  profit- 
amassing  and  wealth-concentrating  class,  is  growing  more  and 
more  evident  in  our  world.  Old  differences  fade  away,  the  dif- 
ference between  craftsman  and  open-air  worker,  between  black 
coat  and  overall,  between  poor  clergyman  and  elementary  school- 
master, between  policeman  and  bus-driver.  They  must  all  buy 
the  same  cheap  furnishings  and  live  in  similar  cheap  houses; 
their  sons  and  daughters  will  all  mingle  and  marry ;  success  at 
the  upper  levels  becomes  more  and  more  hopeless  for  the  rank 
and  file.  Marx,  who  did  not  so  much  advocate  the  class-war, 
the  war  of  the  expropriated  mass  against  the  appropriating  few, 
as  foretell  it,  is  being  more  and  more  justified  by  events.1 

§  3 

To  trace  any  broad  outlines  in  the  fermentation  of  ideas 
that  went  on  during  the  mechanical  and  industrial  revolution 
of  the  nineteenth  century  is  a  very  difficult  task.  But  we  must 
attempt  it  if  we  are  to  link  what  has  gone  before  in  this  history 
with  the  condition  of  our  world  to-day. 

It  will  be  convenient  to  distinguish  two  main  periods  in  the 
hundred  years  between  1814  and  1914.  First  came  the  period 
1814-48,  in  which  there  was  a  very  considerable  amount  of 
liberal  thinking  and  writing  in  limited  circles,  but  during  which 
there  were  no  great  changes  or  development  of  thought  in  the 
general  mass  of  the  people.  Throughout  this  period  the  world's 

1  It  is  sometimes  argued  against  Marx  that  the  proportion  of  people 
who  have  savings  invested  has  increased  in  many  modern  communities. 
These  savings  are  technically  "capital"  and  their  owners  "capitalists"  to 
that  extent,  and  this  is  supposed  to  contradict  the  statement  of  Marx 
that  property  concentrates  into  few  and  fewer  hands.  Marx  used  many 
of  his  terms  carelessly  and  chose  them  ill,  and  his  ideas  were  better  than 
his  words.  When  he  wrote  property  he  meant  "property  so  far  as  it  is 
power."  The  small  investor  has  remarkably  little  power  over  his  in- 
vested capital. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  937 

affairs  were  living,  so  to  speak,  on  their  old  intellectual  capital, 
they  were  going  on  in  accordance  with  the  leading  ideas  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  counter-revolution.  The  dominant  liberal 
ideas  were  freedom  and  a  certain  vague  equalitarianism;  the 
conservative  ideas  were  monarchy,  organized  religion,  social 
privilege,  and  obedience. 

Until  1848  the  spirit  of  the  Holy  Alliance,  the  spirit  of 
Metternich,  struggled  to  prevent  a  revival  of  the  European  revo- 
lution that  Napoleon  had  betrayed  and  set  back.  In  America, 
both  North  and  South,  on  the  other  hand,  the  revolution  had 
triumphed  and  nineteenth-century  liberalism  ruled  unchallenged. 
Britain  was  an  uneasy  country,  never  quite  loyally  reactionary 
nor  quite  loyally  progressive,  neither  truly  monarchist,  nor  truly 
republican,  the  land  of  Cromwell  and  also  of  the  Merry  Mon- 
arch, Charles ;  anti- Austrian,  anti-Bourbon,  anti-papal,  yet 
weakly  repressive.  We  have  told  of  the  first  series  of  liberal 
storms  in  Europe  in  and  about  the  year  1830 ;  in  Britain  in  1832 
a  Eeform  Bill,  greatly  extending  the  franchise  and  restoring 
something  of  its  representative  character  to  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, relieved  the  situation.  Round  and  about  1848  came  a 
second  and  much  more  serious  system  of  outbreaks,  that  over- 
threw the  Orleans  monarchy  and  established  a  second  Republic 
in  France  (1848-52),  raised  North  Italy  and  Hungary  against 
Austria,  and  the  Poles  in  Posen  against  the  Germans,  and 
sent  the  Pope  in  flight  from  the  republicans  of  Rome.  A  very 
interesting  Pan-Slavic  conference  held  at  Prague  foreshadowed 
many  of  the  territorial  readjustments  of  1919.  It  dispersed 
after  an  insurrection  at  Prague  had  been  suppressed  by  Aus- 
trian troops. 

Ultimately  all  these  insurrections  failed;  the  current  system 
staggered,  but  kept  its  feet.  There  were  no  doubt  serious  social 
discontents  beneath  these  revolts,  but  as  yet,  except  in  the  case 
of  Paris,  these  had  no  very  clear  form;  and  this  1848  storm,  so 
far  as  the  rest  of  Europe  was  concerned,  may  be  best  described, 
in  a  phrase,  as  a  revolt  of  the  natural  political  map  against 
the  artificial  arrangements  of  the  Vienna  diplomatists,  and  the 
system  of  suppressions  those  arrangements  entailed. 

The  history  of  Europe,  then,  from  1815  to  1848  was,  gen- 
erally speaking,  a  sequel  to  the  history  of  Europe  from  1789  to 
1814.  There  were  no  really  new  motifs  in  the  composition. 
The  main  trouble  was  still  the  struggle,  though  often  a  blind 


938  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  misdirected  struggle,  of  the  interests  of  ordinary  men 
against  the  Great  Power  system  which  cramped  and  oppressed 
the  life  of  mankind. 

But  after  1848,  from  1848  to  1914,  though  the  readjust- 
ment of  the  map  still  went  on  towards  a  free  and  unified  Italy 
and  a  unified  Germany,  there  began  a  fresh  phase  in  the  process 
of  mental  and  political  adaptation  to  the  new  knowledge  and 
the  new  material  powers  of  mankind.  Came  a  great  irruption 
of  new  social,  religious,  and  political  ideas  into  the  general 
European  mind.  In  the  next  three  sections  we  will  consider 
the  origin  and  quality  of  these  irruptions.  They  laid  the 
foundations  upon  which  we  base  our  political  thought  to-day, 
but  for  a  long  time  they  had  no  very  great  effect  on  contempo- 
rary politics.  Contemporary  politics  continued  to  run  on  in 
the  old  lines,  but  with  a  steadily  diminishing  support  in  the 
intellectual  convictions  and  consciences  of  men.  We  have  al- 
ready described  the  way  in  which  a  strong  intellectual  process 
undermined  the  system  of  Grand  Monarchy  in  France  before 
1789.  A  similar  undermining  process  was  going  on  throughout 
Europe  during  the  Great  Power  period  of  1848-1914.  Pro- 
found doubts  of  the  system  of  government  and  of  the  liberties 
of  many  forms  of  property  in  the  economic  system  spread 
throughout  the  social  body.  Then  came  the  greatest  and  most 
disorganizing  war  in  history,  so  that  it  is  still  impossible  to 
estimate  the  power  and  range  of  the  accumulated  new  ideas 
of  those  sixty-six  years.  We  have  been  through  a  greater 
catastrophe  even  than  the  Napoleonic  catastrophe,  and  we  are 
in  a  slack-water  period,  corresponding  to  the  period  1815-30. 
Our  1830  and  our  1848  are  still  to  come  and  show  us  where 
we  stand. 

§4 

We  have  traced  throughout  this  history  the  gradual  restric- 
tion of  the  idea  of  property  from  the  first  unlimited  claim  of 
the  strong  man  to  possess  everything  and  the  gradual  realiza- 
tion of  brotherhood  as  something  transcending  personal  self- 
seeking.  Men  were  first  subjugated  into  more  than  tribal 
societies  by  the  fear  of  monarch  and  deity.  It  is  only  within 
the  last  three  or  at  most  four  thousand  years  that  we  have  any 
clear  evidence  that  voluntary  self-abandonment  to  some  greater 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  939 

end,  without  fee  or  reward,  was  an  acceptable  idea  to  men, 
or  that  anyone  had  propounded  it.  Then  we  find  spreading 
over  the  surface  of  human  affairs,  as  patches  of  sunshine  spread 
and  pass  over  the  hillsides  upon  a  windy  day  in  spring,  the  idea 
that  there  is  a  happiness  in  self-devotion  greater  than  any  per- 
sonal gratification  or  triumph,  and  a  life  of  mankind  different 
and  greater  and  more  important  than  the  sum  of  all  the  in- 
dividual lives  within  it.  We  have  seen  that  idea  become  vivid 
as  a  beacon,  vivid  as  sunshine  caught  and  reflected  dazzlingly  by 
some  window  in  the  landscape,  in  the  teachings  of  Buddha,  Lao 
Tse,  and,  most  clearly  of  all,  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Through 
all  its  variations  and  corruptions  Christianity  has  never  com- 
pletely lost  the  suggestion  of  a  devotion  to  God's  commonweal 
that  makes  the  personal  pomps  of  monarchs  and  rulers  seem 
like  the  insolence  of  an  overdressed  servant  and  the  splendours 
and  gratifications  of  wealth  like  the  waste  of  robbers.  No  man 
living  in  a  community  which  such  a  religion  as  Christianity  or 
Islam  has  touched  can  be  altogether  a  slave ;  there  is  an  ineradi- 
cable quality  in  these  religions  that  compels  men  to  judge  their 
masters  and  to  realize  their  own  responsibility  for  the  world. 
As  men  have  felt  their  way  towards  this  new  state  of  mind 
from  the  fierce  self-centred  greed  and  instinctive  combative- 
ness  of  the  early  paleolithic  family  group,  they  have  sought 
to  express  the  drift  of  their  thoughts  and  necessities  very  vari- 
ously. They  have  found  themselves  in  disagreement  and  con- 
flict with  old-established  ideas,  and  there  has  been  a  natural 
tendency  to  contradict  these  ideas  flatly,  to  fly  over  to  the  abso- 
lute contrary.  Faced  by  a  world  in  which  rule  and  classes  and 
order  seem  to  do  little  but  give  opportunity  for  personal  self- 
ishness and  unrighteous  oppression,  the  first  impatient  move- 
ment was  to  declare  for  a  universal  equality  and  a  practical 
anarchy.  Faced  by  a  world  in  which  property  seemed  little 
more  than  a  protection  for  selfishness  and  a  method  of  enslave- 
ment, it  was  as  natural  to  repudiate  all  property.  Our  history 
shows  an  increasing  impulse  to  revolt  against  rulers  and  against 
ownership.  We  have  traced  it  in  the  middle  ages  burning  the 
rich  man's  chateaux  and  experimenting  in  theocracy  and  com- 
munism. In  the  French  revolutions  this  double  revolt  is  clear 
and  plain.  In  France  we  find  side  by  side,  inspired  by  the 
same  spirit  and  as  natural  parts  of  the  same  revolutionary 
movement,  men  who,  with  their  eyes  on  the  ruler's  taxes,  de- 


940  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

clared  that  property  should  be  inviolable,  and  others  who,  with 
their  eyes  on  the  employer's  hard  bargains,  declared  that  prop- 
erty should  be  abolished.  But  what  they  are  really  revolting 
against  in  each  case  is  that  the  ruler  and  the  employer,  instead 
of  becoming  servants  of  the  community,  still  remain,  like  most 
of  mankind,  self-seeking,  oppressive  individuals. 

Throughout  the  ages  we  find  this  belief  growing  in  men's 
minds  that  there  can  be  such  a  rearrangement  of  laws  and  pow- 
ers as  to  give  rule  and  order  while  still  restraining  the  egotism 
of  any  ruler  and  of  any  ruling  class  that  may  be  necessary,  and 
such  a  definition  of  property  as  will  give  freedom  without 
oppressive  power.  We  begin  to  realize  nowadays  that  these  ends 
are  only  to  be  attained  by  a  complex  constructive  effort;  they 
arise  through  the  conflict  of  new  human  needs  against  igno- 
rance and  old  human  nature;  but  throughout  the  nineteenth 
century  there  was  a  persistent  disposition  to  solve  the  problem 
by  some  simple  formula.  (And  be  happy  ever  afterwards,  re- 
gardless of  the  fact  that  all  human  life,  all  life,  is  throughout 
the  ages  nothing  but  the  continuing  solution  of  a  continuous 
synthetic  problem.) 

The  earlier  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  saw  a  number  of 
experiments  in  the  formation  of  trial  human  societies  of  a  new 
kind.  Among  the  most  important  historically  were  the  experi- 
ments and  ideas  of  Robert  Owen  (1771-1858),  a  Manchester 
cotton-spinner.  He  is  very  generally  regarded  as  the  founder 
of  modern  Socialism ;  it  was  in  connection  with  his  work  that 
the  word  "socialism"  first  arose  (about  1835). 

He  seems  to  have  been  a  thoroughly  competent  business  man ; 
he  made  a  number  of  innovations  in  the  cotton-spinning  indus- 
try, and  acquired  a  fair  fortune  at  an  early  age.  He  was  dis- 
tressed by  the  waste  of  human  possibilities  among  his  workers, 
and  he  set  himself  to  improve  their  condition  and  the  relations 
of  employer  and  employed.  This  he  sought  to  do  first  at  his 
Manchester  factory  and  afterwards  at  New  Lanark,  where  he 
found  himself  in  practical  control  of  works  employing  about 
two  thousand  people.  Between  1800  and  1828  he  achieved 
very  considerable  things :  he  reduced  the  hours  of  labour,  made 
his  factory  sanitary  and  agreeable,  abolished  the  employment 
of  very  young  children,  improved  the  training  of  his  workers, 
provided  unemployment  pay  during  a  period  of  trade  depres- 
sion, established  a  system  of  schools,  and  made  New  Lanark 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  941 

a  model  of  better  industrialism,  while  at  the  same  time  sus- 
taining its  commercial  prosperity.  He  wrote  vigorously  to 
defend  the  mass  of  mankind  against  the  charges  of  intemperance 
and  improvidence  which  were  held  to  justify  the  economic  in- 
iquities of  the  time.  He  held  that  men  and  women  are  largely 
the  product  of  their  educational  environment,  a  thesis  that 
needs  no  advocacy  to-day.  And  he  set  himself  to  a  propaganda 
of  the  views  that  New  Lanark  had  justified.  He  attacked  the 
selfish  idolence  of  his  fellow  manufacturers,  and  in  1819,  largely 
under  his  urgency,  the  first  Factory  Act  was  passed,  the  first 
attempt  to  restrain  employers  from  taking  the  most  stupid  and 
intolerable  advantages  of  their  workers'  poverty.  Some  of  the 
restrictions  of  that  Act  amaze  us  to-day.  It  seems  incredible 
now  that  it  should  ever  have  been  necessary  to  protect  little 
children  of  nine  (  ! )  from  work  in  factories,  or  to  limit  the 
nominal  working  day  of  such  employees  to  twelve  hours! 

People  are  perhaps  too  apt  to  write  of  the  industrial  revolu- 
tion as  though  it  led  to  the  enslavement  and  overworking  of 
poor  children  who  had  hitherto  been  happy  and  free.  But  this 
misinterprets  history.  From  the  very  beginnings  of  civiliza- 
tion the  little  children  of  the  poor  had  always  been  obliged  to 
do  whatever  work  they  could  do.  But  the  factory  system  gath- 
ered up  all  this  infantile  toil  and  made  it  systematic,  conspic- 
uous, and  scandalous.  The  factory  system  challenged  the  quick- 
ening human  conscience  on  that  issue.  The  British  Factory 
Act  of  1819,  weak  and  feeble  though  it  seems  to  us,  was  the 
Magna  Carta  of  childhood ;  thereafter  the  protection  of  the  chil- 
dren of  the  poor,  first  from  toil  and  then  from  bodily  starvation 
and  ignorance,  began. 

We  cannot  tell  here  in  any  detail  the  full  story  of  Owen's 
life  and  thought.  His  work  at  New  Lanark  had  been,  he  felt, 
only  a  trial  upon  a  small  working  model.  What  could  be  done 
for  one  industrial  community  could  be  done,  he  held,  for  every 
industrial  community  in  the  country;  he  advocated  a  resettle- 
ment of  the  industrial  population  in  townships  on  the  New 
Lanark  plan.  For  a  time  he  seemed  to  have  captured  the  imag- 
ination of  the  world.  The  Times  and  Morning  Post  supported 
his  proposals;  among  the  visitors  to  New  Lanark  was  the 
Grand  Dukd  Nicholas  who  succeeded  Alexander  I  as  Tsar; 
a  fast  friend  was  the  Duke  of  Kent,  son  of  George  III  and 
father  of  Queen  Victoria.  But  all  the  haters  of  change  and 


942  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

all — and  there  are  always  many  such — who  were  jealous  of 
the  poor,  and  all  the  employers  who  were  likely  to  be  troubled 
by  his  projects,  were  waiting  for  an  excuse  to  counter-attack 
him,  and  they  found  it  in  the  expression  of  his  religious  opin- 
ions, which  were  hostile  to  official  Christianity,  and  through 
those  he  was  successfully  discredited.  But  he  continued  to 
develop  his  projects  and  experiments,  of  which  the  chief  was 
a  community  at  New  Harmony  in  Indiana  (U.S.A.),  in  which 
he  sank  most  of  his  capital.  His  partners  bought  him  out 
of  the  New  Lanark  business  in  1828. 

Owen's  experiments  and  suggestions  ranged  very  widely,  and 
do  not  fall  under  any  single  formula.  There  was  nothing  doc- 
trinaire about  him.  His  New  Lanark  experiment  was  the  first 
of  a  number  of  "benevolent  businesses'7  in  the  world;  Lord 
Leverhulme's  Port  Sunlight,  the  Cadburys'  Bournville,  and  the 
Ford  businesses  in  America  are  contemporary  instances ;  it  was 
not  really  a  socialist  experiment  at  all;  it  was  a  "paternal" 
experiment.  But  his  proposals  for  state  settlements  were  what 
we  should  call  state  socialism  to-day.  His  American  experi- 
ment and  his  later  writings  point  to  a  completer  form  of  social- 
ism, a  much  wider  departure  from  the  existing  state  of  affairs. 
It  is  clear  that  the  riddle  of  currency  exercised  Owen.  He 
understood  that  we  can  no  more  hope  for  real  economic  justice 
while  we  pay  for  work  with  money  of  fluctuating  value  than 
we  could  hope  for  a  punctual  world  if  the^e  was  a  continual 
inconstant  variability  in  the  length  of  an  hour.  One  of  his 
experiments  was  an  attempt  at  a  circulation  of  labour  notes  rep- 
resenting one  hour,  five  hours,  or  twenty  hours  of  work.  The 
co-operative  societies  of  to-day,  societies  of  poor  men  which 
combine  for  the  collective  buying  and  distribution  of  commodi- 
ties or  for  collective  manufacture  or  dairying  or  other  forms  of 
agriculture,  arose  directly  out  of  his  initiatives,  though  the 
pioneer  co-operative  societies  of  his  own  time  ended  in  failure. 
Their  successors  have  spread  throughout  the  whole  world,  and 
number  to-day  some  thirty  or  forty  million  of  adherents. 

A  po*int  to  note  about  this  early  socialism  of  Owen's  is  that 
it  was  not  at  first  at  all  "democratic."  Its  initiative  was  benevo- 
lent, its  early  form  patriarchal ;  it  was  something  up  to  which 
the  workers  were  to  be  educated  by  liberally  disposed  employ- 
ers and  leaders.  The  first  socialism  was  not  a  worker's  move^ 
ment ;  it  was  a  master's  movement. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  943 

Concurrently  with  this  work  of  Owen's,  another  and  quite 
independent  series  of  developments  was  going  on  in  America 
and  Britain  which  was  destined  to  come  at  last  into  reaction 
with  his  socialistic  ideas.  The  English  law  had  long  prohib- 
ited combinations  in  restraint  of  trade,  combinations  to  raise 
prices  or  wages  by  concerted  action.  There  had  been  no  great 
hardship  in  these  prohibitions  before  the  agrarian  and  indus- 
trial changes  of  the  eighteenth  century  let  loose  a  great  swarm 
of  workers  living  from  hand  to  mouth  and  competing  for  in- 
sufficient employment.  Under  these  new  conditions,  the  workers 
in  many  industries  found  themselves  intolerably  squeezed.  They 
were  played  off  one  against  another;  day  by  day  and  hour  by 
hour  none  knew  what  concession  his  fellow  might  not  have 
made,  and  what  further  reduction  of  pay  or  increase  of  toil 
might  not  ensue.  It  became  vitally  necessary  for  the  workers  to 
make  agreements — illegal  though  they  were — against  such  un- 
derselling. At  first  these  agreements  had  to  be  made  and  sus- 
tained by  secret  societies.  Or  clubs,  established  ostensibly  for 
quite  other  purposes,  social  clubs,  funeral  societies,  and  the  like, 
served  to  mask  the  wage-protecting  combination.  The  fact  that 
these  associations  were  illegal  disposed  them  to  violence •;  they 
were  savage  against  "blacklegs"  and  "rats"  who  would  not  join 
them,  and  still  more  savage  with  traitors.  In  1824  the  House 
of  Commons  recognized  the  desirability  of  relieving  tension  in 
these  matters  by  conceding  the  right  of  workmen  to  form  com- 
binations for  "collective  bargaining"  with  the  masters.  This 
enabled  Trade  Unions  to  develop  with  a  large  measure  of  free- 
dom. At  first  very  clumsy  and  primitive  organizations  and 
with  very  restricted  freedoms,  the  Trade  Unions  have  risen 
gradually  to  be  a  real  Fourth  Estate  in  the  country,  a  great 
system  of  bodies  representing  the  mass  of  industrial  workers. 

Arising  at  first  in  Britain  and  America,  they  have,  with 
various  national  modifications,  and  under  varying  legal  condi- 
tions, spread  to  France,  Germany,  and  all  the  westernized 
communities. 

Organized  originally  to  sustain  wages  and  restrict  intolerable 
hours,  the  Trade  Union  movement  was  at  first  something  alto- 
gether distinct  from  socialism.  The  Trade  Unionist  tried  to 
make  the  best  for  himself  of  the  existing  capitalism  and  the  ex- 
Jsting  conditions  of  employment ;  the  socialist  proposed  to  change 
^jpie  system.  It  was  the  imagination  and  generalizing  power  of 


944.  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Karl  Marx  which  brought  these  two  movements  into  relation- 
ship. He  was  a  man  with  the  sense  of  history  very  strong  in 
him ;  he  was  the  first  to  perceive  that  the  old  social  classes  that 
had  endured  since  the  beginning  of  civilization  were  in  process 
of  dissolution  and  regrouping.  His  racial  Jewish  commercial- 
ism made  the  antagonism  of  property  and  labour  very  plain  to 
him.  And  his  upbringing  in  Germany — where,  as  we  have 
pointed  out,  the  tendency  of  class  to  harden  into  caste  was  more 
evident  than  in  any  other  European  country — made  him  con- 
ceive of  labour  as  presently  becoming  "class  conscious"  and 
collectively  antagonistic  to  the  property-concentrating  classes. 
In  the  Trade  Union  movement  which  was  spreading  over  the 
world,  he  believed  he  saw  this  development  of  class-conscious 
labour. 

What,  he  asked,  would  be  the  outcome  of  the  "class  war"  of 
the  capitalist  and  proletariat  ?  The  capitalist  adventurers,  he 
alleged,  because  of  their  inherent  greed  and  combativeness, 
would  gather  power  over  capital  into  fewer  and  fewer  hands, 
until  at  last  they  would  concentrate  all  the  means  of  production, 
transit,  and  the  like  into  a  form  seizable  by  the  workers,  whose 
class  consciousness  and  solidarity  would  be  developed  pari  passu 
by  the  process  of  organizing  and  concentrating  industry.  They 
would  seize  this  capital  and  work  it  for  themselves.  This 
would  be  the  social  revolution.  Then  individual  property  and 
freedom  would  be  restored,  based  upon  the  common  ownership 
of  the  earth  and  the  management  by  the  community  as  a  whole 
of  the  great  productive  services  which  the  private  capitalist 
had  organized  and  concentrated.  This  would  be  the  end  of  the 
"capitalist"  system,  but  not  the  end  of  the  system  of  capitalism. 
State  capitalism  would  replace  private  owner  capitalism. 

This  marks  a  great  stride  away  from  the  socialism  of  Owen. 
Owen  (like  Plato)  looked  to  the  common  sense  of  men  of  any 
or  every  class  to  reorganize  the  casual  and  faulty  political, 
economic,  and  social  structure.  Marx  found  something  more 
in  the  nature  of  a  driving  force  in  his  class  hostility  based 
on  expropriation  and  injustice.  And  he  was  not  simply  a 
prophetic  theorist;  he  was  also  a  propagandist  of  the  revolt  of 
labour,  the  revolt  of  the  so-called  "proletariat."  Labour,  he 
perceived,  had  a  common  interest  against  the  capitalist  every- 
where, though  under  the  test  of  the  Great  Power  wars  of  the 
time,  and  particularly  of  the  liberation  of  Italy,  he  showed  that 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  945 

he  failed  to  grasp  the  fact  that  labour  everywhere  has  a  common 
interest  in  the  peace  of  the  world.  But  with  the  social  revolution 
in  view  he  did  succeed  in  inspiring  the  formation  of  an  inter- 
national league  of  workers,  the  First  International. 

The  subsequent  history  ol  socialism  is  chequered  between  the 
British  tradition  of  Owen  and  the  German  class  feeling  of  Marx. 
What  is  called  Fabian  Socialism,  the  exposition  of  socialism 
by  the  London  Fabian  Society,  makes  its  appeal  to  reasonable 
men  of  all  classes.  What  are  called  "Revisionists"  in  German 
Socialism  incline  in  the  same  direction.  But  on  the  whole,  it 
is  Marx  who  has  carried  the  day  against  Owen,  and  the  gen- 
eral disposition  of  socialists  throughout  the  world  is  to  look 
to  the  organization  of  labour  and  labour  only  to  supply  the 
fighting  forces  that  will  disentangle  the  political  and  economic  or- 
ganization of  human  affairs  from  the  hands  of  the  more  or  less 
irresponsible  private  owners  and  adventurers  who  now  con- 
trol it. 

These  are  the  broad  features  of  the  project  which  is  called 
Socialism.  We  will  discuss  its  incompletenesses  and  inade- 
quacies in  our  next  section.  It.  was  perhaps  inevitable  that 
socialism  should  be  greatly  distraught  and  subdivided  by  doubts 
and  disputes  and  sects  and  schools;  they  are  growth  symptoms 
like  the  spots  on  a  youth's  face.  Here  we  can  but  glance  at 
the  difference  between  state  socialism,  which  would  run  the 
economic  business  of  the  country  through  its  political  govern- 
ment, and  the  newer  schools  of  syndicalism  and  guild  socialism 
which  would  entrust  a  large  measure  in  the  government  of  each 
industry  to  the  workers  of  every  grade — including  the  directors 
and  managers — engaged  in  that  industry.  This  "guild  social- 
ism" is  really  a  new  sort  of  capitalism  with  a  committee  of 
workers  and  officials  in  each  industry  taking  the  place  of  the 
free  private  capitalists  of  that  industry.  The  personnel  becomes 
the  collective  capitalist.  Nor  can  we  discuss  the  undemocratic 
idea  of  the  Russian  leader  Lenin,  that  a  population  cannot 
judge  of  socialism  before  it  has  experienced  it,  and  that  a  group 
of  socialists  are  therefore  justified  in  seizing  and  socializing, 
if  they  can,  the  life  of  a  country  without  at  first  setting  up  any 
democratic  form  of  general  government  at  all,  for  which  sort 
of  seizure  he  uses  the  Marxian  phrase,  a  very  imcompetent 
phrase,  the  "dictatorship  of  the  proletariat." 

All  Russia  now  is  a  huge  experiment  in  that  dictatorship. 


946  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  ''proletariat'7  is  supposed  to  be  dictating  the  government 
of  Russia  through  committees  of  workmen  and  soldiers,  the 
Soviets,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact  these  Soviets  have  little  or  no 
real  directive  power.  They  assemble  in  meetings  so  big  as 
to  be  practically  mass  meetings,  and  the  utmost  they  can  do  is 
to  give  a  general  assent  to  the  proceedings  of  the  government. 
The  Petersburg  Soviet,  which  the  writer  visited  in  September, 
1920,  was  a  mass  meeting  of  over  three  thousand  people,  in- 
capable of  any  detailed  criticism  or  direction  of  the  Bolshevik 
government.1 

§5 

We  are  all  socialists  nowadays,  said  Sir  William  Harcourt 
years  ago,  and  that  is  loosely  true  to-day.  There  can  be  few 
people  who  fail  to  realize  the  provisional  nature  and  the  dan- 
gerous instability  of  our  present  political  and  economic  system, 
and  still  fewer  who  believe  with  the  doctrinaire  individualists 
that  profit-hunting  "go  as  you  please"  will  guide  mankind  to 
any  haven  of  prosperity  and  happiness.  Great  rearrangements 
are  necessary,  and  a  systematic  legal  subordination  of  personal 
self-seeking  to  the  public  good.  So  far  most  reasonable  men  are 
socialists.  But  these  are  only  preliminary  propositions.  How 
far  has  socialism  and  modern  thought  generally  gone  towards 
working  out  the  conception  of  this  new  political  and  social  order, 
of  which  our  world  admittedly  stands  in  need  ?  We  are  obliged 
to  answer  that  there  is  no  clear  conception  of  the  new  state  to- 
wards which  we  vaguely  struggle,  that  Qur  science  of  human 
relationships  is  still  so  crude  and  speculative  as  to  leave  us  with- 
out definite  guidance  upon  a  score  of  primarily  important  issues. 
In  1920  we  are  no  more  in  a  position  to  set  up  a  scientifically 
conceived  political  system  in  the  world  than  were  men  to  set 
up  an  electric  power  station  in  1820.  They  could  not  have  done 
that  then  to  save  their  lives. 

The  Marxist  system  points  us  to  an  accumulation  of  revolu- 
tionary forces  in  the  modern  world.  These  forces  will  continu- 
ally tend  towards  revolution.  But  Marx  assumed  too  hastily 
that  a  revolutionary  impulse  would  necessarily  produce  an 
ordered  state  of  a  new  and  better  kind.  A  revolution  may  stop 
half-way  in  mere  destruction.  ~No  socialist  sect  has  yet  defined 

1  Wells,  Russia  in  the  Shadows. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY         947 

its  projected  government  clearly ;  the  Bolsheviks  in  their  Rus- 
sian experiment  seem  to  have  been  guided  by  a  phrase,  the  dic- 
tatorship of  the  proletariat,  and  in  practice,  we  are  told,  Trotsky 
and  Lenin  have  proved  as  autocratic  as  the  less  intelligent  but 
equally  well-meaning  Tsar,  Alexander  I.  We  have  been  at 
some  pains  to  show  from  our  brief  study  of  the  French  revolu- 
tion that  a  revolution  can  establish  nothing  permanent  that 
has  not  already  been  thought  out  beforehand  and  apprehended 
by  the  general  mind.  The  French  republic,  confronted  with 
unexpected  difficulties  in  economics,  currency,  and  international 
relationships,  collapsed  to  the  egotisms  of  the  newly  rich  people 
of  the  Directory,  and  finally  to  the  egotism  of  Napoleon.  Law 
and  a  plan,  steadily  upheld,  are  more  necessary  in  revolutionary 
times  than  in  ordinary  humdrum  times,  because  in  revolution- 
ary times  society  degenerates  much  more  readily  into  a  mere 
scramble  under  the  ascendancy  of  the  forcible  and  cunning. 

If  in  general  terms  we  take  stock  of  the  political  and  social 
science  of  our  age,  we  shall  measure  something  of  the  prelimi- 
nary intellectual  task  still  to  be  done  by  mankind  before  we 
can  hope  to  see  any  permanent  constructive  achievements  emerg- 
ing from  the  mere  traditionalism  and  adventuring  that  rule 
our  collective  affairs  to-day.  This  Socialism,  which  professes 
to  be  a  complete  theory  of  a  new  social  order,  we  discover,  when 
we  look  into  it,  to  be  no  more  than  a  partial  theory — very 
illuminating,  so  far  as  it  goes — about  property.  We  have  already 
discussed  the  relationship  of  social  development  to  the  restric- 
tion of  the  idea  of  property.  There  are  various  schools  of 
thought  which  would  restrict  property  more  or  less  completely. 
Communism  is  the  proposal  to  abolish  property  altogether,  or, 
in  other  words,  to  hold  all  things  in  common.  Modern  Social- 
ism, on  the  other  hand — or,  to  give  it  a  more  precise  name, 
"Collectivism" — does  clearly  distinguish  between  personal  prop- 
erty and  collective  property.  The  gist  of  the  socialist  proposal 
is  that  land  and  all  the  natural  means  of  production,  transit, 
and  distribution  should  be  collectively  owned.  Within  these 
limits  there  is  to  be  much  free  private  ownership  and  unre- 
stricted personal  freedom.  Given  efficient  administration,  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  many  people  nowadays  would  dispute 
that  proposal.  But  socialism  has  never  gone  on  to  a  thorough 
examination  of  that  proviso  for  efficient  administration. 

Again,  what  community  is  it  that  is  to  own  the  collective 


948  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

property ;  is  it  to  be  the  sovereign  or  the  township  or  the  county 
or  the  nation  or  mankind  ?  Socialism  makes  no  clear  answer. 
Socialists  are  very  free  with  the  word  "nationalize,"  but  we 
have  been  subjecting  the  ideas  of  "nations"  and  "nationalism" 
to  some  destructive  criticism  in  this  Outline.  If  socialists 
object  to  a  single  individual  claiming  a  mine  or  a  great  stretch 
of  agricultural  land  as  his  own  individual  property,  with  a 
right  to  refuse  or  barter  its  use  and  profit  to  others,  why 
should  they  permit  a  single  nation  to  monopolize  the  mines 
or  trade  routes  or  natural  wealth  of  the  territories  in  whicn 
it  lives,  against  the  rest  of  mankind  ?  There  seems  to  be  great 
confusion  in  socialist  theory  in  this  matter.  And  unless  human 
life  is  to  become  a  mass  meeting  of  the  race  in  permanent  ses- 
sion, how  is  the  community  to  appoint  its  officers  to  carry  on 
its  collective  concerns  ?  After  all,  the  private  owner  of  land  or 
of  a  business  or  the  like  is  a  sort  of  public  official  in  so  far  as 
his  ownership  is  sanctioned  and  protected  by  the  community. 
Instead  of  being  paid  a  salary  or  fees,  he  is  allowed  to  make  a 
profit.  The  only  valid  reason  for  dismissing  him  from  his  own- 
ership is  that  the  new  control  to  be  substituted  will  be  more 
efficient  and  profitable  and  satisfactory  to  the  community.  And, 
being  dismissed,  he  has  at  least  the  same  claim  to  consideration 
from  the  community  that  he  himself  has  shown  in  the  past 
to  the  worker  thrown  out  of  employment  by  a  mechanical 
invention. 

This  question  of  administration,  the  sound  and  adequate  bar 
to  much  immediate  socialization,  brings  us  to  the  still  largely 
unsolved  problem  of  human  association ;  how  are  we  to  secure 
the  best  direction  of  human  affairs  and  the  maximum  of  will- 
ing co-operation  with  that  direction?  This  is  ultimately  a 
complex  problem  in  psychology,  but  it  is  absurd  to  pretend 
that  it  is  an  insoluble  one.  There  must  be  a  definite  best,  which 
is  the  right  thing,  in  these  matters.  But  if  it  is  not  insoluble, 
it  is  equally  unreasonable  to  pretend  that  it  has  been  solved. 
The  problem  in  its  completeness  involves  the  working  out  of  the 
best  methods  in  the  following  departments,  and  their  complete 
correlation : — 

(i)  Education. — The  preparation  of  the  individual  for  an 
understanding  and  willing  co-operation  in  the  world's  affairs. 

(ii)  Information. — The  continual  truthful  presentation  of 
public  affairs  to  the  individual  for  his  judgment  and  approval. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY         949 

Closely  connected  with  this  need  for  current  information  is 
the  codification  of  the  law,  the  problem  of  keeping  the  law  plain, 
clear,  and  accessible  to  all. 

(iii)  Representation. — The  selection  of  representatives  and 
agents  to  act  in  the  collective  interest  in  harmony  with  the 
general  will  based  on  this  education  and  plain  information. 

(iv)  The  Executive. — The  appointment  of  executive  agents 
and  the  maintenance  of  means  for  keeping  them  responsible 
to  the  community,  without  at  the  same  time  hampering  intelli- 
gent initiatives. 

(v)  Thought  and  Research. — The  systematic  criticism  of  af- 
fairs and  laws  to  provide  data  for  popular  judgments,  and 
through  those  judgments  to  ensure  the  secular  improvement 
of  the  human  organization. 

These  are  the  five  heads  under  which  the  broad  problem  of 
human  society  presents  itself  to  us.  In  the  world  around  us 
we  see  makeshift  devices  at  work  in  all  those  branches,  ill  co- 
ordinated one  with  another  and  unsatisfactory  in  themselves. 
We  see  an  educational  system  meanly  financed  and  equipped, 
badly  organized  and  crippled  by  the  interventions  and  hostilities 
of  religious  bodies ;  we  see  popular  information  supplied  chiefly 
by  a  venal  press  dependant  upon  advertisements  and  subsidies ; 
we  see  farcical  methods  of  election  returning  politicians  to 
power  as  unrepresentative  as  any  hereditary  ruler  or  casual 
conqueror;  everywhere  the  executive  is  more  or  less  influenced 
or  controlled  by  groups  of  rich  adventurers,  and  the  pursuit  of 
political  and  social  science  and  of  public  criticism  is  still  the 
work  of  devoted  and  eccentric  individuals  rather  than  a  recog- 
nized and  honoured  function  in  the  state.  There  is  a  gigantic 
task  before  right-thinking  men  in  the  cleansing  and  sweetening 
of  the  politician's  stable;  and  until  it  is  done,  any  complete 
realization  of  socialism  is  impossible.  While  private  adven- 
turers control  the  political  life  of  the  state,  it  is  ridiculous  to 
think  of  the  state  taking  over  collective  economic  interests  from 
private  adventurers. 

Not  only  has  the  socialist  movement  failed  thus  far  to  pro- 
duce a  scientifically  reasoned  scheme  for  the  correlation  of  edu- 
cation, law,  and  the  exercise  of  public  power,  but  even  in  the 
economic  field,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out,  creative  forces 
wait  for  the  conception  of  a  right  organization  of  credit  and  a 
right  method  of  payment  and  interchange.  It  is  a  truism  that 


950  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  willingness  of  the  worker  depends,  among  other  things, 
upon  his  complete  confidence  in  the  purchasing  power  of  the 
currency  in  which  he  is  paid.  As  this  confidence  goes,  work 
ceases,  except  in  so  far  as  it  can  be  rewarded  hy  payment  in 
goods.  But  there  is  no  sufficient  science  of  currency  and  busi- 
ness psychology  to  restrain  governments  from  the  most  disturb- 
ing interferences  with  the  public  credit  and  with  the  circulation. 
And  such  interferences  lead  straight  to  the  cessation  of  work, 
that  is,  of  the  production  of  necessary  things.  Upon  such  vital 
practical  questions  it  is  scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  the  mass 
of  those  socialists  who  would  recast  the  world  have  no  definite 
ideas  at  all.  Yet  in  a  socialist  world  quite  as  much  as  in  any 
other  sort  of  world,  people  must  be  paid  money  for  their  work 
rather  than  be  paid  in  kind  if  any  such  thing  as  personal  free- 
dom is  to  continue.  Here,  too,  there  must  be  an  ascertainable 
right  thing  to  do.  Until  that  is  determined,  history  in  these 
matters  will  continue  to  be  not  so  much  a  record  of  experiments 
as  of  flounderings. 

And  in  another  direction  the  social  and  political  thinking 
of  the  nineteenth  century  was,  in  the  face  of  the  vastness  of  the 
mechanical  revolution,  timid,  limited,  and  insufficient,  and  that 
was  in  regard  to  international  relations.  The  reader  of  social- 
istic literature  will  find  the  socialists  constantly  writing  and 
talking  of  the  "State,"  and  never  betraying  any  realization 
that  the  "State"  might  be  all  sorts  of  organizations  in  all  sorts 
of  areas,  from  the  republic  of  San  Marino  to  the  British  Em- 
pire. It  is  true  that  Karl  Marx  had  a  conception  of  a  solidarity 
of  interests  between  the  workers  in  all  the  industrialized  coun- 
tries, but  there  is  little  or  no  suggestion  in  Marxist  socialism 
of  the  logical  corollary  of  this,  the  establishment  of  a  demo- 
cratic world  federal  government  (with  national  or  provincial 
"state"  governments)  as  a  natural  consequence  of  his  projected 
social  revolution.  At  most  there  is  a  vague  aspiration.  But  if 
there  is  any  logic  about  the  Marxist,  it  should  be  his  declared 
political  end  for  which  he  should  work  without  ceasing.  Put 
to  the  test  of  the  war  of  1914,  the  socialists  of  almost,  all  the 
European  countries  showed  that  their  class-conscious  interna- 
tionalism was  veneered  very  thinly  indeed  over  their  patriotic 
feelings,  and  had  to  no  degree  replaced  them.  Everywhere 
during:  the  German  war  socialists  denounced  that  war  as  made 
by  capitalist  governments,  but  it  produces  little  or  no  perma- 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  951 

nent  effect  to  denounce  a  government  or  a  world  system  unless 
you  have  a  working  idea  of  a  better  government  and  a  better 
system  to  replace  it. 

We  state  these  things  here  because  they  are  facts,  and  a  living 
and  necessary  part  of  a  contemporary  survey  of  human  history. 
It  is  not  our  task  either  to  advocate  or  controvert  socialism. 
But  it  is  in  our  picture  to  note  that  political  and  social  life 
are,  and  must  remain,  chaotic  and  disastrous  without  the  devel- 
opment of  some  such  constructive  scheme  as  socialism  sketches, 
and  to  point  out  clearly  how  far  away  the  world  is  at  present 
from  any  such  scheme.  An  enormous  amount  of  intellectual 
toil  and  discussion  and  education  and  many  years — whether 
decades  or  centuries,  no  man  can  tell — must  intervene  before  a 
new  order,  planned  as  ships  and  railways  are  planned,  runs,  as 
the  cables  and  the  postal  deliveries  run,  over  the  whole  surface 
of  our  earth.  And  until  such  a  new  order  draws  mankind  to- 
gether with  its  net,  human  life,  as  we  shall  presently  show  by 
the  story  of  the  European  wars  since  1854,  must  become  more 
and  more  casual,  dangerous,  miserable,  anxious,  and  disastrous 
because  of  the  continually  more  powerful  and  destructive  war 
methods  the  continuing  mechanical  revolution  produces. 

§  6l 

While  the  mechanical  revolution  which  the  growth  of  phys- 
ical science  had  brought  about  was  destroying  the  ancient  social 
classification  of  the  civilized  state  which  had  been  evolved 
through  thousands  of  years,  and  producing  new  possibilities  and 
new  ideals  of  a  righteous  human  community  and  a  righteous 
world  order,  a  change  at  least  as  great  and  novel  was  going  on 
in  the  field  of  religious  thought.  That  same  growth  of  scien- 
tific knowledge  from  which  sprang  the  mechanical  revolution 
was  the  moving  cause  of  these  religious  disturbances. 

In  the  opening  chapters  of  this  Outline  we  have  given  the 
main  story  of  the  Record  of  the  Rocks ;  we  have  shown  life  for 
the  little  beginning  of  consciousness  that  it  is  in  the  still  wait- 
ing vastness  of  the  void  of  space  and  time.  But  before  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  this  enormous  prospect  of  the 

1  For  a  closely  parallel  view  of  religion  to  that  given  here,  see  Outspoken 
Essai/s,  by  Dean  Inge,  Essays  VIII  and  IX  on  St,  PdUl  and  on 
tionalism  and  Mysticism, 


952  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

past  which  fills  a  modern  mind  with  humility  and  illimitable 
hope  was  hidden  from  the  general  consciousness  of  our  race. 
It  was  veiled  by  the  curtain  of  a  Sumerian  legend.  The  heavens 
were  no  more  than  a  stage  background  to  a  little  drama  of 
kings.  Men  had  been  too  occupied  with  their  own  private  pas- 
sions and  personal  affairs  to  heed  the  intimations  of  their  own 
great  destiny  that  lay  about  them  everywhere. 

They  learnt  their  true  position  in  space  long  before  they 
placed  themselves  in  time.  We  have  already  named  the  earlier 
astronomers,  and  told  how  Galileo  was  made  to  recant  his  as- 
sertion that  the  earth  moved  round  the  sun.  He  was  made 
to  do  so  by  the  church,  and  the  church  was  stirred  to  make  him 
do  so  because  any  doubt  that  the  world  was  the  centre  of  the 
universe  seemed  to  strike  fatally  at  the  authority  of  Christianity. 

Now,  upon  that  matter  the  teller  of  modern  history  is  obliged 
to  be  at  once  cautious  and  bold.  He  has  to  pick  his  way  be- 
tween cowardly  evasion  on  the  one  hand,  and  partisanship  on 
the  other.  As  far  as  possible  he  must,  confine  himself  to  facts 
and  restrain  his  opinions.  Yet  it  is  well  to  remember  that  no 
opinions  can  be  altogether  restrained.  The  writer  has  his  own 
very  strong  and  definite  persuasions,  and  the  reader  must  bear 
that  in  mind.  It  is  a  fact  in  history  that  the  teaching  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  had  in  it  something  profoundly  new  and  creative; 
he  preached  a  new  Kingdom  of  Heaven  in  the  hearts  and  in  the 
world  of  men.  There  was  nothing  in  his  teaching,  so  far  as 
we  can  judge  it  at  this  distance  of  time,  to  clash  or  interfere 
with  any  discovery  or  expansion  of  the  history  of  the  world 
and  mankind.  But  it  is  equally  a  fact  in  history  that  St.  Paul 
and  his  successors  added  to  or  completed  or  imposed  upon  or 
substituted  another  doctrine  for — as  you  may  prefer  to  think — 
the  plain  and  profoundly  revolutionary  teachings  of  Jesus  by 
expounding  a  subtle  and  complex  theory  of  salvation,  a  salva- 
tion which  could  be  attained  very  largely  by  belief  and  formali- 
ties, without  any  serious  disturbance  of  the  believer's  ordinary 
habits  and  occupations,  and  that  this  Pauline  teaching  did 
involve  very  definite  beliefs  about  the  history  of  the  world  and 
man.  It  is  not  the  business  of  the  historian  to  controyert  or 
explain  these  matters;  the  question  of  their  ultimate  signifi- 
cance depends  upon  the  theologian ;  the  historian's  concern  is 
merely  with  the  fact  that  official  Christianity  throughout  the 
world  adopted  St.  Paul's  view  so  plainly  expressed  in  his  epis- 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  953 

ties  and  so  untraceable  in  the  gospels,  that  the  meaning  of 
religion  lay  not  in  the  future,  but  in  the  past,  and  that  Jesus 
was  not  so  much  a  teacher  of  wonderful  new  things,  as  a  pre- 
destinate divine  blood  sacrifice  of  deep  mystery  and  aacredness 
made  in  atonement  of  a  particular  historical  act  of  disobedience 
to  the  Creator  committed  by  our  first  parents,  Adam  and  Eve, 
in  response  to  the  temptation  of  a  serpent  in  the  Garden  of 
Eden.  Upon  the  belief  in  that  Fall  as  a  fact,  and  not  upon 
the  personality  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  upon  the  theories  of  Paul, 
and  not  upon  the  injunctions  of  Jesus,  doctrinal  Christianity 
built  itself. 

We  have  already  noted  that  this  story  of  the  special  creation 
of  the  world  and  of  Adam  and  Eve  and  the  serpent  was  also 
an  ancient  Babylonian  story,  and  probably  a  still  more  ancient 
Sumerian  story,  and  that  the  Jewish  sacred  books  were  the 
medium  by  which  this  very  ancient  and  primitive  "heliolithic" 
serpent  legend  entered  Christianity.  Wherever  official  Chris- 
tianity has  gone,  it  has  taken  this  story  with  it.  It  has  tied  it- 
self up  to  that  story.  Until  a  century  and  less  ago  the  whole 
Christianized  world  felt  bound  to  believe  and  did  believe,  that 
the  universe  had  been  specially  created  in  the  course  of  six  days 
by  the  word  of  God  a  few  thousand  years  before — according 
to  Bishop  Ussher,  4004  B.C.  (The  Universal  History,  in  forty- 
two  volumes,  published  in  1779  by  a  group  of  London  book- 
sellers, discusses  whether  the  precise  date  of  the  first  day  of 
Creation  was  March  21st  or  September  21st,  4004  B.C.,  and 
inclines  to  the  view  that  the  latter  was  the  more  probable 
season.) 

Upon  this  historical  assumption  rested  the  religious  fabric 
of  the  Western  and  Westernized  civilization,  and  yet  the  whole 
world  was  littered,  the  hills,  mountains,  deltas,  and  seas 
were  bursting  with  evidence  of  its  utter  absurdity.  The  re- 
ligious life  of  the  leading  nations,  still  a  very  intense  and  sin- 
cere religious  life,  was  going  on  in  a  house  of  history  built 
upon  sand. 

There  is  frequent  recognition  in  classical  literature  of  a 
sounder  cosmogony.  Aristotle  was  aware  of  the  broad  princi- 
ples of  modern  geology,  they  shine  through  the  speculations  of 
Lucretius,  and  we  have  noted  also  Leonardo  da  Vinci's  (1452- 
1519)  lucid  interpretation  of  fossils.  A  Frenchman,  Descartes 
(1596-1650),  speculated  boldly  upon  the  incandescent  begin- 


954  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

nings  of  our  globe,  and  a  Dane,  Steno  (1631-87),  began  the 
collection  of  fossils  and  the  description  of  strata.  But  it  was 
only  as  the  eighteenth  century  drew  to  its  close  that  the  syste- 
matic study  of  geology  assumed  such  proportions  as  to  affect 
the  general  authority  of  the  Bible  version  of  that  ancient 
Sumerian  narrative.  Contemporaneously  with  the  Universal 
History  quoted  above,  a  great  French  naturalist,  Buffon,  was 
writing  upon  the  Epochs  of  Nature  (1778),  and  boldly  extend- 
ing the  age  of  the  world  to  70,000  or  75,000  years.  He  divided 
his  story  into  six  epochs  to  square  with  the  six  days  of  the  Crea- 
tion story.  These  days,  it  was  argued,  were  figurative  days; 
they  were  really  ages.  There  was  a  general  disposition  to  do 
this  on  the  part  of  the  new  science  of  geology.  By  that  accom- 
modating device,  geology  contrived  to  make  a  peace  with  ortho- 
dox religious  teaching  that  lasted  until  the  middle  of  the  nine- 
teenth century. 

We  cannot  trace  here  the  contributions  of  such  men  as  Hut- 
ton  and  Playfair  and  Sir  Charles  Lyell,  and  the  Frenchmen 
Lamarck  and  Cuvier,  in  unfolding  and  developing  the  record 
of  the  rocks.  It  was  only  slowly  that  the  general  intelligence 
of  the  Western  world  was  awakened  to  two  disconcerting  facts : 
firstly,  that  the  succession  of  life  in  the  geological  record  did 
not  correspond  to  the  acts  of  the  six  days  of  creation;  and, 
secondly,  that  the  record,  in  harmony  with  a  mass  of  biological 
facts,  pointed  away  from  the  Bible  assertion  of  a  separate  crea- 
tion of  each  species  straight  towards  a  genetic  relation  between 
all  forms  of  life,  in  which  even  man  was  included!  The  im- 
portance of  this  last  issue  to  the  existing  doctrinal  system  was 
manifest.  If  all  the  animals  and  man  had  been  evolved  in  this 
ascendant  manner,  then  there  had  been  no  first  parents,  no  Eden, 
and  no  Fall.  And  if  there  had  been  no  fall,  then  the  entire 
historical  fabric  of  Christianity,  the  story  of  the  first  sin  and 
the  reason  for  an  atonement,  upon  which  the  current  teaching 
based  Christian  emotion  and  morality,  collapsed  like  a  house 
of  cards. 

It  was  with  something  like  horror,  therefore,  that  great 
numbers  of  honest  and  religious-spirited  men  followed  the  work 
of  the  English  naturalist,  Charles  Darwin  (1809-82);  in 
1859  he  published  his  Origin  of  Species  by  Means  of  Natural 
Selection,  a  powerful  and  permanently  valuable  exposition  of 
that  conception  of  the  change  and  development  of  species  which 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  955 

we  have  sketched  briefly  in  Chapter  III;  and  in  1871  he  com- 
pleted the  outline  of  his  work  with  the  Descent  of  Man,  which 
brought  man  definitely  into  the  same  scheme  of  development 
with  the  rest  of  life. 

Many  men  and  women  are  still  living  who  can  remember 
the  dismay  and  distress  among  ordinary  intelligent  people  in  the 
Western  communities  as  the  invincible  case  of  the  biologists 
and  geologists  against  the  orthodox  Christian  cosmogony  un- 
folded itself.  The  minds  of  many  resisted  the  new  knowledge 
instinctively  and  irrationally.  Their  whole  moral  edifice  was 
built  upon  false  history;  they  were  too  old  and  set  to  rebuild 
it ;  they  felt  the  practical  truth  of  their  moral  convictions,  and 
this  new  truth  seemed  to  them  to  be  incompatible  with  that. 
They  believed  that  to  assent  to  it  would  be  to  prepare  a  moral 
collapse  for  the  world.  And  so  they  produced  a  moral  collapse 
by  not  assenting  to  it.  The  universities  in  England  particu- 
larly, being  primarily  clerical  in  their  constitution,  resisted  the 
new  learning  very  bitterly.  During  the  seventies  and  eighties 
a  stormy  controversy  raged  throughout  the  civilized  world. 
The  quality  of  the  discussions  and  the  fatal  ignorance  of  the 
church  may  be  gauged  by  a  description  in  Hackett's  Common- 
place Book  of  a  meeting  of  the  British  Association  in  1860,  at 
which  Bishop  Wilberforce  assailed  Huxley,  the  great  champion 
of  the  Darwinian  views,  in  this  fashion. 

Facing  "Huxley  with  a  smiling  insolence,  he  begged  to  know, 
was  it  through  his  grandfather  or  grandmother  that  he  claimed 
his  descent  from  a  monkey?  Huxley  turned  to  his  neighbour, 
and  said,  'The  Lord  hath  delivered  him  into  my  hands/  Then 
he  stood  before  us  and  spoke  these  tremendous  words,  'He 
was  not  ashamed  to  have  a  monkey  for  his  ancestor;  but  he 
would  be  ashamed  to  be  connected  with  a  man  who  used  great 
gifts  to  obscure  the  truth/  '  (Another  version  has  it:  "I 
have  certainly  said  that  a  man  has  no  reason  to  be  ashamed 
of  having  an  ape  for  his  grandfather.  If  there  were  an  ancestor 
whom  I  should  feel  ashamed  in  recalling,  it  would  rather  be 
a  man  'of  restless  and  versatile  intellect  who  plunges  into  scien- 
tific questions  with  which  he  has  no  real  acquaintance,  only  to 
obscure  them  by  an  aimless  rhetoric  and  distract  the  attention 
of  his  audience  from  the  real  point  at  issue  by  eloquent  di- 
gressions and  skilled  appeals  to  prejudice.")  These  words 
were  certainly  spoken  with  passion.  The  scene  was  one  of 


95G  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

great  excitement.  A  lady  fainted,  says  Hackett.  .  .  .  Such 
was  the  temper  of  this  controversy. 

The  Darwinian  movement  took  formal  Christianity  una- 
wares, suddenly.  Formal  Christianity  was  confronted  with  a 
clearly  demonstrable  error  in  her  theological  statements.  The 
Christian  theologians  were  neither  wise  enough  nor  mentally 
nimble  enough  to  accept  the  new  truth,  modify  their  formulae, 
and  insist  upon  the  living  and  undiminished  vitality  of  the 
religious  reality  those  formula?  had  hitherto  sufficed  to  express. 
For  the  discovery  of  man's  descent  from  sub-human  forms  does 
not  even  remotely  touch  the  teaching  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven. 
Yet  priests  and  bishops  raged  at  Darwin ;  foolish  attempts  were 
made  to  suppress  Darwinian  literature  and  to  insult  and  dis- 
credit the  exponents  of  the  new  views.  There  was  much  wild 
talk  of  the  "antagonism"  of  religion  and  science.  Now  in  all 
ages  there  have  been  sceptics  in  Christendom.  The  Emperor 
Frederick  II  was  certainly  a  sceptic ;  in  the  eighteenth  century 
Gibbon  and  Voltaire  were  openly  anti-Christian,  and  their  writ- 
ings influenced  a  number  of  scattered  readers.  But  these  were 
exceptional  people.  .  .  .  Now  the  whole  of  Christendom  became 
as  a  whole  sceptical.  This  new  controversy  touched  everybody 
who  read  a  book  or  heard  intelligent  conversation.  A  new 
generation  of  young  people  grew  up,  and  they  found  the  de- 
fenders of  Christianity  in  an  evil  temper,  fighting  their  cause 
without  dignity  or  fairness.  It  was  the  orthodox  theology  that 
the  new  scientific  advances  had  compromised,  but  the  angry 
theologians  declared  that  it  was  religion. 

In  the  end  men  may  discover  that  religion  shines  all  the 
brighter  for  the  loss  of  its  doctrinal  wrappings,  but  to  the  youm> 
it  seemed  as  if  indeed  there  had  been  a  conflict  of  science  and 
religion,  and  that  in  that  conflict  science  had  won. 

The  immediate  effect  of  this  great  dispute  upon  the  ideas 
and  methods  of  people  in  the  prosperous  and  influential  classes 
throughout  the  westernized  world  was  very  detrimental  indeed. 
The  new  biological  science  was  bringing  nothing  constructive 
as  yet  to  replace  the  old  moral  stand-bys.  A  real  de-moraliza- 
tion  ensued.  The  general  level  of  social  life  in  those  classes 
was  far  higher  in  the  early  twentieth  than  in  the  early  seven- 
teenth century,  but  in  one  respect,  in  respect  to  disinterested- 
ness and  conscientiousness  in  these  classes,  it  is  probable  that 
the  tone  of  the  earlier  age  was  better  than  the  latter.  In  the 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY        957 

owning  and  active  classes  of  the  seventeenth  century,  in  spite 
of  a  few  definite  "infidels/7  there  was  probably  a  much  higher 
percentage  of  men  and  women  who  prayed  sincerely,  who 
searched  their  souls  to  find  if  they  had  done  evil,  and  who  were 
prepared  to  suffer  and  make  great  sacrifices  for  what  they  con- 
ceived to  be  right,  than  in  the  opening  years  of  the  twentieth 
century.  There  was  a  real  loss  of  faith  after  1859.  The  true 
gold  of  religion  was  in  many  cases  thrown  away  with  the 
worn-out  purse  that  had  contained  it  for  so  long,  and  it  was  not 
recovered.  Towards  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  a  crude 
misunderstanding  of  Darwinism  had  become  the  fundamental 
mindstuif  of  great  masses  of  the  "educated"  everywhere.  The 
seventeenth-century  kings  and  owners  and  rulers  and  leaders  had 
had  the  idea  at  the  back  of  their  minds  that  they  prevailed  by 
the  will  of  God ;  they  really  feared  him,  they  got  priests  to  put 
things  right  for  them  with  him ;  when  they  were  wicked,  they 
tried  not  to  think  of  him.  But  the  old  faith  of  the  kings,  own- 
ers, and  rulers  of  the  opening  twentieth  century  had  faded 
under  the  actinic  light  of  scientific  criticism.  Prevalent  peo- 
ples at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  believed  that  they 
prevailed  by  virtue  of  the  Struggle  for  Existence,  in  which  the 
strong  and  cunning  get  the  better  of  the  weak  and  confiding. 
And  they  believed  further  that  they  had  to  be  strong,  energetic, 
ruthless,  "practical,"  egotistical,  because  God  was  dead,  and  had 
always,  it  seemed,  been  dead — which  was  going  altogether 
further  than  the  new  knowledge  justified. 

They  soon  got  beyond  the  first  crude  popular  misconception 
of  Darwinism,  the  idea  that  every  man  is  for  himself  alone. 
But  they  stuck  at  the  next  level.  Man,  they  decided,  is  a  social 
animal  like  the  Indian  hunting  dog.  He  is  much  more  than  a 
dog — but  this  they  did  not  see.  And  just  as  in  a  p<ack  it  is 
necessary  to  bully  and  subdue  the  younger  and  weaker  for  the 
general  good,  so  it  seemed  right  to  them  that  the  big  dogs  of  the 
human  pack  should  bully  and  subdue.  Hence  a  new  scorn  for 
the  ideas  of  democracy  that  had  ruled  the  earlier  nineteenth 
century,  and  a  revived  admiration  for  the  overbearing  and  the 
cruel.  It  was  quite  characteristic  of  the  times  that  Mr.  Kipling 
should  lead  the  children  of  the  middle  and  upper-class  British 
public  back  to  the  Jungle,  to  learn  "the  law,"  and  that  in  his 
book  Stalky  and  Co.  he  should  give  an  appreciative  description 
of  the  torture  of  two  boys  by  three  others,  who  have  by  a  sub- 


958  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

terfuge  tied  up  their  victims  helplessly  before  revealing  their 
hostile  intentions. 

It  is  worth  while  to  give  a  little  attention  to  this  incident  in 
Stalky  and  Co.,  because  it  lights  up  the  political  psychology  of 
the  British  Empire  at  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century  very 
vividly.  The  history  of  the  last  half  century  is  not  to  be  under- 
stood without  an  understanding  of  the  mental  twist  which  this 
story  exemplifies.  The  two  boys  who  are  tortured  are  "bullies," 
that  is  the  excuse  of  their  tormentors,  and  these  latter  have 
further  been  incited  to  the  orgy  by  a  clergyman.  Nothing  can 
restrain  the  gusto  with  which  they  (and  Mr.  Kipling)  set 
about  the  job.  Before  resorting  to  torture,  the  teaching  seems 
to  be,  see  that  you  pump  up  a  little  justifiable  moral  indigna- 
tion, and  all  will  be  well.  If  you  have  the  authorities  on  your 
side,  then  you  cannot  be  to  blame.  Such,  apparently,  is  the 
simple  doctrine  of  this  typical  imperialist.  But  every  bully 
has  to  the  best  of  his  ability  followed  that  doctrine  since  the 
human  animal  developed  sufficient  intelligence  to  be  consciously 
cruel. 

Another  point  in  the  story  is  very  significant  indeed.  The 
head  master  and  his  clerical  assistant  are  both  represented  as 
being  privy  to  the  affair.  They  want  this  bullying  to  occur. 
Instead  of  exercising  their  own  authority,  they  use  these  boys, 
who  are  Mr.  Kipling's  heroes,  to  punish  the  two  victims.  Head 
master  and  clergyman  turn  a  deaf  ear  to  the  complaints  of  an 
indignant  mother.  All  this  Mr.  Kipling  represents  as  a  most 
desirable  state  of  affairs.  In  this  we  have  the  key  to  the  ugliest, 
most  retrogressive,  and  finally  fatal  idea  of  modern  imperial- 
ism ;  the  idea  of  a  tacit  conspiracy  between  the  law  and  illegal 
violence.  Just  as  the  Tsardom  wrecked  itself  at,  last  by  a  fur- 
tive encouragement  of  the  ruffians  of  the  Black  Hundreds,  who 
massacred  Jews  and  other  people  supposed  to  be  inimical  to 
the  Tsar,  so  the  good  name  of  the  British  Imperial  Government 
has  been  tainted — and  is  still  tainted — by  an  illegal  raid  made 
by  Doctor  Jameson  into  the  Transvaal  before  the  Boer  War, 
by  the  adventures  which  we  shall  presently  describe,  of  Sir 
Edward  Carson  and  Mr.  F.  E.  Smith  (now  Lord  Birkenhead), 
in  Ireland  and  by  the  tacit  connivance  of  the  British  govern- 
ment in  Ireland  with  the  "reprisals"  undertaken  by  the  loyalists 
against  the  perpetrators  of  Sinn  Fein  outrages.  By  such  trea- 
sons against  their  subjects,  empires  destroy  themselves.  The 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  959 

true  strength  of  rulers  and  empires  lies  not  in  armies  and  navies, 
but  in  the  belief  of  men  that  they  are  inflexibly  open  and  truth- 
ful and  legal.  So  soon  as  a  government  departs  from  that 
standard,  it  ceases  to  be  anything  more  than  "the  gang  in  pos- 
session/7 and  its  days  are  numbered. 

§  7 

We  have  already  pointed  out  that  there  must  be  a  natural 
political  map  of  the  world  which  gives  the  best  possible  geo- 
graphical divisions  for  human  administrations.  Any  other  po- 
litical division  of  the  world  than  this  natural  political  map  will 
necessarily  be  a  misfit,  and  must  produce  stresses  of  hostility 
and  insurrection  tending  to  shift  boundaries  in  the  direction 
indicated  by  the  natural  political  map.  These  would  seem  to 
be  self-evident  propositions  were  it  not  that  the  diplomatists  at 
Vienna  evidently  neither  believed  nor  understood  anything  of 
the  sort,  and  thought  themselves  as  free  to  carve  up  the  world 
as  one  is  free  to  carve  up  such  a  boneless  structure  as  a  cheese. 
Nor  were  these  propositions  evident  to  Mr.  Gladstone.  Most 
of  the  upheavals  and  conflicts  that  began  in  Europe  as  the  world 
recovered  from  the  exhaustion  of  the  Napoleonic  wars  were 
quite  obviously  attempts  of  the  ordinary  common  men  to  get  rid 
of  governments  that  were  such  misfits  as  to  be  in  many  cases 
intolerable.  Generally  the  existing  governments  were  misfits 
throughout  Europe  because  they  were  not  socially  representa- 
tive, and  so  they  were  hampering  production  and  wasting  human 
possibilities ;  but  when  there  were  added  to  these  universal  an- 
noyances differences  of  religion  and  racial  culture  between  rul- 
ers and  ruled  (as  in  most  of  Ireland),  differences  in  race  and 
language  (as  in  Austrian  North  Italy  and  throughout  most  of 
the  Austrian  Empire),  or  differences  in  all  these  respects  (as 
in  Poland  and  -the  Turkish  Empire  in  Europe) ,  the  exaspera- 
tion, drove  towards  bloodshed.  Europe  was  a  system  of  gov- 
erning machines  abominably  adjusted.  From  the  stresses  of 
this  maladjustment  the  various  "nationalist"  movements  that 
played  so  large  a  part  in  the  history  of  the  nineteenth  century 
drew  their  driving  force. 

What  is  a  nation?  What  is  nationality?  If  our  story  of 
the  world  has  demonstrated  anything,  it  has  demonstrated  the 
mingling  of  races  and  peoples,  the  instability  of  human  divi- 


9GO  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

sions,  the  swirling  variety  of  human  groups  and  human  ideas 
of  association.  A  nation,  it  has  been  said,  is  an  accumulation 
of  human  beings  who  think  they  are  one  people;  but  we  are 
told  that  Ireland  is  a  nation,  and  Protestant  Ulster  certainly 
does  not  share  that  idea ;  and  Italy  did  not  think  it  was  one 
people  until  long  after  its  unity  was  accomplished.  When  the 
writer  was  in  Italy  in  1916,  people  were  saying:  "This  war 
will  make  us  one  nation.''  Again,  are  the  English  a  nation  01 
have  they  merged  into  a  "British  nationality"  ?  Scotchmen  do 
not  seem  to  believe  very  much  in  this  British  nationality.  It 
cannot  be  a  community  of  race  or  language  that  constitutes  a 
nation,  because  the  Gaels  and  the  Lowlanders  make  up  the 
Scotch  "nation" ;  it  cannot  be  a  common  religion,  for  Eng- 
land has  scores;  nor  a  common  literature,  or  why  is 
Britain  separated  from  the  United  States,  and  the  Argentine 
Republic  from  Spain?  We  may  suggest  that  a  nation  is  in 
effect  any  assembly,  mixture,  or  confusion  of  people  which  is 
either  afflicted  by  or  wishes  to  be  afflicted  by  a  foreign  office 
of  its  own,  in  order  that  it  should  behave  collectively  as  if  it 
alone  constituted  humanity.  We  have  already  traced  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Machiavellian  monarchies  into  the  rule  of 
their  foreign  offices,  playing  the  part  of  "Powers."  The 
"nationality"  which  dominated  the  political  thought  of  the 
nineteenth  century  is  really  no  more  than  the  romantic  and 
emotional  exaggeration  of  the  stresses  produced  by  the  dis- 
cord of  the  natural  political  map  with  unsuitable  political 
arrangements. 

Throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  and  particularly  through 
out  its  latter  half,  there  has  been  a  great  working  up  of  this 
nationalism  in  the  world.  All  men  are  by  nature  partisans  and 
patriots,  but  the  natural  tribalism  of  men  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  unnaturally  exaggerated,  it  was  fretted  and  over- 
stimulated  and  inflamed  and  forced  into  the  nationalist  mould. 
Nationalism  was  taught  in  schools,  emphasized  by  newspapers, 
preached  and  mocked  and  sung  into  men.  Men  were  brought 
to  feel  that  they  were  as  improper  without  a  nationality  as  with- 
out their  clothes  in  a  crowded  assembly.  Oriental  peoples  who 
had  never  heard  of  nationality  before,  took  to  it  as  they  took 
to  the  cigarettes  and  bowler  hats  of  the  west.  India,  a  galaxv 
of  contrasted  races,  religions,  and  cultures,  Dravidian,  Mongo- 
lian, and  Aryan,  became  a  "nation."  There  were  perplexing 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


961 


962  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

cases,  of  course,  as  when  a  young  Whitechapel  Jew  had  to  decide 
whether  he  belonged  to  the  British  or  the  Jewish  nation.  Cari- 
cature and  political  cartoons  played  a  large  part  in  this  eleva- 
tion of  the  cult  of  these  newer  and  bigger  tribal  gods — for  such 
indeed  the  modern  "nations"  are— to  their  ascendancy  over 
the  imagination  of  the  nineteenth  century.  If  one  turns  over 
the  pages  of  Puncli,  that  queer  contemporary  record  of  the 
British  soul,  which  has  lasted  now  since  1841,  one  finds  the 
figures  of  Britannia,  Hibernia,  France,  and  Germania  embrac- 
ing, disputing,  reproving,  rejoicing,  grieving.  It  greatly  helped 
the  diplomatists  to  carry  on  their  game  of  Great  Powers  to 
convey  politics  in  this  form  to  the  doubting  general  intelligence. 
To  the  common  man,  resentful  that  his  son  should  be  sent 
abroad  to  be  shot,  it  was  made  clear  that  instead  of  this  being 
merely  the  result  of  the  obstinacy  and  greed  of  two  foreign 
offices,  it  was  really  a  necessary  part  of  a  righteous  inevitable 
gigantic  struggle  between  two  of  these  dim  vast  divinities. 
France  had  been  wronged  by  Germania,  or  Italia  was  showing 
a  proper  spirit  to  Austria.  The  boy's  death  ceased  to  appear 
an  outrage  on  common  sense;  it  assumed  a  sort  of  mythological 
dignity.  And  insurrection  could  clothe  itself  in  the  same  ro- 
mantic habiliments  as  diplomacy.  Ireland  became  a  Cinderella 
goddess,  Cathleen  ni  Houlihan,  full  of  heartrending  and  unfor- 
givable wrongs;  young  India  transcended  its  realities  in  the 
worship  of  Bande  Mataram. 

The  essential  idea  of  nineteenth-century  nationalism  was 
the  "legitimate  claim"  of  every  nation  to  complete  sovereignty, 
the  claim  of  every  nation  to  manage  all  its  affairs  within  its 
own  territory,  regardless  of  any  other  nation.  The  fl-aw  in  this 
idea  is  that  the  affairs  and  interests  of  every  modern  community 
extend  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  earth.  The  assassination  of 
Sarajevo  in  1914,  for  example,  which  caused  the  great  war, 
produced  the  utmost  distress  among  the  Indian  tribes  of  Lab- 
rador because  that  war  interrupted  the  marketing  of  the  furs 
upon  which  they  relied  for  such  necessities  as  ammunition, 
without  which  they  could  not  get  sufficient  food.  A  world  of 
independent  sovereign  nations  means,  therefore,  a  world  of  per- 
petual injuries,  a  world  of  states  constantly  preparing  for  or  wag- 
ing war.  But  concurrently  and  discordantly  with  the  preaching 
of  this  nationalism  there  was,  among  the  stronger  nationalities, 
a,  vigorous  propagation  of  another  set  of  ideas,  the  ideas  of  im- 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  963 

perialism,  in  which  a  powerful  and  advanced  nation  was  con- 
ceded the  right  to  dominate  a  group  of  other  less  advanced 
nations  or  less  politically  developed  nations  or  peoples  whose 
nationality  was  still  undeveloped,  who  were  expected  by  the 
dominating  nation  to  be  grateful  for  its  protection  and  domi- 
nance. This  use  of  the  word  empire  was  evidently  a  different 
one  from  its  former  universal  significance.  The  new  empires 
did  not  even  pretend  to  be  a  continuation  of  the  world  empire 
of  Rome. 

These  two  ideas  of  nationality  and,  as  the  crown  of 
national  success,  "empire,"  ruled  European  political  thought, 
ruled  indeed  the  political  thought  of  the  world,  throughout  the 
latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  ruled  it  to  the  prac- 
tical exclusion  of  any  wider  conception  of  a  common  human 
welfare.  They  were  plausible  and  dangerously  unsound  work- 
ing ideas.  They  represented  nothing  fundamental  and  inal- 
terable in  human  nature,  and  they  failed  to  meet  the  new  needs 
of  world  controls  and  world  security  that  the  mechanical  revo- 
lution was  every  day  making  more  imperative.  They  were 
accepted  because  people  in  general  had  neither  the  sweeping 
views  that  a  study  of  world  history  can  give,  nor  had  they 
any  longer  the  comprehensive  charity  of  a  world  religion.  Their 
danger  to  all  the  routines  of  ordinary  life  was  not  realized  until 
it  was  too  late. 

§  8 

After  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century,  this  world  of 
new  powers  and  old  ideas,  this  fermenting  new  wine  in  the 
old  bottles  of  diplomacy,  broke  out  through  the  flimsy  restraints 
of  the  Treaty  of  Vienna  into  a  series  of  wars.  By  an  ironical 
accident  the  new  system  of  disturbances  was  preceded  by  a 
peace  festival  in  London,  the  Great  Exhibition  of  1851. 

The  moving  spirit  in  this  exhibition  was  Prince  Albert  of 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,  the  nephew  of  Leopold  I,  the  German  king 
who  had  been  placed  upon  the  Belgian  throne  in  1831,  and 
who  was  also  the  maternal  uncle  of  the  young  Queen  Victoria 
of  England.  She  had  become  queen  in  1837  at  the  age  of 
eighteen.  The  two  young  cousins — they  were  of  the  same  age — 
had  married  in  1840  under  their  uncle's  auspices,  and  Prince 
Albert  was  known  to  the  British  as  the  "Prince  Consort." 


964  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

He  was  a  young  man  of  sound  intelligence  and  exceptional 
education,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  greatly  shocked  by  the 
mental  stagnation  into  which  England  had  sunken.  Oxford 
and  Cambridge,  those  once  starry  centres,  were  still  recovering 
but  slowly  from  the  intellectual  ebb  of  the  later  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. At  neither  university  did  the  annual  matriculations 
number  more  than  four  hundred.  The  examinations  were  for 
the  most  part  mere  viva  voce  ceremonies.  Except  for  two  col- 
leges in  London  (the  University  of  London}  and  one  in  Dur- 
ham, this  was  all  the  education  on  a  university  footing  that 
England  had  to  offer.  It  was  very  largely  the  initiative  of  this 
scandalized  young  German  who  had  married  the  British  queen 
which  produced  the  university  commission  of  1850,  and  it 
was  with  a  view  to  waking  up  England  further  that  he  promoted 
the  first  International  Exhibition  which  was  to  afford  some 
opportunity  for  a  comparison  of  the  artistic  and  industrial 
products  of  the  various  European  nations. 

The  project  was  bitterly  opposed.  In  the  House  of  Com- 
mons it  was  prophesied  that  England  would  be  overrun  by 
foreign  rogues  and  revolutionaries  who  would  corrupt  the 
morals  of  the  people  and  destroy  all  faith  and  loyalty  in  the 
country. 

The  exhibition  was  held  in  Hyde  Park  in  a  great  building 
of  glass  and  iron — which  afterwards  was  re-erected  as  the 
Crystal  Palace.  Financially  it  was  a  great  success.  It  made 
many  English  people  realize  for  the  first  time  that  theirs 
was  not  the  only  industrial  country  in  the  world,  and  that 
commercial  prosperity  was  not  a  divinely  apipointed  British 
monopoly.  There  was  the  clearest  evidence  of  a  Europe  recover- 
ing steadily  from  the  devastation  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  and 
rapidly  overtaking  the  British  lead  in  trade  and  manufacture. 
It  was  followed  directly  by  the  organization  of  a  Science  and 
Art  Department  (1853),  to  recover,  if  possible,  the  educational 
leeway  that  Britain  had  lost. 

The  exhibition  released  a  considerable  amount  of  interna- 
tional talk  and  sentiment.  It  had  already  found  expression  in 
the  work  of  such  young  poets  as  Tennyson,  who  had  glanced 
down  the  vista  of  the  future. 

"Till  the  war-drums  throb'd  no  longer,  and  the  battle-flags 

were  furl'd. 
In  the  Parliament  of  man,  the  Federation  of  the  world." 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  965 

There  was  much  shallow  optimism  on  the  part  of  comfortable 
people  just  then.  Peace  seemed  to  be  more  secure  than  it  had 
been  for  a  long  time.  The  social  gales  of  1848  had  blown, 
and,  it  seemed,  blown  themselves  out.  Nowhere  had  the  revo- 
lution succeeded.  In  France  it  had  been  betrayed  a  second 
time  by  a  Bonaparte,  a  nephew  of  the  first  Napoleon,  but  a 
much  more  supple  man.  He  had  posed  as  a  revolutionary 
while  availing  himself  of  the  glamour  of  his  name;  he  had 
twice  attempted  raids  on  France  during  the  Orleans  monarchy. 
He  had  written  a  manual  of  artillery  to  link  himself  to  his 
uncle's  prestige,  and  he  had  also  published  an  account  of  what 
he  alleged  to  be  Napoleonic  views,  Des  Idees  Napoleoniennes 
in  which  he  jumbled  up  socialism,  socialistic  reform,  and 
pacificism  with  the  Napoleonic  legend.  The  republic  of  1848 
was  soon  in  difficulties  with  crude  labour  experiments,  and  in 
October  he  was  able  to  re-enter  the  country  and  stand  for  elec- 
tion as  President.  He  took  an  oath  as  President  to  be  faithful 
to  the  democratic  republic,  and  to  regard  as  enemies  all  who 
attempted  to  change  the  form  of  government.  In  two  years' 
time  (December,  1852)  he  was  Emperor  of  the  French. 

At  first  he  was  regarded  with  considerable  suspicion  by 
Queen  Victoria,  or  rather  by  Baron  Stockmar,  the  friend  and 
servant  of  King  Leopold  of  Belgium,  and  the  keeper  of  the 
international  conscience  of  the  British  queen  and  her  consort. 
All  this  group  of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha  people  had  a  reasonable 
and  generous  enthusiasm  for  the  unity  and  well-being  of 
Germany — upon  liberal  lines — and  they  were  disposed  to 
be  alarmed  at  this  Bonapartist  revival.  Lord  Palmerston, 
the  British  foreign  minister,  was,  on  the  other  hand, 
friendly  with  the  usurper  from  the  outset;  he  offended 
the  queen  by  sending  amiable  dispatches  to  the  French 
President  without  submitting  them  for  her  examination 
and  so  giving  her  sufficient  time  to  consult  Stockmar  upon 
them,  and  he  was  obliged  to  resign.  But  subsequently  the 
British  Court  veered  round  to  a  more  cordial  attitude  to  the 
new  adventurer.  The  opening  years  of  his  reign  promised  a 
liberal  monarchy  rather  than  a  Napoleonic  career;  a  govern- 
ment of  "cheap  bread,  great  public  works,  and  holidays,"  1  and 
he  expressed  himself  warmly  in  favour  of  the  idea  of  national- 
ism, which  was  naturally  a  very  acceptable  idea  to  any  liberal 
1  Albert  Thomas  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica. 


966 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


German  intelligence.  There  had  been  a  brief  all-German  par- 
liament at  Frankfort  in  1848,  which  was  overthrown  in  1849 
by  the  Prussian  monarchy. 

Before  1848  all  the  great  European  courts  of  the  Vienna 
settlement  had  been  kept  in  a  kind  of  alliance  by  the  fear  of  a 


o     -EUROPE   1848-1871 


second  and  more  universal  democratic  revolution.  After  the 
revolutionary  failures  of  1848  this  fear  was  lifted,  and  they 
were  free  to  resume  the  scheming  and  counter-scheming  of  the 
days  before  1789 — with  the  vastly  more  powerful  armies  and 
fleets  the  first  Kapoleonic  phase  had  given  them.  The  game  of 
Great  Powers  was  resumed  with  zest,  after  an  interval  of  sixty 
years,  and  it  continued  until  it  produced  the  catastrophe  of 
1914. 

The  Tsar  of  Kussia,  Nicholas  I,  was  the  first  to  move  to- 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


967 


wards  war.  He  resumed  the  traditional  thrust  of  Peter  the 
Great  towards  Constantinople.  Nicholas  invented  the  phrase 
of  the  "sick  man  of  Europe"  for  the  Sultan,  and,  finding  an 
excuse  in  the  misgovernment  of  the  Christian  population  of 
the  Turkish  empire,  he  occupied  the  Danubian  principalities 
in  1853.  European  diplomatists  found  themselves  with  a 


<2%  KINGDOM  of  ITALY: 


SWITZERLAND 


Uv.    S      T      R,    I     A 


Turns 
F    R   I   C  A 


question  of  quite  the  eighteenth-century  pattern.  The  designs 
of  Russia  were  understood  to  clash  with  the  designs  of  France 
in  Syria,  and  to  threaten  the  Mediterranean  route  to  India 
of  Great  Britain,  and  the  outcome  was  an  alliance  of  France 
and  England  to  holster  up  Turkey  and  a  war,  the  Crimean 
War,  which  ended  in  the  repulse  of  Russia.  One  might  have 
thought  that  the  restraint  of  Russia  was  rather  the  business  of 
Austria  and  Germany,  but  the  passion  of  the  foreign  offices  of 


968  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

France  and  England  for  burning  their  fingers  in  Russian  affairs 
has  always  been  very  difficult  to  control. 

The  next  phase  of  interest  in  this  revival  of  the  Great  Power 
drama  was  the  exploitation  by  the  Emperor  Napoleon  III  and 
the  king  of  the  small  kingdom  of  Sardinia  in  North  Italy,  of 
the  inconveniences  and  miseries  of  the  divided  state  of  Italy, 
and  particularly  of  the  Austrian  rule  in  the  north.  The  King 
of  Sardinia,  Victor  Emmanuel,  made  an  old-time  bargain  for 
Napoleon's  help  in  return  for  the  provinces  of  Nice  and  Savoy. 
The  war  between  France  and  Sardinia  on  the  one  hand,  and 
Austria  on  the  other,  broke  out  in  1859,  and  was  over  in  a  few 
weeks.  The  Austrians  were  badly  beaten  at  Magenta  and  Sol- 
ferino.  Then,  being  threatened  by  Prussia  on  the  Rhine,  Na- 
poleon made  peace,  leaving  Sardinia  the  richer  for  Lombardy. 

The  next  move  in  the  game  of  Victor  Emmanuel,  and  of  his 
chief  minister  Cavour,  was  an  insurrectionary  movement  in 
Sicily  led  by  the  great  Italian  patriot  Garibaldi.  Sicily  and 
Naples  were  liberated,  and  all  Italy,  except  only  Rome  (which 
remained  loyal  to  the  Pope)  and  Venetia,  which  was  held  by 
the  Austrians,  fell  to  the  king  of  Sardinia.  A  general  Italian 
parliament  met  at  Turin  in  1861,  and  Victor  Emmanuel  be- 
came the  first  king  of  Italy. 

But  now  the  interest  in  this  game  of  European  diplomacy 
shifted  to  Germany.  Already  the  common  sense  of  the  natural 
political  map  had  asserted  itself.  In  1848  all  Germany,  in- 
cluding, of  course,  German  Austria,  was  for  a  time  united  under 
the  Frankfort  parliament.  But  that  sort  of  union  was  partic- 
ularly offensive  to  all  the  German  courts  and  foreign  offices; 
they  did  not  want  a  Germany  united  by  the  will  of  its  people, 
they  wanted  Germany  united  by  legal  and  diplomatic  action — 
as  Italy  was  being  united.  In  1848  the  German  parliament 
had  insisted  that  the  largely  German  provinces  of  Schleswig- 
Holstein,  which  had  been  in  the  German  Bund,  must  belong 
to  Germany.  It  had  ordered  the  Prussian  army  to  occupy 
them,  and  the  king  of  Prussia  had  refused  to  take  his  orders 
from  the  German  parliament,  and  so  had  precipitated  the  down- 
fall of  that  body.  Now  the  King  of  Denmark,  Christian  IX, 
for  no  conceivable  motive  except  the  natural  folly  of  kings, 
embarked  upon  a  campaign  of  annoyance  against  the  Germans 
in  these  two  duchies.  Prussian  affairs  were  then  very  much 
in  the  hands  of  a  minister  of  the  seventeenth-century  type, 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  9«9 

von  Bismarck  (count  in  1865,  prince  in  1871),  and  he  saw 
brilliant  opportunities  in  this  trouble.  He  became  the  cham- 
pion of  the  German  nationality  in  these  duchies — it  must  be 
remembered  that  the  King  of  Prussia  had  refused  to  under- 
take this  role  for  democratic  Germany  in  1848 — and  he  per- 
suaded Austria  to  side  with  Prussia  in  a  military  interven- 
tion. Denmark  had  no  chance  against  these  Great  Powers; 
she  was  easily  beaten  and  obliged  to  relinquish  the  duchies. 
Then  Bismarck  picked-a^uarrel  with  Austria  for  the  posses- 
sion of  these  two  small  states.  So  he  brought  about  a  needless 
and  fratricidal  war  of  Germans  for  the  greater  glory  of  Prus- 
sia and  the  ascendancy  of  the  Hohenzollern  dynasty  in  Ger- 
many. German  writers  of  a  romantic  turn  of  mind  represent 
Bismarck  as  a  great  statesman  planning  the  unity  of  Germany ; 
but  indeed  he  was  doing  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  unity  of 
Germany  was  a  reality  in  1848.  It  was  and  is  in  the  nature 
of  things.  The  Prussian  monarchy  was  simply  delaying  the 
inevitable  in  order  to  seem  to  achieve  it  in  Prussian  fashion. 
That  is  why,  when  at  last  Germany  was  unified,  instead  of 
bearing  the  likeness  of  a  modern  civilized  people,  it  presented 
itself  to  the  world  with  the  face  of  this  archaic  Bismarck,  with  a 
fierce  moustache,  huge  jack  boots,  a  spiked  helmet,  and  a  sword. 

In  this  war  between  Prussia  and  Austria,  Prussia  had  for 
an  ally  Italy ;  most  of  the  smaller  German  states,  who  dreaded 
the  schemes  of  Prussia,  fought  on  the  side  of  Austria.  The 
reader  will  naturally  want  to  know  why  Napoleon  III  did 
not  grasp  this  admirable  occasion  for  statecraft  and  come  into 
the  war  to  his  own  advantage.  All  the  rules  of  the  Great  Power 
game  required  that  he  should.  But  Napoleon,  unhappily  for 
himself,  had  got  his  fingers  in  a  trap  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  and  was  in  no  position  to  intervene. 

In  order  to  understand  the  entanglement  of  this  shifty  gen- 
tleman, it  is  necessary  to  explain  that  the  discord  in  interests 
between  the  northern  and  southern  states  of  the  American 
union,  due  to  the  economic  differences  based  on  slavery,  had  at 
last  led  to  open  civil  war.  The  federal  system  established  in 
1789  had  to  fight  the  secessionist  efforts  of  the  confederated 
slave-holding  states.  We  have  traced  the  causes  of  that  great 
struggle  in  Chapter  XXXVI,  §  6 ;  its  course  we  cannot  relate 
here,  nor  tell  how  President  Lincoln  (born  1809,  died  1865, 
president  from  1861)  rose  to  greatness,  how  the  republic  was 


970 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


J.T.tt. 


cleansed  from  the  stain  of  slavery,  and  how  the  federal  govern- 
ment of  the  union  was  preserved.  The  story  of  President  Lin- 
coln is  in  itself  a  great  epic  of  union  and  order  threatened  and 
saved,  and  it  is  with  reluctance  that  it  is  treated  so  briefly  here. 
But  in  this  Outline  we  must  cling  closely  to  our  main  story. 
For  four  long  years  (1861-65)  this  American  civil  war 
swung  to  and  fro,  through  the  rich  woods  and  over  the  hills  of 
Virginia  between  Washington  and  Richmond,  until  at  last  the 
secessionist  left  was  thrust  back  and  broken,  and  Sherman,  the 

unionist     general,      swept 

across  Georgia  to  the  sea  in 
the  rear  of  the  main  confed- 
erate (secessionist)  armies. 
All  the  elements  of  reaction 
in  Europe  rejoiced  during 
the  four  years  of  republican 
dissension;  the  British  aris- 
tocracy openly  sided  with 
the  confederate  states,  and 
the  British  Government  per- 
mitted several  privateers, 
and  particularly  the  Ala- 
bama, to  be  launched  in 

'Bismarck.  England   to  attack  the  fed- 

eral     shipping.        Napoleon 

III  was  even  more  rash  in  his  assumption  that  after  all  the 
new  world  had  fallen  before  the  old.  The  sure  shield  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  it  seemed  to  him,  was  thrust  aside  for  good, 
the  Great  Powers  might  meddle  again  in  America,  and  the 
blessings  of  an  adventurous  monarchy  be  restored  there.  A 
pretext  for  interference  was  found  in  certain  liberties  taken 
with  the  property  of  foreigners  by  the  Mexican  president.  A 
joint  expedition  of  French,  British,  and  Spanish  occupied 
Vera  Cruz,  but  Napoleon's  projects  were  too  bold  for  his  allies, 
and  they  withdrew  when  it  became  clear  that  he  contemplated 
nothing  less  than  the  establishment  of  a  Mexican  empire.  This 
he  did,  after  much  stiff  fighting,  making  the  Archduke  Maxi- 
milian of  Austria  Emperor  of  Mexico  in  1864.  The  French 
forces,  however,  remained  in  effectual  possession  of  the  coun- 
try, and  a  crowd  of  French  speculators  poured  into  Mexico  to 
exploit  its  mines  and  resources. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  971 

But  in  April,  1865,  the  civil  war  in  the  United  States  was 
brought  to  an  end  with  the  surrender  of  the  great  southern 
commander,  General  Lee,  at  Appomattox  Court  House,  and 
the  little  group  of  eager  Europeans  in  possession  of  Mexico 
found  themselves  faced  by  the  victorious  federal  government 
in  a  thoroughly  grim  mood,  with  a  large,  dangerous-looking 
army  in  hand.  The  French  imperialists  were  bluntly  given 
the  alternative  of  war  with  the  United  States  or  clearing  out 
of  America.  In  effect  this  was  an  instruction  to  go.  This 
was  the  entanglement  which  prevented  Napoleon  III  from 
interference  between  Prussia  and  Austria  in  1866,  and  this 
was  the  reason  why  Bismarck  precipitated  his  struggle  with 
Austria. 

While  Prussia  was  fighting  Austria,  Napoleon  III  was  try- 
ing to  escape  with  dignity  from  the  briars  of  Mexico.  He  in- 
vented a  shabby  quarrel  upon  financial  grounds  with  Maxi- 
milian and  withdrew  the  French  troops.  Then,  by  all  the  rules 
of  kingship,  Maximilian  should  have  abdicated.  But  instead 
he  made  a  fight  for  his  empire;  he  was  defeated  by  his  re- 
calcitrant subjects,  caught,  and  shot  as  a  public  nuisance  in 
1867.  So  the  peace  of  President  Monroe  was  restored  to  the 
new  world.  There  remained  only  one  monarchy  in  America, 
the  empire  of  Brazil,  where  a  branch  of  the  Portuguese  royal 
family  continued  to  reign  until  1889.  In  that  year  the  em- 
peror was  quietly  packed  off  to  Paris,  and  Brazil  came  into  line 
with  the  rest  of  the  continent. 

But  while  N~apoleon  was  busy  with  his  American  adventure, 
Prussia  and  Italy  were  snatching  victory  over  the  Austrians 
(1866).  Italy  was  badly  beaten  at  Custozza  and  in  the  naval 
battle  of  Lissa,  but  the  Austrian  army  was  so  crushed  by  the 
Prussian  at  the  battle  of  Sadowa  that  Austria  made  an  abject 
surrender.  Italy  gained  the  province  of  Venetia,  so  making 
one  more  step  towards  unity — only  Rome  and  Trieste  and  a 
few  small  towns  on  the  north  and  north-western  frontiers  re- 
mained— and  Prussia  became  the  head  of  a  North  German 
Confederation,  from  which  Bavaria,  Wiirttemberg,  Baden, 
Hesse,  and  Austria  were  excluded. 

Four  years  later  came  the  next  step  towards  the  natural 
political  map  of  Europe,  when  Napoleon  III  plunged  into 
war  against  Prussia.  A  kind  of  self-destroying  foolishness 
urged  him  to  do  this,  He  came  near  to  thi§  war  in  1867  so 


972  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

soon  as  he  was  free  from  Mexico,  by  demanding  Luxembourg 
for  France;  he  embarked  upon  it  in  1870,  when  a  cousin  of 
the  king  of  Prussia  became  a  candidate  for  the  vacant  throne 
of  Spain.  Napoleon  had  some  theory  in  his  mind  that  Austria, 
Bavaria,  Wiirttemberg,  and  the  other  states  outside  the  North 
German  Confederation  would  side  with  him  against  Prussia. 
He  probably  thought  this  would  happen  because  he  wanted 
it  to  happen.  But  since  1848  the  Germans,  so  far  as  foreign 
meddling  was  concerned,  had  been  in  spirit  a  united  people; 
Bismarck  was  merely  imposing  the  Hohenzollern  monarchy, 
with  pomp,  ceremony,  and  bloodshed,  upon  accomplished  facts. 
All  Germany  sided  with  Prussia. 

Early  in  August,  1870,  the  united  German  forces  invaded 
France.  After  the  battles  of  Worth  and  Gravelotte,  one 
French  army  under  Bazaine  was  forced  into  Metz  and  sur- 
rounded there,  and,  on  -September  1st,  a  second,  with  which 
was  Napoleon,  was  defeated  and  obliged  to  capitulate  at  Sedan. 
Paris  found  herself  bare  to  the  invader.  For  a  second  time 
the  promises  of  Napoleonism  had  failed  France  disastrously. 
On  September  4th,  France  declared  herself  a  republic  again, 
and  thus  regenerated,  prepared  to  fight  for  existence  against 
triumphant  Prussianism.  For  though  it  was  a  united  Ger- 
many that  had  overcome  French  imperialism,  it  had  Prussia 
in  the  saddle.  The  army  in  Metz  capitulated  in  October ;  Paris, 
after  a  siege  and  bombardment,  surrendered  in  January,  1871. 

With  pomp  and  ceremony,  in  the  Hall  of  Mirrors  at  Ver- 
sailles, amidst  a  great  array  of  military  uniforms,  the  King 
of  Prussia  was  declared  German  Emperor,  and  Bismarck  and 
the  sword  of  the  Hohenzollerns  claimed  the  credit  for  that 
German  unity  which  a  common  language  and  literature  had 
long  since  assured. 

The  peace  of  Frankfort  was  a  Hohenzollern  peace.  Bis- 
marck had  availed  himself  of  the  national  feeling  of  Germany 
to  secure  the  aid  of  the  South  German  states,  but  he  had  no 
grasp  of  the  essential  forces  that  had  given  victory  to  him  and 
to  his  royal  master.  The  power  that  had  driven  Prussia  to 
victory  was  the  power  of  the  natural  political  map  of  Europe 
insisting  upon  the  unity  of  the  German-speaking  peoples.  In 
the  east,  Germany  was  already  sinning  against  that  natural 
map  by  her  administration  of  Posen  and  other  Polish  districts 
Now  greedy  for  territory,  and  particularly  for  iron  mines,  she 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  973 

annexed  a  considerable  area  of  French-speaking  Lorraine,  in- 
cluding Metz,  and  Alsace,  which,  in  spite  of  its  German 
speech,  was  largely  French  in  sympathy.  Inevitably  there  was 
a  clash  between  German  rulers  and  French  subjects  in  these 
annexed  provinces;  inevitably  the  wrongs  and  bitterness  of 
the  subjugated  France  of  Lorraine  echoed  in  Paris  and  kept 
alive  the  passionate  resentment  of  the  French.  .  .  . 

The  natural  map  had  already  secured  political  recognition 
in  the  Austrian  Empire  after  Sadowa  (1866).  Hungary, 
which  had  been  subordinated  to  Austria,  was  erected  into  a 
kingdom  on  an  equal  footing  with  Austria,  and  the  Empire  of 
Austria  had  become  the  "dual  monarchy"  of  Austria-Hungary. 
But  in  the  south-east  of  this  empire,  and  over  the  Turkish 
empire,  the  boundaries  and  subjugations  of  the  conquest  period 
still  remained. 

A  fresh  upthrust  of  the  natural  map  began  in  1875,  when 
the  Christian  races  in  the  Balkans,  and  particularly  the  Bul- 
garians, became  restless  and  insurgent.  The  Turks  adopted 
violent  repressive  measures,  and  embarked  upon  massacres  of 
Bulgarians  on  an  enormous  scale.  Thereupon  Russia  inter- 
vened (1877),  and  after  a  year  of  costly  warfare  obliged  the 
Turks  to  sign  the  treaty  of  San  Stefano,  which  was,  on  the 
whole,  a  sensible  treaty,  breaking  up  the  artificial  Turkish 
Empire,  and  to  a  large  extent  establishing  the  natural  map. 
But  it  had  become  the  tradition  of  British  policy  to  thwart 
"the  designs  of  Russia" — heaven  knows  why ! — whenever  Rus- 
sia appeared  to  have  a  design,  and  the  British  foreign  office, 
under  the  premiership  of  Lord  Beaconsfield,  intervened  with 
a  threat  of  war  if  a  considerable  restoration  of  the  Turks' 
facilities  for  exaction,  persecution,  and  massacre  was  not  made. 
For  a  time  war  seemed  very  probable.  The  British  music-halls, 
those  lamps  to  British  foreism  policy,  were  lit  with  patriotic 
fire,  and  the  London  errand-boy  on  his  rounds  was  inspired  to 
chant,  with  the  simple  dignity  of  a  great  people  conscious  of 
its  high  destinies,  a  song  declaring  that: 

"We  don't  want  to  fight,  but,  by  Jingo,1  if  we  do, 
We  got  the  ships,  we  got  the  men,  we  got  the  immn-aye  too  "... 

and  so  on  to  a  climax: 

"The  Russ'ns  shall  not  'ave  Con-stan-te-no pie." 

1  Hence  "Jingo"  for  any  rabid  patriot. 


974 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


In  consequence  of  this  British  opposition,  a  conference  was 
assembled  in  1878  at  Berlin  to  revise  the  treaty  of  San  Stefano, 
chiefly  in  the  interests  of  the  Turkish  and  Austrian  mon- 
archies, the  British  acquired  the  island  of  Cyprus,  to  which 
they  had  no  sort  of  right  whatever,  and  which  has  never  been 
of  the  slightest  use  to  them,  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  returned 
triumphantly  from  the  Berlin  Conference,  to  the  extreme  ex 


Map  0A&*  BALKANS 

to    illustrate    t^e 

TREATTof  BERLIN 
167-8 


RUSSIA 


M 


1          T"i  •  I"*V.*«  *•"•'. 

by  AJumanza . .  [•  '.•.;:•.•.• 
Ceded  by  Rumania  to    K^^; 
Russia  .  w%%, 
New  Prindp^of  BuZcaHa,  <& 
ffl/tanoTTiouj  province  £.Rumelu 
••  •  •••« 

Proposed  'Big  BuIg'aHan.' 
frontier  of  Treaty  of  »5an 

StefajlO    mm.*"""'***" 


asperation  of  Mr.  Gladstone,  with  what  the  British  were  given 
to  understand  at  the  time  was  "Peace  with  Honour." 

This  treaty  of  Berlin  was  the  second  main  factor,  the  peace 
of  Frankfort  being  the  first,  in  bringing  about  the  great  war 
of  1914-18. 

These  thirty  years  after  1848  are  years  of  very  great  in- 
terest to  the  student  of  international  political  methods.  Re- 
from  their  terror  of  a  world-wide  insurrection  of  the 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  975 

common  people,  the  governments  of  Europe  were  doing  their 
best  to  resume  the  game  of  Great  Powers  that  had  been  so 
rudely  interrupted  by  the  American  and  French  revolutions. 
But  it  looked  much  more  like  the  old  game  than  it  was  in 
reality.  The  mechanical  revolution  was  making  war  a  far 
more  complete  disturbance  of  the  general  life  than  it  had  ever 
been  before,  and  the  proceedings  of  the  diplomatists  were  ruled, 
in  spite  of  their  efforts  to  disregard  the  fact,  by  imperatives 
that  Charles  V  and  Louis  XIV  had  never  known.  Irritation 
with  misgovernment  was  capable  of  far  better  organization  and 
far  more  effective  expression  than  it  had  ever  been  before. 
Statesmen  dressed  this  up  as  the  work  of  the  spirit  of  Na- 
tionalism, but  there  were  times  and  occasions  when  that  cos- 
tume wore  very  thin.  The  grand  monarchs  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries  had  seemed  to  be  free  to  do  this  or 
that,  to  make  war  or  to  keep  the  peace,  to  conquer  this  province 
or  cede  that  as  they  willed ;  but  such  a  ruler  as  Napoleon  III 
went  from  one  proceeding  to  another  with  something  of  the 
effect  of  a  man  who  feels  his  way  among  things  unseen. 

None  of  these  European  governments  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury was  in  fact  a  free  agent.  We  look  to-day  at  the  maps  of 
Europe  since  1814,  we  compare  them  with  the  natural  map, 
and  we  see  that  the  game  the  Great  Powers  played  was  indeed 
a  game  of  foregone  conclusions.  Whatever  arrangements  they 
made  that  were  in  accordance  with  the  natural  political  map 
of  the  world,  and  the  trend  towards  educational  democracy, 
held,  and  whatever  arrangements  they  made  contrary  to  these 
things,  collapsed.  We  are  forced,  therefore,  to  the  conclusion 
that  all  the  diplomatic  fussing,  posturing,  and  scheming,  all 
the  intrigue  and  bloodshed  of  these  years,  all  the  monstrous 
turmoil  and  waste  of  kings  and  armies,  all  the  wonderful  atti- 
tudes, deeds,  and  schemes  of  the  Cavours,  Bismarcks,  Disraelis, 
Bonapartes,  and  the  like  "great  men,"  might  very  well  have 
been  avoided  altogether  had  Europe  but  had  the  sense  to  in- 
struct a  small  body  of  ordinarily  honest  ethnologists,  geog- 
raphers, and  sociologists  to  draw  out  its  proper  boundaries 
and  prescribe  suitable  forms  of  government  in  a  reasonable 
manner.  The  romantic  phase  in  history  had  come  to  an  end. 
A  new  age  was  beginning  with  new  and  greater  imperatives, 
and  these  nineteenth-century  statesmen  were  but  pretending 
to  control  events. 


976 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY        977 

§9 

We  have  suggested  that  in  the  political  history  of  Europe 
between  1848  and  1878,  the  mechanical  revolution  was  not 
yet  producing  any  very  revolutionary  changes.  The  post-revo- 
lutionary Great  Powers  were  still  going  on  within  boundaries 
of  practically  the  same  size  and  with  much  the  same  formalities 
as  they  had  done  in  pre-revolutionary  times.  But  where  the 
increased  speed  and  certainty  of  transport  and  telegraphic  com- 
munications were  already  producing  very  considerable  changes 
of  condition  and  method,  was  in  the  overseas  enterprises  of 
Britain  and  the  other  European  powers,  and  in  the  reaction 
of  Asia  and  Africa  to  Europe. 

The  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  a  period  of  disrupt- 
ing empires  and  disillusioned  expansionists.  The  long  and 
tedious  journey  between  Britain  and  Spain  and  their  colonies 
in  America  prevented  any  really  free  coming  and  going  be- 
tween the  home  land  and  the  daughter  lands,  and  so  the  colonies 
separated  into  new  and  distinct  communities,  with  distinctive 
ideas  and  interests  and  even  modes  of  speech.  As  they  grew 
they  strained  more  and  more  at  the  feeble  and  uncertain  link 
of  shipping  that  joined  them.  Weak  trading-posts  in  the 
wilderness,  like  those  of  France  in  Canada,  or  trading  estab- 
lishments in  great  alien  communities,  like  those  of  Britain  in 
India,  might  well  cling  for  bare  existence  to  the  nation  which 
gave  them  support  and  a  reason  for  their  existence.  That 
much  and  no  more  seemed  to  many  thinkers  in  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  to  be  the  limit  set  to  overseas  rule. 
In  1820  the  sketchy  great  European  "empires'7  outside  of 
Europe  that  had  figured  so  bravely  in  the  maps  of  the  middle 
eighteenth  century,  had  shrunken  to  very  small  dimensions. 
Only  the  Russian  sprawled  as  large  as  ever  across  Asia.  It 
sprawled  much  larger  in  the  imaginations  of  many  Europeans 
than  in  reality,  because  of  their  habit  of  studying  the  geography 
of  the  world  upon  Mercator's  projection,  which  enormously 
exaggerated  the  size  of  Siberia. 

The  British  Empire  in  1815  consisted  of  the  thinly  popu- 
lated coastal  river  and  lake  regions  of  Canada,  and  a  great 
hinterland  of  wilderness  in  which  the  only  settlements  as  yet 
were  the  fur-trading  stations  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Company, 
about  a  third  of  the  Indian  peninsula,  under  the  rule  of  the 


978 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  979 

East  India  Company,  the  coast  districts  of  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope  inhabited  by  blacks  and  rebellious-spirited  Dutch  settlers ; 
a  few  trading  stations  on  the  coast  of  West  Africa,  the  rock 
of  Gibraltar,  the  island  of  Malta,  Jamaica,  a  few  minor 
slave-labour  possessions  in  the  West  Indies,  British  Guiana  in 
South  America,  and,  on  the  other  side  of  the  world,  two  dumps 
for  convicts  at  Botany  Bay  in  Australia  and  in  Tasmania. 
Spain  retained  Cuba  and  a  few  settlements  in  the  Philippine 
Islands.  Portugal  had  in  Africa  some  vestiges  of  her  ancient 
claims.  Holland  had  various  islands  and  possessions  in  the 
East  Indies  and  Dutch  Guiana,  and  Denmark  an  island  or  so 
in  the  West  Indies.  France  had  one  or  two  West.  Indian 
Islands  and  French  Guiana.  This  seemed  to  be  as  much  as 
the  European  powers  needed,  or  were  likely  to  acquire  of 
the  rest  of  the  world.  Only  the  East  India  Company  showed 
any  spirit  of  expansion. 

In  India,  as  we  have  already  told,  a  peculiar  empire  was 
being  built  up,  not  by  the  British  peoples,  nor  by  the  British 
Government,  but  by  this  company  of  private  adventurers  with 
their  monopoly  and  royal  charter.  The  company  had  been 
forced  to  become  a  military  and  political  power  during  the 
years  of  Indian  division  and  insecurity  that  followed  the  break- 
up of  India  after  the  death  of  Aurangzeb  in  1707.  It  had 
learnt  to  trade  in  states  and  peoples  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Clive  founded,  Warren  Hastings  organized,  this  strange 
new  sort  of  empire;  French  rivalry  was  defeated,  as  we  have 
already  toM;  and  by  1798,  Lord  Mornington,  afterwards  the 
Marquis  Wellesley,  the  elder  brother  of  that  General  Wellesley 
who  became  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  became  Governor-General 
of  India,  and  set  the  policy  of  the  company  definitely  upon  the 
line  of  replacing  the  fading  empire  of  the  Great  Mogul  by  its 
own  rule.  Napoleon's  expedition  to  Egypt  was  a  direct  attack 
upon  the  empire  of  this  British  company.  While  Europe  was 
busy  with  the  Napoleonic  wars,  the  East  India  Company,  under 
a  succession  of  governors-general,  was  playing  much  the  same 
role  in  India  that  had  been  played  before  by  Turkoman  and 
such-like  invaders  from  the  north,  but  playing  it  with  a  greater 
efficiency  and  far  less  violence  and  cruelty.  And  after  the  peace 
of  Vienna  it  went  on,  levying  its  revenues,  making  wars,  sending 
ambassadors  to  Asiatic  powers,  a  quasi-independent  state,  a  state, 
however,  with  a  marked  disposition  to  send  wealth  westward. 


980  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

In  a  previous  chapter  we  have  sketched  the  break-up  of  the 
empire  of  the  Great  Mogul  and  the  appearance  of  the  Mahratta 
states,  the  Rajput  principalities,  the  Moslem  kingdoms  of 
Oudh  and  Bengal,  and  the  Sikhs.  We  cannot  tell  here  in  any 
detail  how  the  British  company  made  its  way  to  supremacy 
sometimes  as  the  ally  of  this  power,  sometimes  as  that,  and 
finally  as  the  conqueror  of  all.  •  Its  power  spread  to  Assam, 
Sind,  Oudh.  The  map  of  India  began  to  take  on  the  outlines 
familiar  to  the  English  schoolboy  of  to-day,  a  patchwork  of 
native  states  embraced  and  held  together  by  the  great  provinces 
under  direct  British  rule.  .  .  . 

Now  as  this  strange  unprecedented  empire  of  the  company 
grew  in  the  period  between  1800  and  1858,  the  mechanical  revo- 
lution was  quietly  abolishing  the  great  distance  that  had  once 
separated  India  and  Britain.  In  the  old  days  the  rule  of  the 
company  had  interfered  little  in  the  domestic  life  of  the  Indian 
states;  it  had  given  India  foreign  overlords,  but  India  was 
used  to  foreign  overlords,  and  had  hitherto  assimilated  them; 
these  Englishmen  came  into  the  country  young,  lived  there 
most  of  their  lives,  and  became  a  part  of  its  system.  But  now 
the  mechanical  revolution  began  to  alter  this  state  of  affairs. 
It  became  easier  for  the  British  officials  to  go  home  and  to 
have  holidays  in  Europe,  easier  for  them  to  bring  out  wives  and 
families;  they  ceased  to  be  Indianized;  they  remained  more 
conspicuously  foreign  and  western — and  there  were  more  of 
them.  And  they  began  to  interfere  more  vigorously  with  Indian 
customs.  Magical  and  terrible  things  like  the  telegraph  and 
the  railway  arrived.  Christian  missions  became  offensively 
busy.  If  they  did  not  make  very  many  converts,  at  least  they 
made  sceptics  among  the  adherents  of  the  older  faiths.  The 
young  men  in  the  towns  began  to  be  "Europeanized"  to  the 
great  dismay  of  their  elders. 

India  had  endured  many  changes  of  rulers  before,  but  never 
the  sort  of  changes  in  her  ways  that  these  things  portended. 
The  Moslem  teachers  and  the  Brahmins  were  alike  alarmed,  and 
the  British  were  blamed  for  the  progress  of  mankind.  Conflicts 
of  economic  interests  grew  more  acute  with  the  increasing  near- 
ness of  Europe ;  Indian  industries,  and  particularly  the  ancient 
cotton  industry,  suffered  from  legislation  that  favoured  the 
British  manufacturer.  A  piece  of  incredible  folly  on  the  part 
of  the  company  precipitated  an  outbreak,  To  the  Brahmin  a 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  981 

cow  is  sacred;  to  the  Moslem  the  pig  is  unclean.  A  new  rifle, 
needing  greased  cartridges — which  the  men  had  to  bite — was 
served  out  to  the  company's  Indian  seldiers ;  the  troops  dis- 
covered that  their  cartridges  were  greased  with  the  fat  of  cows 
and  swine.  This  discovery  precipitated  a  revolt  of  the  com- 
pany's Indian  army,  the  Indian  Mutiny  (1857).  First  the 
troops  mutinied  at  Meerut.  Then  Delhi  rose  to  restore  the 
empire  of  the  Great  Mogul.  .  .  . 

The  British  public  suddenly  discovered  India.  They  became 
aware  of  that  little  garrison  of  British  people,  far  away  in 
that  strange  land  of  fiery  dust  and  weary  sunshine,  fighting  for 
life  against  dark  multitudes  of  assailants.  How  they  got  there 
and  what  right  they  had  there,  the  British  public  did  not  ask. 
The  love  of  one's  kin  in  danger  overrides  such  questions. 
There  were  massacres  and  cruelties.  -1857  was  a  year  of  pas- 
sionate anxiety  in  Great  Britain.  With  mere  handfuls  of 
troops  the  British  leaders,  and  notably  Lawrence  and  Nichol- 
son, did  amazing  things.  They  did  not  sit  down  to  be  besieged 
while  the  mutineers  organized  and  gathered  prestige ;  that  would 
have  lost  them  India  for  ever.  They  attacked  often  against 
overwhelming  odds.  "Clubs,  not  spades,  are  trumps,"  said 
Lawrence.  The  Sikhs,  the  Gurkhas,  the  Punjab  troops  stuck 
to  the  British.  The  south  remained  tranquil.  Of  the  massacres 
of  Cawnpore  and  Lucknow  in  Oudh,  and  how  a  greatly  out- 
numbered force  of  British  troops  besieged  and  stormed  Delhi, 
other  histories  must  tell.  By  April,  1859,  the  last  embers  of 
the  blaze  had  been  stamped  out,  and  the  British  were  masters 
of  India  again.  In  no  sense  had  the  mutiny  been  a  popular 
insurrection ;  it  was  a  mutiny  merely  of  the  Bengal  Army,  due 
largely  to  the  unimaginative  rule  of  the  company  officials.  Its 
story  abounds  in  instances  of  Indian  help  and  kindness  to  Brit- 
ish fugitives.  But  it  was  a  warning. 

The  direct  result  of  the  mutiny  was  the  annexation  of  the 
Indian  Empire  to  the  British  Crown.  By  the  Act  entitled 
An  Act  for  the  Better  Government  of  India,  the  Governor- 
General  became  a  Viceroy  representing  the  Sovereign,  and  the 
place  of  the  company  was  taken  by  a  Secretary  of  State  for 
India  responsible  to  the  British  Parliament.  In  1877,  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  to  complete  this  work,  caused  Queen  Victoria  to  be 
proclaimed  Empress  of  India. 

Upon  these  extraordinary  lines  India  and  Britain  are  linked 


982  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

at  the  present  time.  India  is  still  the  empire  of  the  Great 
Mogul,  expanded,  but  the  Great  Mogul  has  been  replaced  by 
the  "crowned  republic"  of  Great  Britain.  India  is  an  autocracy 
without  an  autocrat.  Its  rule  combines  the  disadvantage  of 
absolute  monarchy  with  the  impersonality  and  irresponsibility 
of  democratic  officialdom.  The  Indian  with  a  complaint  to 
make  has  no  visible  monarch  to  go  to ;  his  Emperor  is  a  golden 
symbol;  he  must  circulate  pamphlets  in  England  or  inspire  a 
question  in  the  British  House  of  Commons.  The  more  occupied 
Parliament  is  with  British  affairs,  the  less  attention  India  will 
receive,  and  the  more  she  will  be  at  the  mercy  of  her  small  group 
of  higher  officials. 

This  is  manifestly  impossible  as  a  permanent  state  of  affairs. 
Indian  life,  whatever  its  restraints,  is  moving  forward  with  the 
rest  of  the  world;  India  has  an  increasing  service  of  news- 
papers, an  increasing  number  of  educated  people  affected  by 
Western  ideas,  and  an  increasing  sense  of  a  common  grievance 
against  her  government  There  has  been  little  or  no  corre- 
sponding advance  in  the  education  and  quality  of  the  British 
official  in  India  during  the  past  seventy  years.  His  tradition 
is  a  high  one;  he  is  often  a  man  of  exceptional  quality,  but  the 
system  is  unimaginative  and  inflexible.  Moreover,  the  military 
power  that  stands  behind  these  officials  has  developed  neither  in 
character  nor  intelligence  during  the  last  century.  No  other 
class  has  been  so  stagnant  intellectually  as  the  British  military 
caste.  Confronted  with  a  more  educated  India,  the  British 
military  man,  uneasily  aware  of  his  educational  defects  and 
constantly  apprehensive  of  ridicule,  has  in  the  last  few  years 
displayed  a  disposition  towards  spasmodic  violence  that  has  had 
some  very  lamentable  results.  For  a  time  the  great  war  alto- 
gether diverted  what  small  amount  of  British  public  attention 
was  previously  given  to  India,  and  drew  away  the  more  intelli- 
gent military  men  from  her  service.  During  those  years,  and 
the  feverish  years  of  unsettlement  that  followed,  things  occurred 
in  India,  the  massacre  of  an  unarmed  crowd  at  Amritzar  in 
which  nearly  two  thousand  people  were  killed  or  wounded, 
floggings  and  humiliating  outrages,  a  sort  of  official's  Terror, 
that  produced  a  profound  moral  shock  when  at  last  the  Hunter 
Commission  of  1919  brought  them  before  the  home  public.  In 
liberal-minded  Englishmen,  who  have  been  wont  to  regard  their 
empire  as  an  incipient  league  of  free  peoples,  this  revelation 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  983 

of  the  barbaric  quality  in  its  administrators  produced  a  very 
understandable  dismay.  .  .  . 

But  the  time  has  not  yet  come  for  writing  the  chapter  of 
history  that  India  is  opening  for  herself.  .  .  .  We  cannot  dis- 
cuss here  in  detail  the  still  unsettled  problems  of  the  new  India 
that  struggles  into  being.  Already  in  the  Government  of  India 
Act  of  1919  we  may  have  the  opening  of  a  new  and  happier 
era  that  may  culminate  in  a  free  and  willing  group  of  Indian 
peoples  taking  an  equal  place  among  the  confederated  states 
of  the  world.  .  .  . 

The  growth  of  the  British  Empire  in  directions  other  than 
that  of  India  was  by  no  means  so  rapid  during  the  earlier  half 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  A  considerable  school  of  political 
thinkers  in  Britain  was  disposed  to  regard  overseas  possessions 
as  a  source  of  weakness  to  the  kingdom.  The  Australian  settle- 
ments developed  slowly  until  in  1842  the  discovery  of  valuable 
copper  mines,  and  in  1851  of  gold,  gave  them  a  new  importance. 
Improvements  in  transport  were  also  making  Australian  wool 
an  increasingly  marketable  commodity  in  Europe.  Canada,  too, 
was  not  remarkably  progressive  until  1849 ;  it  was  troubled 
by  dissensions  between  its  French  and  British  inhabitants,  there 
were  several  serious  revolts,  and  it  was  only  in  1867  that  a 
new  constitution  creating  a  Federal  Dominion  of  Canada  re- 
lieved its  internal  strains.  It  was  the  railway  that  altered  the 
Canadian  outlook.  It  enabled  Canada,  just  as  it  enabled  the 
United  States,  to  expand  westward,  to  market  its  corn  and 
other  produce  in  Europe,  and  in  spite  of  its  swift  and  extensive 
growth,  to  remain  in  language  and  sympathy  and  interests  one 
community.  The  railway,  the  steamship,  and  the  telegraphic 
cable  were  indeed  changing  all  the  conditions  of  colonial 
development. 

Before  1840,  English  settlements  had  already  begun  in 
New  Zealand,  and  a  N"ew  Zealand  Land  Company  had  been 
formed  to  exploit  the  possibilities  of  the  island.  In  1840  New 
Zealand  also  was  added  to  the  colonial  possessions  of  the  British 
Crown. 

Canada,  as  we  have  noted,  was  the  first  of  the  British  pos- 
sessions to  respond  richly  to  the  new  economic  possibilities  the 
new  methods  of  transport  were  opening.  Presently  the  re- 
publics of  South  America,  and  particularly  the  Argentine 
Republic,  began  to  feel,  in  their  cattle  trade  and  coffee  growing, 


984  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  increased  nearness  of  the  European  market.  Hitherto  the 
chief  commodities  that  had  attracted  the  European  powers  into 
unsettled  and  barbaric  regions  had  been  gold  or  other  metals, 
spices,  ivory,  or  slaves.  But  in  the  latter  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  increase  of  the  European  populations  was 
obliging  their  governments  to  look  abroad  for  staple  foods ;  and 
the  growth  of  scientific  industrialism  was  creating  a  demand 
for  new  raw  materials,  fats  and  greases  of  every  kind,  rubber, 
and  other  hitherto  disregarded  substances.  It  was  plain  that 
Great  Britain  and  Holland  and  Portugal  were  reaping  a  great 
and  growing  commercial  advantage  from  their  very  consider- 
able control  of  tropical  and  sub-tropical  products.  After  1871 
Germany  and  presently  France  and  later  Italy  began  to  look 
for  unannexed  raw-material  areas,  or  for  Oriental  countries 
capable  of  profitable  modernization. 

So  began  a  fresh  scramble  all  over  the  world,  except  in  the 
American  region  where  the  Monroe  Doctrine  now  barred  such 
adventures,  for  politically  unprotected  lands.  Close  to  Europe 
was  the  continent  of  Africa,  full  of  vaguely  known  possibilities. 
In  1850  it  was  a  continent  of  black  mystery;  only  Egypt  and 
the  coast  were  known.  A  map  must  show  the  greatness  of  the 
European  ignorance  at  that  time.  It  would  need  a  book  as  long 
as  this  Outline  to  do  justice  to  the  amazing  story  of  the  ex- 
plorers and  adventurers  who  first  pierced  this  cloud  of  dark- 
ness, and  to  the  political  agents,  administrators,  traders,  set- 
tlers, and  scientific  men  who  followed  in  their  track.  Wonder- 
ful races  of  men  like  the  pigmies,  strange  beasts  like  the  okapi, 
marvellous  fruits  and  flowers  and  insects,  terrible  diseases, 
astounding  scenery  of  forest  and  mountain,  enormous  inland 
seas  and  gigantic  rivers  and  cascades  were  revealed;  a  whole 
new  world.  Even  remains  (at  Zimbabwe)  of  some  unrecorded 
and  vanished  civilization,  the  southward  enterprise  of  an  early 
people,  were  discovered.  Into  this  new  world  came  the  Euro- 
peans, and  found  the  rifle  already  there  in  the  hands  of  the 
Arab  slave-traders,  and  negro  life  in  disorder.  By  1900,  as 
our  second  map  must  show,  all  Africa  was  mapped,  explored, 
estimated,  and  divided  between  the  European  powers,  divided 
with  much  snarling  and  disputation  into  portions  that  left  each 
power  uneasy  or  discontented.  Little  heed  was  given  to  the 
welfare  of  the  natives  in  this  scramble.  The  Arab  slaver  was 
indeed  curbed  rather  than  expelled,  but  the  greed  for  rubber, 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


985 


which  was  a  wild  product  collected  under  compulsion  by  the 
natives  in  the  Belgian  Congo,  a  greed  exacerbated  by  the  pitiless 
avarice  of  the  King  of  the  Belgians,  and  the  clash  of  inexperi- 
enced European  administrators  with  the  native  population  in 
many  other  annexations,  led  to  horrible  atrocities.  No  Euro- 
pean power  has  perfectly  clean  hands  in  this  matter. 


AFRICA- 

about -ike  ird 


We  cannot  tell  here  in  any  detail  how  Great  Britain  got 
possession  of  Egypt  in  1883,  and  remained  there  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  Egypt  was  technically  a  part  of  the  Turkish 
Empire,  nor  how  nearly  this  scramble  led  to  war  between  France 
and  Great  Britain  in  1898,  when  a  certain  Colonel  Marchand, 
crossing  Central  Africa  from  the  west  coast,  tried  at  Fashoda 
to  seize  the  Upper  Nile.  In  Uganda  the  French  Catholic  and 


986 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


the  British  Anglican  missionaries  disseminated  a  form  of  Chris- 
tianity so  heavily  charged  with  the  spirit  of  Napoleon,  and  so 
finely  insistent  upon  the  nuances  of  doctrine,  that  a  few  years 
after  its  first  glimpse  of  European  civilization,  Mengo,  the  capi- 
tal of  Uganda,  was  littered  with  dead  "Protestants"  and  "Catho- 


AFRICA 
1914- 


British 

French. 

German..... $g% 


lies"  extremely  difficult  to  distinguish  from  the  entirely  un- 
spiritual  warriors  of  the  old  regime. 

Nor  can  we  tell  how  the  British  Government  first  let  the 
Boers,  or  Dutch  settlers,  of  the  Orange  River  district  and  the 
Transvaal  set  up  independent  republics  in  the  inland  parts  of 
South  Africa,  and  then  repented  and  annexed  the  Transvaal 
Republic  in  1877;  nor  how  the  Transvaal  Boers  fought  for 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 

freedom  and  won  it  after  the  Battle  of  Majuba  Hill  (1881). 
Majuba  Hill  was  made  to  rankle  in  the  memory  of  the  English 
people  by  a  persistent  press  campaign.  A  war  with  both  re- 
publics broke  out  in  1899,  a  three  years'  war  enormously  costly 
to  the  British  people,  which  ended  at  last  in  the  surrender  of 
the  two  republics. 

Their  period  of  subjugation  was  a  brief  one.  In  1907,  after 
the  downfall  of  the  imperialist  government  which  had  con- 
quered them,  the  Liberals  took  the  South  African  problem  in 
hand,  and  these  former  republics  became  free  and  fairly  will- 
ing associates  with  Cape  Colony  and  Natal  in  a  confederation 
of  all  the  states  of  South  Africa  as  one  self-governing  republic 
under  the  British  Crown. 

In  a  quarter  of  a  century  the  partition  of  Africa  was  com- 
pleted. There  remained  unannexed  three  comparatively  small 
countries:  Liberia,  a  settlement  of  liberated  negro  slaves  on 
the  west  coast;  Morocco,  under  a  Moslem  Sultan;  and  Abys- 
sinia, a  barbaric  country,  with  an  ancient  and  peculiar  form  of 
Christianity,  which  had  successfully  maintained  its  independ- 
ence against  Italy  at  the  Battle  of  Adowa  in  1896. 


§  10 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  any  large  number  of  people  really 
accepted  this  headlong  painting  of  the  map  of  Africa  in  Euro- 
pean colours  as  a  permanent  new  settlement  of  the  world's 
affairs,  but  it  is  the  duty  of  the  historian  to  record  that  it  was 
so  accepted.  There  was  but  a  shallow  historical  background 
to  the  European  mind  in  the  nineteenth  century,  hardly  any 
sense  of  what  constitutes  an  enduring  political  system,  and  no 
habit  of  penetrating  criticism.  The  quite  temporary  advantages 
that  the  onset  of  the  mechanical  revolution  in  the  west  had  given 
the  European  Great  Powers  over  the  rest  of  the  old  world  were 
regarded  by  people,  blankly  ignorant  of  the  great  Mongol  con- 
quests of  the  thirteenth  and  following  centuries,  as  evidences 
of  a  permanent  and  assured  leadership.  They  had  no  sense  of 
the  transferability  of  science  and  its  fruits.  They  did  not 
realize  that  Chinamen  and  Indians  could  carry  on  the  work  of 
research  as  ably  as  Frenchmen  or  Englishmen.  They  believed 
that  there  was  some  innate  intellectual  drive  in  the  west,  and 


988  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

some  innate  indolence  and  conservatism  in  the  east,  that  assured 
the  Europeans  a  world  predominance  for  ever. 

The  consequence  of  this  infatuation  was  that  the  various 
European  foreign  offices  set  themselves  not  merely  to  scramble 
with  the  British  for  the  savage  and  undeveloped  regions  of 
the  world's  surface,  but  also  to  carve  up  the  populous  and 
civilized  countries  of  Asia  as  though  these  peoples  also  were 
no  more  than  raw  material  for  European  exploitation.  The 
inwardly  precarious  but  outwardly  splendid  imperialism  of 
the  British  ruling  class  in  India,  and  the  extensive  and  profit- 
able possessions  of  the  Dutch  in  the  East  Indies,  filled  the 
ruling  and  mercantile  classes  of  the  rival  Great  Powers  with 
dreams  of  similar  glories  in  Persia,  in  the  disintegrating  Otto- 
man Empire,  and  in  Further  India,  China,  and  Japan.  In 
the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  was  assumed,  as 
the  reader  may  verify  by  an  examination  of  the  current  litera- 
ture of  the  period,  to  be  a  natural  and  inevitable  thing  that  all 
the  world  should  fall  under  European  dominion.  With  a 
reluctant  benevolent  effort  the  European  mind  prepared  itself 
to  take  up  what  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  called  "the  White  Man's 
Burthen" — that  is  to  say,  the  lordship  of  the  earth.  The 
Powers  set  themselves  to  this  enterprise  in  a  mood  of  jostling 
rivalry,  with  half-educated  or  illiterate  populations  at  home, 
with  a  mere  handful  of  men,  a  few  thousand  at  most,  engaged  in 
scientific  research,  with  their  internal  political  systems  in  a  state 
of  tension  or  convulsive  change,  with  a  creaking  economic  system 
of  the  most  provisional  sort,  and  with  their  religions  far  gone  in 
decay.  They  really  believed  that  the  vast  populations  of  eastern 
Asia  could  be  permanently  subordinated  to  such  a  Europe. 

Even  to-day  there  are  many  people  who  fail  to  grasp  the  es- 
sential facts  of  this  situation.  They  do  not  realize  that  in 
Asia  the  average  brain  is  not  one  whit  inferior  in  quality  to 
the  average  European  brain;  that  history  shows  Asiatics  to  be 
as  bold,  as  vigorous,  as  generous,  as  self-sacrificing,  and  as 
capable  of  strong  collective  action  as  Europeans,  and  that  there 
are  and  must  continue  to  be  a  great  many  more  Asiatics  than 
Europeans  in  the  world.  It  has  always  been  difficult  to  re- 
strain the  leakage  of  knowledge  from  one  population  to  another, 
and  now  it  becomes  impossible.  Under  modern  conditions 
world-wide  economic  and  educational  equalization  is  in  the 
long  run  inevitable.  An  intellectual  and  moral  rally  of  the 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  989 

Asiatics  is  going  on  at  the  present  time.  The  slight  leeway  of 
a  century  or  so,  a  few  decades  may  recover.  At  the  present 
time,  for  example,  for  one  Englishman  who  knows  Chinese 
thoroughly,  or  has  any  intimate  knowledge  of  Chinese  life  and 
thought,  there  are  hundreds  of  Chinamen  conversant  with  every- 
thing the  English  know.  The  balance  of  knowledge  in  favour 
of  India  may  be  even  greater.  To  Britain,  India  sends  stu- 
dents; to  India,  Britain  sends  officials,  for  the  most  part  men 
untrained  in  scientific  observation.  There  is  no  organization 
whatever  for  the  sending  of  European  students,  as  students,  to 
examine  and  inquire  into  Indian  history,  archaeology,  and  cur- 
rent affairs  or  for  bringing  learned  Indians  into  contact  with 
British  students  in  Britain. 

Since  the  year  1898,  the  year  of  the  seizure  of  Kiau-Chau 
by  Germany  and  of  Wei-hai-wei  by  Britain,  and  the  year  after 
the  Russian  taking  of  Port  Arthur,  events  in  China  have  moved 
more  rapidly  than  in  any  other  country  except  Japan.  A  great 
hatred  of  Europeans  swept  like  a  flame  over  China,  and  a  po- 
litical society  for  the  expulsion  of  Europeans,  the  Boxers,  grew 
up  and  broke  out  into  violence  in  1900.  This  was  an  outbreak 
of  rage  and  mischief  on  quite  old-fashioned  lines.  In  1900 
the  Boxers  murdered  250  Europeans  and,  it  is  said,  nearly 
30,000  Christians.  China,  not  for  the  first  time  in  history, 
was  under  the  sway  of  a  dowager  empress.  She  was  an  igno- 
rant woman,  but  of  great  force  of  character  and  in  close  sym- 
pathy with  the  Boxers.  She  supported  them,  and  protected 
those  who  perpetrated  outrages  on  the  Europeans.  All  that 
again  is  what  might  have  happened  in  500  B.C.  or  thereabouts 
against  the  Huns. 

Things  came  to  a  crisis  in  1900.  The  Boxers  became  more 
and  more  threatening  to  the  Europeans  in  China.  Attempts 
were  made  to  send  up  additional  European  guards  to  the  Peking 
legations,  but  this  only  precipitated  matters.  The  German 
minister  was  shot  down  in  the  streets  of  Peking  by  a  soldier  of 
the  imperial  guard.  The  rest  of  the  foreign  representatives 
gathered  together  and  made  a  fortification  of  the  more  favour- 
ably situated  legations  and  stood  a  siege  of  two  months.  A 
combined  allied  force  of  20,000  under  a  German  general  then 
marched  up  to  Peking  and  relieved  the  legations,  and  the  old 
Empress  fled  to  Sian-fu,  the  old  capital  of  Tai-tsung.  Some 
of  the  European  troops  committed  grave  atrocities  upon  the 


990  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Chinese  civil  population.1  That  brings  one  up  to  about  the  level 
of  1850,  let  us  say. 

There  followed  the  practical  annexation  of  Manchuria  by 
Russia,  a  squabble  among  the  powers,  and  in  1904  a  British 
invasion  of  Tibet,  hitherto  a  forbidden  country.  But  what  did 
not  appear  on  the  surface  of  these  events,  and  what  made  all 
these  events  fundamentally  different,  was  that  China  now  con- 
tained a  considerable  number  of  able  people  who  had  a  Euro- 
pean education  and  European  knowledge.  The  Boxer  Insur- 
rection subsided,  and  then  the  influence  of  this  new  factor 
began  to  appear  in  talk  of  a  constitution  (1906),  in  the  sup- 
pression of  opium-smoking,  and  in  educational  reforms.  A  con- 
stitution of  the  Japanese  type  came  into  existence  in  1909, 
making  China  a  limited  monarchy.  But  China  is  not  to  be 
moulded  to  the  Japanese  pattern,  and  the  revolutionary  stir  con- 
tinued. Japan,  in  her  own  reorganization,  and  in  accordance 
with  her  temperament,  had  turned  her  eyes  to  the  monarchist 
west,  but  China  was  looking  across  the  Pacific.  In  1911  the 
essential  Chinese  revolution  began.  In  1912  the  emperor  abdi- 
cated, and  the  greatest  community  in  the  world  became  a  repub- 
lic. The  overthrow  of  the  emperor  was  also  the  overthrow  of  the 
Manchus,  and  the  Mongolian  pigtail,  which  had  been  worn  by 
the  Chinese  since  1644,  ceased  to  be  compulsory.  It  continues, 
however,  to  be  worn  by  a  large  proportion  of  the  population. 

At  the  present  time  it  is  probable  that  there  is  more  good 
brain  matter  and  more  devoted  men  working  out  the  moderniza- 
tion and  the  reorganization  of  the  Chinese  civilization  than  we 
should  find  directed  to  the  welfare  of  any  single  European 
people.  China  will  presently  have  a  modernized  practicable 
script,  a  press,  new  and  vigorous  modern  universities,  a  reor- 
ganized industrial  system,  and  a  growing  body  of  scientific  and 
economic  inquiry.  The  natural  industry  and  ingenuity  of  her 
vast  population  will  be  released  to  co-operate  upon  terms  of 
equality  with  the  Western  world.  She  may  have  great  internal 
difficulties  ahead  of  her  yet ;  of  that  no  man  can  judge.  Never- 
theless, the  time  may  not  be  very  distant  when  the  Federated 
States  of  China  may  be  at  one  with  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica and  a  pacified  and  reconciled  Europe  in  upholding  the 
organized  peace  of  the  world. 

1See  Putnam  Weale's  Indiscreet  Letters  from  Pekin,  a  partly  fictitious 
book,  but  true  and  vivid  in  its  effects. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  991 


The  pioneer  country,  however,  in  the  recovery  of  the  Asiatic 
peoples  was  not  China,  but  Japan.  We  have  outrun  our  story 
in  telling  of  China.  Hitherto  Japan  has  played  but  a  small  part 
in  this  history;  her  secluded  civilization  has  not  contributed 
very  largely  to  the  general  shaping  of  human  destinies;  she 
has  received  much,  but  she  has  given  little.  The  original  in- 
habitants of  the  Japanese  Islands  were  probably  a  northern  peo- 
ple with  remote  Nordic  affinities,  the  Hairy  Ainu.  But  the 
Japanese  proper  are  of  the  Mongolian  race.  Physically  they 
resemble  the  Amerindians,  and  there  are  many  curious  re- 
semblances between  the  prehistoric  pottery  and  so  forth  of 
Japan  and  similar  Peruvian  products.  It  is  not  impossible  that 
they  are  a  back-flow  from  the  trans-Pacific  drift  of  the  early 
heliolithic  culture,  but  they  may  also  have  absorbed  from  the 
south  a  Malay  and  even  a  Negrito  element. 

Whatever  the  origin  of  the  Japanese,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  their  civilization,  their  writing,  and  their  literary  and 
artistic  traditions  are  derived  from  the  Chinese.  They  were 
emerging  from  barbarism  in  the  second  and  third  century  of 
the  Christian  Era,  and  one  of  their  earliest  acts  as  a  people 
outside  their  own  country  was  an  invasion  of  Korea  under  a 
queen  Jingo,  who  seems  to  have  played  a  large  part  in  estab- 
lishing their  civilization.  Their  history  is  an  interesting  and 
romantic  one;  they  developed  a  feudal  system  and  a  tradition 
of  chivalry  ;  their  attacks  upon  Korea  and  China  are  an  Eastern 
equivalent  of  the  English  wars  in  France.  Japan  was  first 
brought  into  contact  with  Europe  in  the  sixteenth  century;  in 
1542  some  Portuguese  reached  it  in  a  Chinese  junk,  and  in  1549 
a  Jesuit  missionary,  Francis  Xavier,  began  his  teaching  there. 
The  Jesuit  accounts  describe  a  country  greatly  devastated  by 
perpetual  feudal  war.  For  a  time  Japan  welcomed  European 
intercourse,  and  the  Christian  missionaries  made  a  great  num- 
ber of  converts.  A  certain  William  Adams,  of  Gillingham,  in 
Kent,  became  the  most  trusted  European  adviser  of  the  Japa- 
nese, and  showed  them  how  to  build  big  ships.  There  were 
voyages  in  Japanese-built  ships  to  India  and  Peru.  Then  arose 
complicated  quarrels  between  the  Spanish  Dominicans,  the 
Portuguese  Jesuits,  and  the  English  and  Dutch  Protestants, 
each  warning  the  Japanese  against  the  evil  political  designs  of 


992  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  others.  The  Jesuits,  in  a  phase  of  ascendancy,  persecuted 
and  insulted  the  Buddhists  with  great  acrimony.  These  troubles 
interwove  with  the  feudal  conflicts  of  the  time.  In  the  end  the 
Japanese  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Europeans  and  their 
Christianity  were  an  intolerable  nuisance,  and  that  Catholic 
Christianity  in  particular  was  a  mere  cloak  for  the  political 
dreams  of  the  Pope  and  the  Spanish  monarchy — already  in 
possession  of  the  Philippine  Islands;  there  was  a  great  and 
conclusive  persecution  of  the  Christians,  and  in  1638  Japan 
with  the  exception  of  one  wretched  Dutch  factory  on  the  minute 
island  of  Deshima  in  the  harbour  of  Nagasaki  was  absolutely 
closed  to  Europeans,  and  remained  closed  for  over  200  years. 
The  Dutch  on  Deshima  were  exposed  to  almost  unendurable 
indignities.  They  had  no  intercourse  with  any  Japanese  exeept 
the  special  officials  appointed  to  deal  with  them.  During  those 
two  centuries  the  Japanese  remained  as  completely  cut  off  from 
the  rest  of  the  world  as  though  they  lived  upon  another  planet 
It  was  forbidden  to  build  any  ship  larger  than  a  mere  coasting 
boat.  No  Japanese  could  go  abroad,  and  no  European  enter 
the  country. 

For  two  centuries  Japan  remained  outside  the  main  current 
of  history.  She  lived  on  in  a  state  of  picturesque  feudalism 
enlivened  by  blood  feuds,  in  which  about  five  per  cent,  of  the 
population,  the  samurai,  or  fighting  men,  and  the  nobles  and 
their  families,  tyrannized  without  restraint  over  the  rest  of  the 
population.  All  common  men  knelt  when  a  noble  passed;  to 
betray  the  slightest  disrespect  was  to  risk  being  slashed  to  death 
by  his  samurai.  The  elect  classes  lived  lives  of  romantic  adven- 
ture without  one  redeeming  gleam  of  novelty;  they  loved, 
murdered,  and  pursued  fine  points  of  honour — which  probably 
bored  the  intelligent  ones  extremely.  We  can  imagine  the 
wretchedness  of  a  curious  mind,  tormented  by  the  craving 
for  travel  and  knowledge,  cooped  up  in  these  islands  of  empty 
romance. 

Meanwhile  the  great  world  outside  went  on  to  wider  visions 
and  new  powers.  Strange  shipping  became  more  frequent,  pass- 
ing the  Japanese  headlands;  sometimes  ships  were  wrecked  and 
sailors  brought  ashore.  Through  the  Dutch  settlement  at 
Deshima,  their  one  link  with  the  outer  universe,  came  warnings 
that  Japan  was  not  keeping  pace  with  the  power  of  the  Western 
world.  In  1837  a  ship  sailed  into  Yedo  Bay  flying  a  strange 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  993 

flag  of  stripes  and  stars,  and  carrying  some  Japanese  sailors 
she  had  picked  up  far  adrift  in  the  Pacific.  She  was  driven  off 
by  a  cannon  shot.  This  flag  presently  reappeared  on  other  ships. 
One  in  1849  came  to  demand  the  liberation  of  eighteen  ship- 
wrecked American  sailors.  Then  in  1853  came  four  American 
warships  under  Commodore  Perry,  and  refused  to  be  driven 
away.  He  lay  at  anchor  in  forbidden  waters,  and  sent  messages 
to  the  two  rulers  who  at  that  time  shared  the  control  of  Japan. 
In  1854  he  returned  with  ten  ships,  amazing  ships  propelled 
by  steam,  and  equipped  with  big  guns,  and  he  made  proposals 
for  trade  and  intercourse  that  the  Japanese  had  no  power  to 
resist.  He  landed  with  a  guard  of  500  men  to  sign  the  treaty. 
Incredulous  crowds  watched  this  visitation  from  the  outer  world, 
marching  through  the  streets. 

Russia,  Holland,  and  Britain  followed  in  the  wake  of  Amer- 
ica. Foreigners  entered  the  country,  and  conflicts  between  them 
and  Japanese  gentlemen  of  spirit  ensued.  A  British  subject 
was  killed  in  a  street  brawl,  and  a  Japanese  town  was  bom- 
barded by  the  British  (1863).  A  great  nobleman  whose  estates 
commanded  the  Straits  of  Shimonoseki  saw  fit  to  fire  on  foreign 
vessels,  and  a  second  bombardment  by  a  fleet  of  British,  French, 
Dutch,  and  American  warships  destroyed  his  batteries  and  scat- 
tered his  swordsmen.  Finally  an  allied  squadron  (1865),  at 
anchor  off  Kioto,  imposed  a  ratification  of  the  treaties  which 
opened  Japan  to  the  world. 

The  humiliation  of  the  Japanese  by  these  events  was  intense, 
and  it  would  seem  that  the  salvation  of  peoples  lies  largely  in 
such  humiliations.  With  astonishing  energy  and  intelligence 
they  set  themselves  to  bring  their  culture  and  organization  up 
to  the  level  of  the  European  powers.  Never  in  all  the  history 
of  mankind  did  a  nation  make  such  a  stride  as  Japan  then  did. 
In  1866  she  was  a  mediaeval  people,  a  fantastic  caricature  of 
the  extremist  romantic  feudalism  ;  in  1899  hers  was  a  completely 
Westernized  people,  on  a  level  with  the  most  advanced  Euro- 
pean powers,  and  well  in  advance  of  Russia.  She  completely 
dispelled  the  persuasion  that  Asia  was  in  some  irrevocable  way 
hopelessly  behind  Europe.  She  made  all  European  progress 
seem  sluggish  and  tentative  by  comparison. 

We  cannot  tell  here  in  any  detail  of  Japan's  war  with  China 
in  1894-95.  It  demonstrated  the  extent  of  her  Westernization. 
She  had  an  efficient  Westernized  army  and  a  small  but  sound 


994  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

fleet.  But  the  significance  of  her  renascence,  though  it  wa3 
appreciated  by  Britain  and  the  United  States,  who  were  already 
treating  her  as  if  she  were  a  European  state,  was  not  under- 
stood by  the  other  Great  Powers  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  new 
Indias  in  Asia.  Russia  was  pushing  down  through  Manchuria 
to  Korea,  France  was  already  established  far  to  the  south  in 
Tonkin  and  Annam,  Germany  was  prowling  hungrily  on  the 
look-out  for  some  settlement.  The  three  powers  combined  to 
prevent  Japan  reaping  any  fruits  from  the  Chinese  war,  and 
particularly  from  establishing  herself  on  the  mainland  at  the 
points  commanding  the  Japan  Sea.  She  was  exhausted  by 
her  war  with  China,  and  they  threatened  her  with  war. 

In  1898  Germany  descended  upon  China,  and,  making  the 
murder  of  two  missionaries  her  excuse,  annexed  a  portion  of 
the  province  of  Shang-tung.  Thereupon  Russia  seized  the  Liao- 
tung  peninsula,  and  extorted  the  consent  of  China  to  an  exten- 
sion of  her  trans-Siberian  railway  to  Port  Arthur ;  and  in  1900 
she  occupied  Manchuria.  Britain  was  unable  to  resist  the  imita- 
tive impulse,  and  seized  the  port  of  Wei-hai-wei  (1898).  How 
alarming  these  movements  must  have  been  to  every  intelligent 
Japanese  a  glance  at  the  map  will  show.  They  led  to  a  war 
\vith  Russia  which  marks  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  Asia,  the 
close  of  the  period  of  European  arrogance.  The  Russian  people 
were,  of  course,  innocent  and  ignorant  of  this  trouble  that  was 
being  made  for  them  half-way  round  the  world,  and  the  wiser 
Russian  statesmen  were  against  these  foolish  thrusts ;  but  a  gang 
of  financial  adventurers  surrounded  the  Tsar,  including  the 
Grand  Dukes,  his  cousins.  They  had  gambled  deeply  in  the 
prospective  looting  of  Manchuria  and  China,  and  they  would 
suffer  no  withdrawal.  So  there  began  a  transportation  of  great 
armies  of  Japanese  soldiers  across  the  sea  to  Port  Arthur  and 
Korea,  and  the  sending  of  endless  trainloads  of  Russian  peas- 
ants along  the  Siberian  railway  to  die  in  those  distant 
battlefields. 

The  Russians,  badly  led  and  dishonestly  provided,  were 
beaten  on  sea  and  land  alike.  The  Russian  Baltic  Fleet  sailed 
round  Africa  to  be  utterly  destroyed  in  the  Straits  of  Tshu- 
shima.  A  revolutionary  movement  among  the  common  people 
of  Russia,  infuriated  by  this  remote  and  reasonless  slaughter, 
obliged  the  Tsar  to  end  the  war  (1905)  ;  he  returned  the  south- 
ern half  of  Saghalien,  which  had  been  seized  by  Russia  in  1875, 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


995 


996  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

evacuated  Manchuria,  resigned  Korea  to  Japan.  The  White 
Man  was  beginning  to  drop  his  load  in  eastern  Asia.  For  some 
years,  however,  Germany  remained  in  uneasy  possession  of 
Kiau-Chau. 

§  12 

We  have  already  noted  how  the  enterprise  of  Italy  in  Abys- 
sinia had  been  checked  at  the  terrible  battle  of  Adowa  (1896), 
in  which  over  3,000  Italians  were  killed  and  more  than  4,000 
taken  prisoner.  The  phase  of  imperial  expansion  at  the  expense 
of  organized  non-European  states  was  manifestly  drawing  to  a 
close.  It  had  entangled  the  quite  sufficiently  difficult  political 
and  social  problems  of  Great  Britain,  France,  Spain,  Italy,  Ger- 
many, and  Russia  with  the  affairs  of  considerable  alien,  un- 
assimilable,  and  resentful  populations ;  Great  Britain  had  Egvpt 
(not  formally  annexed  as  yet),  India,  Burmah,  and  a  variety 
of  such  minor  problems  as  Malta  and  Shanghai ;  France  had 
cumbered  herself  with  Tonkin  and  Annam  in  addition  to  Algiers 
and  Tunis;  Spain  was  newly  entangled  in  Morocco;  Italy  had 
found  trouble  for  herself  in  Tripoli ;  and  German  overseas  im- 
perialism, though  its  "place  in  the  sun"  seemed  a  poor  one, 
derived  what  satisfaction  it  could  from  the  thought  of  a  prospec- 
tive war  with  Japan  over  Kiau-Chau.  All  these  "subject"  lands 
had  populations  at  a  level  of  intelligence  and  education  very 
little  lower  than  those  of  the  possessing  country;  the  develop- 
ment of  a  native  press,  of  a  collective  self-consciousness,  and  of 
demands  for  self-government  was  in  each  case  inevitable,  and 
the  statesmen  of  Europe  had  been  far  too  busy  achieving  these 
empires  to  have  any  clear  ideas  of  what  they  would  do  with 
them  when  they  got  them. 

The  Western  democracies,  as  they  woke  up  to  freedom,  dis- 
covered themselves  "imperial,"  and  were  considerably  em- 
barrassed by  the  discovery.  The  East  came  to  the  Western  capi- 
tals with  perplexing  demands.  In  London  the  common  English- 
man, much  preoccupied  by  strikes,  by  economic  riddles,  by 
questions  of  nationalization,  municipalization,  and  the  like, 
found  that  his  path  was  crossed  and  his  public  meetings  at 
tended  by  a  large  and  increasing  number  of  swarthy  gentlemen 
in  turbans,  fezes,  and  other  strange  headgear,  all  saying  in 
effect :  "You  have  got  us.  The  people  who  represent  your  gov- 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY  997 

eminent  have  destroyed  our  own  government,  and  prevent  us 
from  making  a  new  one.     What  are  you  going  to  do  with  us  ?" 


§  13 

We  may  note  here  briefly  the  very  various  nature  of  the  con- 
stituents of  the  British  Empire  in  1914.  Itwas  and  is  a  quite 
unique  political  combination;  nothing  of  the  sort  has  ever 
existed  before. 

First  and  central  to  the  whole  system  was  the  "crowned  re- 
public' '  of  the  United  British  Kingdoms,  including  (against 
the  will  of  a  considerable  part  of  the  Irish  people)  Ireland. 
The  majority  of  the  British  Parliament,  made  up  of  the  three 
united  parliaments  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  deter- 
mines the  headship,  the  quality  and  policy  of  the  ministry,  and 
determines  it  largely  on  considerations  arising  out  of  British 
domestic  politics.  It  is  this  ministry  which  is  the  effective 
supreme  government,  with  powers  of  peace  and  war,  over  all 
the  rest  of  the  empire. 

Next  in  order  of  political  importance  to  the  British  States 
were  the  "crowned  republics"  of  Australia,  Canada,  [New- 
foundland (the  oldest  British  possession,  1583),  New  Zealand, 
and  South  Africa,  all  practically  independent  and  self- 
governing  states  in  alliance  with  Great  Britain,  but  each  with 
a  representative  of  the  Crown  appointed  by  the  Government 
in  office; 

Next  the  Indian  Empire,  an  extension  of  the  empire  of  the 
Great  Mogul,  with  its  dependent  and  "protected"  states  reach- 
ing now  from  Baluchistan  to  Burmah,  and  including  Aden,  in 
all  of  which  empire  the  British  Crown  and  the  Indian  Office 
(under  Parliamentary  control)  played  the  role  of  the  original 
Turkoman  dynasty; 

Then  the  ambiguous  possession  of  Egypt,  still  nominally  a 
part  of  the  Turkish  Empire  and  still  retaining  its  own  monarch, 
the  Khedive,  but  under  almost  despotic  British  official  rule ; 

Then  the  still  more  ambiguous  "Anglo-Egyptian"  Sudan  prov- 
ince, occupied  and  administered  jointly  by  the  British  and  by 
the  (British  controlled)  Egyptian  Government; 

Then  a  number  of  partially  self-governing  communities,  some 
British  in  origin  and  some  not,  with  elected  legislatures  and 


998  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

an  appointed  executive,  such  as  Malta,1  Jamaica,  the  Bahamas, 
and  Bermuda; 

Then  the  Crown  colonies,  in  which  the  rule  of  the  British 
Home  Government  (through  the  Colonial  Office)  verged  on 
autocracy,  as  in  Ceylon,  Trinidad,  and  Fiji  (where  there  was 
an  appointed  council),  and  Gibraltar  and  St.  Helena  (where 
there  was  a  governor)  ; 

Then  great  areas  of  (chiefly)  tropical  lands,  raw-product 
areas,  with  politically  weak  and  under-civilized  native  commu- 
nities, which  were  nominally  protectorates,  and  administered 
either  by  a  High  Commissioner  set  over  native  chiefs  (as  in 
Basutoland)  or  over  a  chartered  company  (as  in  Rhodesia).  In 
some  cases  the  Foreign  Office,  in  some  cases  the  Colonial  Office, 
and  in  some  cases  the  India  Office  had  been  concerned  in  acquir- 
ing the  possessions  that  fell  into  this  last  and  least  definite  class 
of  all,  but  for  the  most  part  the  Colonial  Office  was  now 
responsible  for  them. 

It  will  be  manifest,  therefore,  that  no  single  office  and  no 
single  brain  had  ever  comprehended  the  British  Empire  as  a 
whole.  It  was  a  mixture  of  growths  and  accumulations  entirely 
different  from  anything  that  has  ever  been  called  an  empire 
before.  It  guaranteed  a  wide  peace  and  security;  that  is  why 
it  was  endured  and  sustained  by  many  men  of  the  "subject" 
races — in  spite  of  official  tyrannies  and  insufficiencies,  and  of 
much  negligence  on  the  part  of  the  "home"  public.  Like  the 
"Athenian  empire,"  it  was  an  overseas  empire;  its  ways  were 
sea  ways,  and  its  common  link  was  the  British  Navy.  Like  all 
empires,  its  cohesion  was  dependent  physically  upon  a  method 
of  communication ;  the  development  of  seamanship,  ship-build- 
ing, and  steamships  between  the  sixteenth  and  nineteenth  cen- 
turies had  made  it  a  possible  and  convenient  Pax — the  "Pax 
Britannica,"  and  fresh  developments  of  air  or  swift  land  trans- 
port or  of  undersea  warfare  might  at  any  time  make  it  incon- 
venient or  helplessly  insecure. 

1A  new  and  much  more  liberal  Maltese  constitution  was  promulgated 
in  June,  1920,  practically  putting  Malta  on  the  footing  of  a  self-governing 
colony. 


THE  NINETEENTH  CENTURY 


999 


XXXIX 
THE  INTERNATIONAL  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914 

1.  The  Armed  Peace  Before  the  Great  War.  §  2.  Imperia 
Germany.  §  3.  The  Spirit  of  Imperialism  in  Britain  and 
Ireland.  §  4.  Imperialism  in  France,  Italy,  and  the  Balkans. 
§  5.  Russia  a  Grand  Monarchy.  §  6.  The  United  States 
and  the  Imperial  Idea.  §  7.  The  Immediate  Causes  of  the 
Great  War.  §  8.  A  Summary  of  the  Great  War  Up  to  1917. 
§  9.  The  Great  War  from  the  Russian  Collapse  to  the  Armis- 
tice. §  10.  The  Political,  Economical,  and  Social  Disorgani- 
zation Caused  ly  the  War.  §  11.  President  Wilson  and  the 
Problems  of  Versailles.  §  12.  Summary  of  the  First  Cove- 
nant of  the  League  of  Nations.  §  13.  A  General  Outline  of 
the  Treaties  of  1919  and  1920. 


FOR  thirty-six  years  after  the  Treaty  of  San  Stefano  and 
the  Berlin  Conference,  Europe  maintained  an  uneasy 
peace  within  its  borders  ;  there  was  no  war  between  any 
of  the  leading  states  during  this  period.  They  jostled,  brow- 
beat, and  threatened  one  another,  but  they  did  not  come  to 
actual  hostilities.  There  was  "a  general  realization  after  1871 
that  modern  war  was  a  much  more  serious  thing  than  the  pro- 
fessional warfare  of  the  eighteenth  century,  an  effort  of  peoples 
as  a  whole  that  might  strain  the  social  fabric  very  severely,  an 
adventure  not  to  be  rashly  embarked  upon.  The  mechanical 
revolution  was  giving  constantly  more  powerful  (  and  expensive) 
weapons  by  land  and  sea,  and  more  rapid  methods  of  transport  ; 
and  making  it  more  and  more  impossible  to  carry  on  warfare 
without  a  complete  dislocation  of  the  economic  life  of  the  com- 
munity. Even  the  foreign  offices  felt  the  fear  of  war. 

But  though  war  was  dreaded  as  it  had  never  been  dreaded 
in  the  world  before,  nothing  was  done  in  the  way  of  setting  up 

1000 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  19U  1001 

a  federal  control  to  prevent  human  affairs  drifting  towards  war. 
In  1898,  it  is  true,  the  young  Tsar  Nicholas  II  (1894-1917) 
issued  a  rescript  inviting  the  other  Great  Powers  to  a  confer- 
ence of  states  "seeking  to  make  the  great  idea  of  universal 
peace  triumph  over  the  elements  of  trouble  and  discord."  His 
rescript  recalls  the  declaration  of  his  predecessor,  Alexander  I, 
which  gave  its  tone  to  the  Holy  Alliance,  and  it  is  vitiated  by 
the  same  assumption  that  peace  can  he  established  between  sov- 
ereign governments  rather  than  by  a  broad  appeal  to  the  needs 
and  rights  of  the  one  people  of  mankind.  The  lesson  of  the 
United  States  of  America,  which  showed  that  there  could  bo 
neither  unity  of  action  nor  peace  until  the  thought  o±  the  "people 
of  Virginia"  and  the  "people  of  Massachusetts"  had  been  swept 
aside  by  the  thought  of  the  "people  of  the  United  States,"  went 
entirely  disregarded  in  the  European  attempts  at  pacification. 
Two  conferences  were  held  at  The  Hague  in  Holland,  one  in 
1899  and  another  in  1907, -and  at  the  second  nearly  all  the 
sovereign  states  of  the  world  were  represented.  They  were 
represented  diplomatically,  there  was  no  direction  of  the  general 
intelligence  of  the  world  to  their  deliberations,  the  ordinary 
common  man  did  not  even  know  that  these  conferences  were 
sitting,  and  for  the  most  part  the  assembled  representatives 
haggled  cunningly  upon  points  of  international  law  affecting 
war,  leaving  aside  the  abolition  of  war  as  a  chimsera.  These 
Hague  Conferences  did  nothing  to  dispel  the  idea  that  inter- 
national life  is  necessarily  competitive.  They  accepted  that  idea. 
They  did  nothing  to  develop  the  consciousness  of  a  world  com- 
monweal overriding  sovereigns  and  foreign  offices.  The  interna- 
tional lawyers  and  statesmen  who  attended  these  gatherings  were 
as  little  disposed  to  hasten  on  a  world  commonweal  on  such  a 
basis  as  were  the  Prussian  statesmen  of  1848  to  welcome  an  all- 
German  parliament  overriding  the  rights  and  "policy"  of  the 
King  of  Prussia. 

In  America  a  series  of  three  Pan-American  conferences  in 
1889,  1901,  and  1906  went  some  way  towards  the  development 
of  a  scheme  of  international  arbitration  for  the  whole  American 
continent. 

The  character  and  good  faith  of  Nicholas  II,  who  initiated 
these  Hague  gatherings,  we  will  not  discuss  at  any  length  here. 
He  may  have  thought  that  time  was  on  the  side  of  Kussia.  But 
of  the  general  unwillingness  of  the  Great  Powers  to  face  the 


1002  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

prospect  of  a  merger  of  sovereign  powers,  without  which  perma- 
nent peace  projects  are  absurd,  there  can  be  no  sort  of  doubt 
whatever.  It  was  no  cessation  of  international  competition  with 
its  acute  phase  of  war  that  they  desired,  but  rather  a  cheapening 
of  war,  which  was  becoming  too  costly.  Each  wanted  to  econo- 
mize the  wastage  of  minor  disputes  and  conflicts,  and  to  establish 
international  laws  that  would  embarrass  its  more  formidable 
opponents  in  war-time  without  incommoding  itself.  These  were 
the  practical  ends  they  sought  at  the  Hague  Conference.  It 
was  a  gathering  they  attended  to  please  Nicholas  II,  just  as  the 
monarchs  of  Europe  had  subscribed  to  the  evangelical  proposi- 
tions of  the  Holy  Alliance  to  please  Alexander  I ;  and  as  they 
had  attended  it,  they  tried  to  make  what  they  conceived  to  be 
some  use  of  it. 

§2 

The  peace  of  Frankfort  had  left  Germany  Prussianized  and 
united,  the  most  formidable  of  all  the  Great  Powers  of  Europe. 
France  was  humiliated  and  crippled.  Her  lapse  into  repub- 
licanism seemed  likely  to  leave  her  without  friends  in  any 
European  court.  Italy  was  as  yet  a  mere  stripling.  Austria 
sank  now  rapidly  to  the  position  of  a  confederate  in  German 
policy.  Russia  was  vast,  but  undeveloped;  and  the  British 
Empire  was  mighty  only  on  the  sea.  Beyond  Europe  the  one 
power  to  be  reckoned  with  by  Germany  was  the  United  States 
of  America,  growing  now  into  a  great  industrial  nation,  but 
with  no  army  nor  navy  worth  considering  by  European 
standards. 

The  new  Germany  which  was  embodied  in  the  empire  that 
had  been  created  at  Versailles  was  a  complex  and  astonishing 
mixture  of  the  fresh  intellectual  and  material  forces  of  the 
world,  with  the  narrowest  political  traditions  of  the  European 
system.  She  was  vigorously  educational;  she  was  by  far  the 
most  educational  state  in  the  world ;  she  made  the  educational 
pace  for  all  her  neighbours  and  rivals.  In  this  time  of  reckon- 
ing for  Germany,  it  may  help  the  British  reader  to  a  balanced 
attitude  to  recall  the  educational  stimulation  for  which  his  coun- 
try has  to  thank  first  the  German  Prince  Consort  and  then 
German  competition.  That  mean  jealousy  of  the  educated 
common  man  on  the  part  of  the  British  ruling  class,  which  no 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1003 

patriotic  pride  or  generous  impulse  had  ever  sufficed  to  over- 
come, went  down  before  a  growing  fear  of  German  efficiency. 
And  Germany  took  up  the  organization  of  scientific  research 
and  of  the  application  of  scientific  method  to  industrial  and 
social  development  with  such  a  faith  and  energy  as  no  other 
community  had  ever  shown  before.  Throughout  all  this  period 
of  the  armed  peace  she  was  reaping  and  sowing  afresh  and 
reaping  again  the  harvests,  the  unfailing  harvests,  of  freely 
disseminated  knowledge.  She  grew  swiftly  to  become  a  great 
manufacturing  and  trading  power;  her  steel  output  outran  the 
British ;  in  a  hundred  new  fields  of  production  and  commerce, 
where  intelligence  and  system  was  of  more  account  than  mere 
trader's  cunning,  in  the  manufacture  of  optical  glass,  of  dyes 
and  of  a  multitude  of  chemical  products  and  in  endless  novel 
processes,  she  led  the  world. 

To  the  British  manufacturer  who  was  accustomed  to  see  in- 
ventions come  into  his  works,  he  knew  not  whence  nor  why, 
begging  to  be  adopted,  this  new  German  method  of  keeping  and 
paying  scientific  men  seemed  abominably  unfair.  It  was  com- 
pelling fortune,  he  felt.  It  was  packing  the  cards.  It  was 
encouraging  a  nasty  class  of  intellectuals  to  interfere  in  the 
affairs  of  sound  business  men.  Science  went  abroad  from  its 
first  home  like  an  unloved  child.  The  splendid  chemical  indus- 
try of  Germany  was  built  on  the  work  of  the  Englishman  Sir 
William  Perkin,  who  could  find  no  "practical"  English  business 
man  to  back  him.  And  Germany  also  led  the  way  in  many 
forms  of  social  legislation.  Germany  realized  that  labour  is  a 
national  asset,  that  it  deteriorates  through  unemployment,  and 
that,  for  the  common  good,  it  has  to  be  taken  care  of  outside 
the  works.  The  British  employer  was  still  under  the  delusion 
that  labour  had  no  business  to  exist  outside  the  works,  and  that 
the  worse  such  exterior  existence  was,  the  better  somehow  for 
him.  Moreover,  because  of  his  general  illiteracy,  he  was  an 
intense  individualist :  his  was  the  insenate  rivalry  of  the  vulgar 
mind ;  he  hated  his  fellow  manufacturers  about  as  much  as  he 
hated  his  labour  and  his  customers.  German  producers,  on 
the  other  hand,  were  persuaded  of  the  great  advantages  of 
combination  and  civility;  their  enterprises  tended  to  flow 
together  and  assume  more  and  more  the  character  of  national 
undertakings. 

This  educating,  scientific,  and  organizing  Germany  was  the 


1004  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

natural  development  of  the  liberal  Germany  of  1843 ;  it  had  its 
roots  far  back  in  the  recuperative  effort  that  drew  its  impulse 
from  the  shame  of  the  Napoleonic  conquest.  All  that  was  good, 
all  that  was  great  in  this  modern  Germany,  she  owed  indeed 
to  her  schoolmasters.  But  this  scientific  organizing  spirit  was 
only  one  of  the  two  factors  that  made  up  the  new  German 
Empire.  The  other  factor  was  the  Hohenzollern  monarchy 
which  had  survived  Jena,  which  had  tricked  and  bested  the 
revolution  of  1848,  and  which,  under  the  guidance  of  Bismarck, 
had  now  clambered  to  the  legal  headship  of  all  Germany  out- 
side Austria.  Except  the  Tsardom,  no  other  European  state 
had  so  preserved  the  tradition  of  the  Grand  Monarchy  of  the 
eighteenth  century  as  the  Prussian.  Through  the  tradition  of 
Frederick  the  Great,  Machiavelli  now  reigned  in  Germany.  In 
the  head  of  this  fine  new  modern  state,  therefore,  there  sat  no 
fine  modern  brain  to  guide  it  to  a  world  predominance  in  world 
service,  but  an  old  spider  lusting  for  power.  Prussianized  Ger- 
many was  at  once  the  newest  and  the  most  antiquated  thing  in 
Western  Europe.  She  was  the  best  and  the  wickedest  state  of 
her  time. 

The  psychology  of  nations  is  still  but  a  rudimentary  science. 
Psychologists  have  scarcely  begun  to  study  the  citizen  side  of 
the  individual  man.  But  it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  our 
subject  that  the  student  of  universal  history  should  give  some 
thought  to  the  mental  growth  of  the  generations  of  Germans 
educated  since  the  victories  of  1871.  They  were  naturally  in- 
flated by  their  sweeping  unqualified  successes  in  war,  and  by 
their  rapid  progress  from  comparative  poverty  to  wealth.  It 
would  have  been  more  than  human  in  them  if  they  had  not 
given  way  to  some  excesses  of  patriotic  vanity.  But  this  re- 
action was  deliberately  seized  upon  and  fostered  and  devel- 
oped by  a  systematic  exploitation  and  control  of  school  and 
college,  literature  and  press,  in  the  interests  of  the  Hohen- 
zollern dynasty.  A  teacher,  a  professor,  who  did  not  teach  and 
preach,  in  and  out  of  season,  the  racial,  moral,  intellectual,  and 
physical  superiority  of  the  Germans  to  all  other  peoples,  their 
extraordinary  devotion  to  war  and  their  dynasty,  and  their 
inevitable  destiny  under  that  dynasty  to  lead  the  world,  was 
a  marked  man,  doomed  to  failure  and  obscurity.  German  his- 
torical teaching  became  an  immense  systematic  falsification  of 
the  human  past,  with  a  view  to  the  Hohenzollern  future.  All 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1005 

other  nations  were  represented  as  incompetent  and  decadent; 
the  Prussians  were  the  leaders  and  regenerators  of  mankind. 
The  young  German  read  this  in  his  school-hooks,  heard  it  in 
church,  found  it  in  his  literature,  had  it  poured  into  him  with 
passionate  conviction  by  his  professor.  It  was  poured  into 
him  by  all  his  professors;  lecturers  in  biology  or  mathematics 
would  break  off  from  their  proper  subject  to  indulge  in  long 
passages  of  patriotic  rant.  Only  minds  of  extraordinary  tough- 
ness and  originality  could  resist  such  a  torrent  of  suggestion. 
Insensibly  there  was  built  up  in  the  German  mind  a  conception 
of  Germany  and  its  emperor  as  of  something  splendid  and 
predominant  as  nothing  else  had  ever  been  before,  a  godlike 
nation  in  "shining  armour''  brandishing  the  "good  German 
sword"  in  a  world  of  inferior — and  very  badly  disposed — 
peoples.  We  have  told  our  story  of  Europe;  the  reader  may 
judge  whether  the  glitter  of  the  German  sword  is  exceptionally 
blinding.  Germania  was  deliberately  intoxicated,  she  was  sys- 
tematically kept  drunk,  with  this  sort  of  patriotic  rhetoric.  It 
is  the  greatest  of  the  Hohenzollern  crimes  that  the  Crown  con- 
stantly and  persistently  tampered  with  education,  and  partic- 
ularly with  historical  teaching.  No  other  modern  state  has 
so  sinned  against  education.  The  oligarchy  of  the  crowned 
republic  of  Great  Britain  may  have  crippled  and  starved  edu- 
cation, but  the  Hohenzollern  monarchy  corrupted  and  pros- 
tituted it. 

It  cannot  be  too  clearly  stated,  it  is  the  most  important  fact 
in  the  history  of  the  last  half  century,  that  the  German  people 
was  methodically  indoctrinated  with  the  idea  of  a  German 
world-predominance  based  on  might,  and  with  the  theory  that 
war  was  a  necessary  thing  in  life.  The  key  to  German  his- 
torical teaching  is  to  be  found  in  Count  Moltke's  dictum: 
"Perpetual  peace  is  a  dream,  and  it  is  not  even  a  beautiful 
dream.  War  is  an  element  in  the  order  of  the  world  ordained 
by  God."  "Without  war  the  world  would  stagnate  and  lose 
itself  in  materialism."  And  the  anti-Christian  German  phi- 
losopher, Nietzsche,  found  himself  quite  at  one  with  the  pious 
field-marshal.  "It  is  mere  illusion  and  pretty  sentiment,"  he 
observes,  "to  expect  much  (even  anything  at  all)  from  man- 
kind if  it  forgets  how  to  make  war.  As  yet  no  means  are  known 
which  call  so  much  into  action  as  a  great  war  that  rough  energy 
born  of  the  camp,  that  deep  impersonality  born  of  hatred,  that 


1006 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


conscience  born  of  murder  and  cold-bloodedness,  that  fervour 
born  of  effort  in  the  annihilation  of  the  enemy,  that  proud 
indifference  to  loss,  to  one's  own  existence,  to  that  of  one's  fel- 
lows, that  earthquake-like  soul-shaking  which  a  people  needs 
when  it  is  losing  its  vitality."  l 

This  sort  of  teaching,  which  pervaded  the  German  Empire 
from  end  to  end,  was  bound  to  be  noted  abroad,  bound  to  alarm 

every  other  power  and 
people  in  the  world,  bound 
to  provoke  an  anti-Ger- 
man confederation  and  it 
was  accompanied  by  a 
parade  of  military,  and 
presently  of  naval,  prep- 
aration that  threatened 
France,  Russia,  and  Brit- 
ain alike.  It  affected  the 
thoughts,  the  manners, 
and  morals  of  the  entire 
German  people.  After 
1871,  the  German  abroad 
thrust  out  his  chest  and 
raised  his  voice.  He  threw 
a  sort  of  trampling  quality 
even  into  the  operations  of 
commerce.  His  machinery 
came  on  the  markets  of 
the  world,  his  shipping 
took  the  seas  with  a  splash 
of  patriotic  challenge. 
Hjis  very  merits  he  used  as 
a  means  of  offence.  (And  probably  most  other  peoples,  if  they 
had  had  the  same  experiences  and  undergone  the  same  training, 
would  have  behaved  in  a  similar  manner.) 

By  one  of  those  accidents  in  history  that  personify  and  pre- 
cipitate catastrophes,  the  ruler  of  Germany,  the  emperor  Wil- 
liam II,  embodied  the  new  education  of  his  people  and  the 
Hohenzollern  tradition  in  the  completest  form.  He  came  to 
the  throne  in  1888  at  the  age  of  twenty-nine;  his  father,  Fred- 

1  These   quotations   are   from   Sir   Thomas   Barclay's   article    "Peace"    in 
the  Encyclopedia  Britannica. 


XKc  Emperor  'KVUliam  IT. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1007 

erick  III,  had  succeeded  his  grandfather,  William  I,  in  the 
March,  to  die  in  the  June  of  that  year.  William  II  was  the 
grandson  of  Queen  Victoria  on  his  mother's  side,  but  his  tem- 
perament showed  no  traces  of  the  liberal  German  tradition 
that  distinguished  the  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha  family.  His  head 
was  full  of  the  frothy  stuff  of  the  new  imperialism.  He 
signalized  his  accession  by  an  address  to  his  army  and  navy; 
his  address  to  his  people  followed  three  days  later.  A  high  note 
of  contempt  for  democracy  was  sounded:  "The  soldier  and  the 
army,  not  parliamentary  majorities,  have  welded  together  the 
German  Empire.  My  trust  is  placed  in  the  army."  So  the 
patient  work  of  the  German  schoolmasters  was  disowned,  and 
the  Hohenzollern  declared  himself  triumphant. 

The  next  exploit  of  the  young  monarch  was  to  quarrel  with 
the  old  chancellor,  Bismarck,  who  had  made  the  new  German 
Empire,  and  to  dismiss  him  (1890).  There  were  no  profound 
differences  of  opinion  between  them,  but,  as  Bismarck  said,  the 
Emperor  intended  to  be  his  own  chancellor. 

These  were  the  opening  acts  of  an  active  and  aggressive 
career.  This  William  II  meant  to  make  a  noise  in  the  world, 
a  louder  noise  than  any  other  monarch  had  ever  made.  The 
whole  of  Europe  was  soon  familiar  with  the  figure  of  the  new 
monarch,  invariably  in  military  uniform  of  the  most  glittering 
sort,  staring  valiantly,  fiercely  moustached,  and  with  a  withered 
left  arm  ingeniously  minimised.  He  affected  silver  shining 
breastplates  and  long  white  cloaks.  A  great  restlessness  was 
manifest.  It  was  clear  he  conceived  himself  destined  for  great 
things,  but  for  a  time  it  was  not  manifest  what  particular  great 
things  these  were.  There  was  no  oracle  at  Delphi  now  to  tell 
him  that  he  was  destined  to  destroy  a  great  empire. 

The  note  of  theatricality  about  him  and  the  dismissal  of 
Bismarck  alarmed  many  of  his  subjects,  but  they  were  pres- 
ently reassured  by  the  idea  that  he  was  using  his  influence  in 
the  cause  of  peace  and  to  consolidate  Germany.  He  travelled 
much,  to  London,  Vienna,  Rome — where  he  had  private  con- 
versations with  the  Pope — to  Athens,  where  his  sister  married 
the  king  in  1889,  and  to  Constantinople.  He  was  the  first 
Christian  sovereign  to  be  a  Sultan's  guest.  He  also  went  to 
Palestine.  A  special  gate  was  knocked  through  the  ancient  wall 
of  Jerusalem  so  that  he  could  ride  into  that  place;  it  was  be- 
neath his  dignity  to  walk  in.  He  induced  the  Sultan  to  com- 


1008  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

mence  the  reorganization  of  the  Turkish  Army  upon  German 
lines  and  under  German  officers.  In  1895  he  announced  that 
Germany  was  a  "world  power,"  and  that  "the  future  of  Ger- 
many lay  upon  the  water" — regardless  of  the  fact  that  the 
British  considered  that  they  were  there  already — and  he  began 
to  interest  himself  more  and  more  in  the  building  up  of  a  great 
navy.  He  also  took  German  art  and  literature  under  his  care ; 
he  used  his  influence  to  retain  the  distinctive  and  blinding 
German  blackletter  against  the  Roman  type  used  by  the  rest 
of  western  Europe,  and  he  supported  the  Pan-German  move- 
ment, which  claimed  the  Dutch,  the  Scandinavians,  the  Flemish 
Belgians,  and  the  German  Swiss  as  members  of  a  great  German 
brotherhood — as  in  fact  good  assimilable  stuff  for  a  hungry 
young  empire  which  meant  to  grow.  All  other  monarchs  in 
Europe  paled  before  him. 

He  used  the  general  hostility  against  Britain  aroused  through- 
out Europe  by  the  war  against  the  Boer  Republics  to  press  for- 
ward his  schemes  for  a  great  navy,  and  this,  together  with  the 
rapid  and  challenging  extension  of  the  German  colonial  em- 
pire in  Africa  and  tke  Pacific  Ocean,  alarmed  and  irritated 
the  British  extremely.  British  liberal  opinion  in  particular 
found  itself  under  the  exasperating  necessity  of  supporting  an 
ever-increasing  British  Navy.  "I  will  not  rest,"  he  said,  "until 
I  have  brought  my  navy  to  the  same  height  at  which  my  army 
stands."  The  most  peace-loving  of  the  islanders  could  not  ignore 
that  threat. 

In  1890  he  had  acquired  the  small  island  of  Heligoland  from 
Britain.  This  he  made  into  a  great  naval  fortress. 

As  his  navy  grew,  his  enterprise  increased.  He  proclaimed 
the  Germans  "the  salt  of  the  earth."  They  must  not  "weary 
in  the  work  of  civilization;  Germany,  like  the  spirit  of  Im- 
perial Rome,  must  expand  and  impose  itself."  This  he  said 
on  Polish  soil,  in  support  of  the  steady  efforts  the  Germans 
were  making  to  suppress  the  Polish  language  and  culture,  and 
to  Germanize  their  share  of  Poland.  God  he  described  as  his 
"Divine  Ally."  In  the  old  absolutisms  the  monarch  was  either 
God  himself  or  the  adopted  agent  of  God;  the  Kaiser  took 
God  for  his  trusty  henchman.  "Our  old  God,"  he  said  af- 
fectionately. When  the  Germans  seized  Kiau-Chau,  he  spoke 
of  the  German  "mailed  fist."  When  he  backed  Austria  against 
Russia,  he  talked  of  Germany  in  her  "shining  armour." 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1009 

The  disasters  of  Russia  in  Manchuria  in  1905  released  the 
spirit  of  German  imperialism  to  bolder  aggressions.  The  fear 
of  a  joint  attack  from  France  and  Russia  seemed  lifting.  The 
emperor  made  a  kind  of  regal  progress  through  the  Holy  Land, 
landed  at  Tangier  to  assure  the  Sultan  of  Morocco  of  his  sup- 
port against  the  French,  and  inflicted  upon  France  the  crown- 
ing indignity  of  compelling  her  hy  a  threat  of  war  to  dismiss 
Delcasse,  her  foreign  minister.  He  drew  tighter  the  links  be- 
tween Austria  and  Germany,  and  in  1908,  Austria,  with  his 
support,  defied  the  rest  of  Europe  by  annexing  from  the  Turk 
the  Yugo-Slav  provinces  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina.  So  by 
his  naval  challenge  to  Britain  and  .these  aggressions  upon  France 
and  the  Slavs  he  forced  Britain,  France,  and  Russia  into  a 
defensive  understanding  against  him.  The  Bosnian  annexa- 
tion had  the  further  effect  of  estranging  Italy,  which  had 
hitherto  been  his  ally. 

Such  was  the  personality  that  the  evil  fate  of  Germany 
set  over  her  to  stimulate,  organize,  and  render  intolerable  to 
the  rest  of  the  world  the  natural  pride  and  self-assertion  of 
a  great  people  who  had  at  last,  after  long  centuries  of 
division  and  weakness,  escaped  from  a  jungle  of  princes  to 
unity  and  the  world's  respect.  It  was  natural  that  the 
commercial  and  industrial  leaders  of  this  new  Germany 
who  were  now  getting  rich,  the  financiers  intent  upon  over- 
seas exploits,  the  officials  and  the  vulgar,  should  find  this 
leader  very  much  to  their  taste.  Many  Germans  who  thought 
him  rash  or  tawdry  in  their  secret  hearts,  supported  him 
publicly  because  he  had  so  taking  an  air  of  success.  Hoch  der 
.Kaiser! 

Yet  Germany  did  not  yield  itself  without  a  struggle  to  the 
strong-flowing  tide  of  imperialism.  Important  elements  in  Ger- 
man life  struggled  against  this  swaggering  new  autocracy.  The 
old  German  nations,  and  particularly  the  Bavarians,  refused 
to  be  swallowed  up  in  Prussianism.  And  with  the  spread  of 
education  and  the  rapid  industrialization  of  Germany,  organ- 
ized labour  developed  its  ideas  and  a  steady  antagonism  to  the 
military  and  patriotic  clattering  of  its  ruler.  A  new  political 
party  was  growing  up  in  the  state,  the  Social  Democrats,  pro- 
fessing the  doctrines  of  Marx.  In  the  teeth  of  the  utmost  oppo- 
sition from  the  official  and  clerical  organizations,  and  of  vio- 
lently repressive  laws  against  its  propaganda  and  against  com- 


1010  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

binations,  this  party  grew.  The  Kaiser  denounced  it  again  and 
again;  its  leaders  were  sent  to  prison  or  driven  abroad.  Still 
it  grew.  When  he  came  to  the  throne  it  polled  not  half  a  mil- 
lion votes ;  in  1907  it  polled  over  three  million.  He  attempted 
to  concede  many  things,  old  age  and  sickness  insurance,  for 
example,  as  a  condescending  gift,  things  which  it  claimed  for 
the  workers  as  their  right.  His  conversion  to  socialism  was 
noted,  but  it  gained  no  converts  to  imperialism.  His  naval 
ambitions  were  ably  and  bitterly  denounced;  the  colonial 
adventures  of  the  new  German  capitalists  were  incessantly 
attacked  by  this  party  of  the  common  sense  of  the  common 
man.  But  to  the  army,  the  Social  Democrats  accorded  a 
moderate  support,  because,  much  as  they  detested  their  home- 
grown autocrat,  they  hated  and  dreaded  the  barbaric  and 
retrogressive  autocracy  of  Russia  on  their  eastern  frontier 
more. 

The  danger  plainly  before  Germany  was  that  this  swagger- 
ing imperialism  would  compel  Britain,  Russia,  and  France  into 
a  combined  attack  upon  her,  an  offensive-defensive.  The  Kai- 
ser wavered  between  a  stiff  attitude  towards  Britain  and  clumsy 
attempts  to  propitiate  her,  while  his  fleet  grew  and  while  he 
prepared  for  a  preliminary  struggle  with  Russia  and  France. 
When  in  1913  the  British  government  proposed  a  cessation  on 
either  hand  of  naval  construction  for  a  year,  it  was  refused. 
The  Kaiser  was  afflicted  with  a  son  and  heir  more  Hohenzollern, 
more  imperialistic,  more  Pan-Germanic  than  his  father.  He 
had  been  nurtured  upon  imperialist  propaganda.  His  toys 
had  been  soldiers  and  guns.  He  snatched  at  a  premature  pop- 
ularity by  outdoing  his  father's  patriotic  and  aggressive  atti- 
tudes. His  father,  it  was  felt,  was  growing  middle-aged  and 
over-careful.  The  Crown  Prince  renewed  him.  Germany  had 
never  been  so  strong,  never  so  ready  for  a  new  great  adventure 
and  another  harvest  of  victories.  The  Russians,  he  was  in- 
structed, were  decayed,  the  French  degenerate,  the  British  on 
the  verge  of  civil  war.  This  young  Crown  Prince  was  but  a 
sample  of  the  abounding  upper-class  youth  of  Germany  in  the 
spring  of  1914.  They  had  all  drunken  from  the  same  cup. 
Their  professors  and  teachers,  their  speakers  and  leaders,  their 
mothers  and  sweethearts,  had  been  preparing  them  for  the  great 
occasion  that  was  now  very  nearly  at  hand.  They  were  full  of 
the  tremulous  sense  of  imminent  conflict,  of  a  trumpet  call  to 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1011 

stupendous  achievements,  of  victory  over  mankind  abroad,  tri- 
umph over  the  recalcitrant  workers  at  home.  The  country  was 
taut  and  excited  like  an  athletic  competitor  at  the  end  of  his 
training. 

§3 

Throughout  the  period  of  the  armed  peace  Germany  was 
making  the  pace  and  setting  the  tone  for  the  rest  of  Europe. 
The  influence  of  her  new  doctrines  of  aggressive  imperialism 
was  particularly  strong  upon  the  British  mind,  which  was  ill- 
equipped  to  resist  a  strong  intellectual  thrust  from  abroad. 
The  educational  impulse  the  Prince  Consort  had  given  had  died 
away  after  his  death;  the  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge were  hindered  in  their  task  of  effective  revision  of 
upper-class  education  by  the  fears  and  prejudices  the  so-called 
"conflict  of  science  and  religion"  had  roused  in  the  clergy  who 
dominated  them  through  Convocation;  popular  education  was 
crippled  by  religious  squabbling,  by  the  extreme  parsimony  of 
the  public  authorities,  by  the  desire  of  employers  for  child  la- 
bour, and  by  individualistic  objection  to  "educating  other  peo- 
ple's children."  The  old  tradition  of  the  English,  the  tradition 
of  plain  statement,  legality,  fair  play,  and  a  certain  measure 
of  republican  freedom  had  faded  considerably  during  the 
stresses  of  the  Napoleonic  wars;  romanticism,  of  which  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  the  great  novelist,  was  the  chief  promoter,  had 
infected  the  national  imagination  with  a  craving  for  the  florid 
and  picturesque.  "Mr.  Briggs,"  the  comic  Englishman  of 
Punch  in  the  fifties  and  sixties,  getting  himself  into  highland 
costume  and  stalking  deer,  was  fairly  representative  of  the 
spirit  of  the  new  movement.  It.  presently  dawned  upon  Mr. 
Briggs  as  a  richly  coloured  and  credible  fact  he  had  hitherto 
not  observed,  that  the  sun  never  set  on  his  dominions.  The 
country  which  had  once  put  Clive  and  Warren  Hastings  on 
trial  for  their  unrighteous  treatment  of  Indians,  was  now  per- 
suaded to  regard  them  as  entirely  chivalrous  and  devoted  fig- 
ures. They  were  "empire  builders."  Under  the  spell  of  Dis- 
raeli's Oriental  imagination,  which  hiad  made  Queen  Vic- 
toria "empress,"  the  Englishman  turned  readily  enough  to- 
wards the  vague  exaltations  of  modern  imperialism. 

The  perverted  ethnology  and  distorted  history  which  was 


1012  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

persuading  the  mixed  Slavic,  Keltic,  and  Teutonic  Germans 
that  they  were  a  wonderful  race  apart,  was  imitated  by  Eng- 
lish writers  who  began  to  exalt  a  new  ethnological  invention,  the 
"Anglo-Saxon."  This  remarkable  compound  was  presented  as 
the  culmination  of  humanity,  the  crown  and  reward  of  the  ac- 
cumulated effort  of  Greek  and  Roman,  Egyptian,  Assyrian, 
Jew,  Mongol,  and  such-like  lowly  precursors  of  its  white  splen- 
dour. The  senseless  legend  of  German  superiority  did  much  to 
exacerbate  the  irritations  of  the  Poles  in  Posen  and  the  French 
in  Lorraine.  The  even  more  ridiculous  legend  of  the  superior 
Anglo-Saxon  did  not  merely  increase  the  irritations  of  English 
rule  in  Ireland,  but  it  lowered  the  tone  of  British  dealings  with 
"subject"  peoples  throughout  the  entire  world.  Eor  the  cessa- 
tion of  respect  and  the  cultivation  of  "superior"  ideas  are 
the  cessation  of  civility  and  justice. 

The  imitation  of  German  patriotic  misconceptions  did  not 
end  with  this  "Anglo-Saxon"  fabrication.  The  clever  young 
men  at  the  British  universities  in  the  eighties  and  nineties, 
bored  by  the  flatness  and  insincerities  of  domestic  politics,  were 
moved  to  imitation  and  rivalry  by  this  new  teaching  of  an  arro- 
gant, subtle,  and  forceful  nationalist  imperialism,  this  com- 
bination of  Machiavelli  and  Attila,  which  was  being  imposed 
upon  the  thought  and  activities  of  young  Germany.  Britain, 
too,  they  thought,  must  have  her  shining  armour  and  wave  her 
good  sword.  The  new  British  imperialism  found  its  poet  in 
Mr.  Kipling  and  its  practical  support  in  a  number  of  financial 
and  business  interests  whose  way  to  monopolies  and  exploita- 
tions was  lighted  by  its  glow.  These  Prussianizing  English- 
men carried  their  imitation  of  Germany  to  the  most  extraor- 
dinary lengths.  Central  Europe  is  one  continuous  economic 
system,  best  worked  as  one ;  and  the  new  Germany  had  achieved 
a  great  customs  union,  a  Zollverein  of  all  its  constituents.  It 
became  naturally  one  compact  system,  like  a  clenched  fist.  The 
British  Empire  sprawled  like  an  open  hand  throughout  the 
world,  its  members  different  in  nature,  need,  and  relationship, 
with  no  common  interest  except  the  common  guarantee  of 
safety.  But  the  new  Imperialists  were  blind  to  that  difference. 
If  new  Germany  had  a  Zollverein,  then  the  British  Empire 
must  be  in  the  fashion;  and  the  natural  development  of  its 
various  elements  must  be  hampered  everywhere  by  "imperial 
preferences"  and  the  like.  .  .  . 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1018 

Yet  the  imperialist  movement  in  Great  Britain  never  had 
the  authority  nor  the  unanimity  it  had  in  Germany.  It  was 
not  a  natural  product  of  any  of  the  three  united  but  diverse 
British  peoples.  It  was  not  congenial  to  them.  Queen  Victoria 
and  her  successors,  Edward  VII  and  George  V,  were  indis- 
posed, either  by  temperament  or  tradition,  to  wear  "shining 
armour/7  shake  "mailed  fists,"  and  flourish  "good  swords"  in 
the  Hohenzollern  fashion.  They  had  the  wisdom  to  refrain 
from  any  overt  meddling  with  public  ideas.  And  this  "Brit- 
ish" imperialist  movement  had  from  the  first  aroused  the  hos- 
tility of  the  large  number  of  English,  Welsh,  Irish,  and  Scotch 
writers  who  refused  to  recognize  this  new  "British"  nationality 
or  to  accept  the  theory  that  they  were  these  "Anglo-Saxon" 
supermen.  And  many  great  interests  in  Britain,  and  notably 
the  shipping  interest,  had  been  built  up  upon  free  trade,  and 
regarded  the  fiscal  proposals  of  the  new  imperialists,  and  the 
new  financial  and  mercantile  adventurers  with  whom  they  were 
associated,  with  a  justifiable  suspicion.  On  the  other  hand, 
these  ideas  ran  like  wildfire  through  the  military  class,  through 
Indian  officialdom  and  the  like.  Hitherto  there  had  always 
been  something  apologetic  about  the  army  man  in  England. 
He  was  not  native  to  that  soil.  Here  was  a  movement  that 
promised  to  make  him  as  splendidly  important  as  his  Prussian 
brother  in  arms.  And  the  imperialist  idea  also  found  support 
in  the  cheap  popular  press  that  was  now  coming  into  existence 
to'  cater  for  the  new  stratum  of  readers  created  by  elementary 
education.  This  press  wanted  plain,  bright,  simple  ideas 
adapted  to  the  needs  of  readers  who  had  scarcely  begun  to  think. 

In  spite  of  such  support,  and  its  strong  appeal  to  national 
vanity,  British  imperialism  never  saturated  the  mass  of  the 
British  peoples.  The  English  are  not  a  mentally  docile  people, 
and  the  noisy  and  rather  forced  enthusiasm  for  imperialism  and 
higher  tariffs  of  the  old  Tory  Party,  the  army  class,  the  country 
clergy,  the  music-halls,  the  assimilated  alien,  the  vulgar  rich 
and  the  new  large  employers,  inclined  the  commoner  sort,  and 
particularly  organized  labour,  to  a  suspicious  attitude.  If  the 
continually  irritated  sore  of  the  Majuba  defeat  permitted  the 
country  to  be  rushed  into  the  needless,  toilsome^  and  costly 
conquest  of  the  Boer  republics  in  South  Africa,  the  strain  of 
that  adventure  produced  a  sufficient  reaction  towards  decency 
and  justice  to  reinstate  the  Liberal  Party  in  power,  and  to 


1014  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

undo  the  worst  of  that  mischief  by  the  creation  of  a  South 
African  confederation.  Considerable  advances  continued  to 
be  made  in  popular  education,  and  in  the  recovery  of  public 
interests  and  the  general  wealth  from  the  possession  of  the 
few.  And  in  these  years  of  the  armed  peace,  the  three  British 
peoples  came  very  near  to  a  settlement,  on  fairly  just  and  rea- 
sonable lines,  of  their  long-standing  misunderstanding  with 
Ireland.  The  great  war,  unluckily  for  them,  overtook  them  in 
the  very  crisis  of  this  effort. 

Like  Japan,  Ireland  has  figured  but  little  in  this  Outline  of 
History,  and  for  the  same  reason,  because  she  is  an  extreme 
island  country,  receiving  much,  but  hitherto  giving  but  little 
back  into  the  general  drama.  Her  population  is  a  very  mixed 
one,  its  basis,  and  probably  its  main  substance,  being  of  the  dark 
"Mediterranean"  strain,  pre-Nordic  and  pre-Aryan,  like  the 
Basques  and  the  people  of  Portugal  and  south  Italy.  Over 
this  original  basis  there  flowed,  about  the  sixth  century  B.C. — 
we  do  not  know  to  what  degree  of  submergence — a  wave  of 
Keltic  peoples,  in  at  least  sufficient  strength  to  establish  a 
Keltic  language,  the  Irish  Gaelic.  There  were  comings  and 
goings,  invasions  and  counter-invasions  of  this  and  that  Keltic 
or  Kelticized  people  between  Ireland,  Scotland,  Wales,  and 
England.  The  island  was  Christianized  in  the  fifth  century. 
Later  on  the  east  coast  was  raided  and  settled  by  Northmen, 
but  we  do  not  know  to  what  extent  they  altered  the  racial 
quality.  The  Norman-English  came  in  1169,  in  the  time  of 
Henry  II  and  onward.  The  Teutonic  strain  may  be  as  strong 
or  stronger  than  the  Keltic  in  modern  Ireland.  Hitherto 
Ireland  had  been  a  tribal  and  barbaric  country,  with  a  few 
centres  of  security  wherein  the  artistic  tendencies  of  the  more 
ancient  race  found  scope  in  metal-work  and  the  illumination 
of  holy  books.  Now,  in  the  twelfth  century,  there  was  an  im- 
perfect conquest  by  the  English  Crown,  and  scattered  settlements 
by  Normans  and  English  in  various  parts  of  the  country.  From 
the  outset  profound  temperamental  differences  between  the 
Irish  and  English  were  manifest,  differences  exacerbated  by 
a  difference  of  language,  and  these  became  much  more  evident 
after  the  Protestant  Reformation.  The  English  became  Prot- 
estant; the  Irish  by  a  natural  reaction  rallied  about  the  per- 
secuted Catholic  church. 

The  English  rule  in  Ireland  had  been  from  the  first  an  in- 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1015 

termittent  civil  war  due  to  the  class  of  languages  and  the  dif- 
ferent laws  of  land  tenure  and  inheritance  of  the  two  peoples. 
The  rebellions,  massacres,  and  subjugations  of  the  unhappy 
island  during  the  reigns  of  Elizabeth  and  James  I  we  cannot 
tell  of  here;  but  under  James  came  a  new  discord  with  the 
confiscation  of  large  areas  of  Ulster  and  their  settlement  with 
Presbyterian  Scotch  colonists.  They  formed  a  Protestant  com- 
munity in  necessary  permanent  conflict  with  the  Catholic  re- 
mainder of  Ireland. 

In  the  political  conflicts  during  the  reign  of  Charles  I  and 
the  Commonweal,  and  of  James  II  and  William  and  Mary, 
the  two  sides  in  English  affairs  found  sympathizers  and  allies 
in  the  Irish  parties.  There  is  a  saying  in  Ireland  that  Eng- 
land's misfortune  is  Ireland's  opportunity,  and  the  English 
civil  trouble  that  led  to  the  execution  of  Strafford  was  the  occa- 
sion also  of  a  massacre  of  the  English  in  Ireland  (1641).  Later 
on  Cromwell  was  to  avenge  that  massacre  by  giving  no  quarter 
to  any  men  found  under  arms,  a  severity  remembered  by  the 
Irish  Catholics  with  extreme  bitterness.  Between  1689  and 
1691  Ireland  was  again  torn  by  civil  war.  James  II  sought 
the  support  of  the  Irish  Catholics  against  William  III,  and 
his  adherents  were  badly  beaten  at  the  battles  of  the  Boyne 
(1690)  and  Aughrim  (1691). 

There  was  a  settlement,  the  Treaty  of  Limerick,  a  disputed 
settlement  in  which  the  English  Government  promised  much  in 
the  way  of  tolerance  for  Catholics  and  the  like,  and  failed  to 
keep  its  promises.  Limerick  is  still  a  cardinal  memory  in  the 
long  story  of  Irish  embitterment.  Comparatively  few  English 
people  have  even  heard  of  this  Treaty  of  Limerick ;  in  Ireland 
it  rankles  to  this  day. 

The  eighteenth  century  was  a  century  of  accumulating  griev- 
ance. English  commercial  jealousy  put  heavy  restraints  upon 
Irish  trade,  and  the  development  of  a  wool  industry  was  de- 
stroyed in  the  south  and  west.  The  Ulster  Protestants  were 
treated  little  better  than  the  Catholics  in  these  matters,  and 
they  were  the  chief  of  the  rebels.  There  was  more  agrarian 
revolt  in  the  north  than  in  the  south  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

Let  us  state  as  clearly  as  our  space  permits  the  parallelisms 
and  contrasts  of  the  British  and  Irish  situation  at  this  time. 
There  was  a  parliament  in  Ireland,  but  it  was  a  Protestant 
parliament,  even  more  limited  and  corrupt  than  the  contempo- 


1016 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


rary  British  Parliament;  there  was  a  considerable  civilization 
in  and  about  Dublin,  and  much  literary  and  scientific  activity, 
conducted  in  English  and  centring  upon  th6  Protestant  uni- 
versity of  Trinity  College.  This  was  the  Ireland  of  Swift, 
Goldsmith,  Burke,  Berkeley,  and  Boyle.  It  was  essentially  a 
part  of  the  English  culture.  It  had  nothing  distinctively 
Irish  about  it.  The  Catholic  religion  and  the  Irish  language 
were  outcast  and  persecuted  things  in  the  darkness  at  this  time. 


The  English.  'Pale', 

Ityt.... 

ditio         ,twvz  of 
Elizabeth.  &  James  I 

Districts  'pZajiW(i.e. 
confiscated  &  settled  by 
English  &  Scots)  tune 
of  Elizabeth,  &  James  I 


IRELAND 


It  was  from  this  Ireland  of  the  darkness  that  the  recalci- 
trant Ireland  of  the  twentieth  century  arose.  The  Irish  Par- 
liament, its  fine  literature,  its  science,  all  its  culture,  gravitated 
naturally  enough  to  London,  because  they  were  inseparably  a 
part  of  that  world.  The  more  prosperous  landlords  went  to 
England  to  live,  and  had  their  children  educated  there.  This 
meant  a  steady  drain  of  wealth  from  Ireland  to  England  in  the 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1017 

form  of  rent,  spent  or  invested  out  of  the  country.     The  in- 
creasing  facilities   of   communication   steadily   enhanced   this 
tendency,  depleted  Dublin  and  bled  Ireland  white.     The  Act  of 
Union    (January   1st,    1801)    was  the  natural   coalescence  of 
two  entirely  kindred  systems,  of  the  Anglo-Irish  Parliament 
with  the  British  Parliament,  both  oligarchic,  both  politically 
corrupt  in  the  same  fashion.     There  was  a  vigorous  opposition 
to  the  Union  on  the  part  not  so  much  of  the  outer  Irish  as  of 
Protestants  settled  in  Ireland,  and  a  futile  insurrection  under 
Kobert  Emmet  in  1803.    Dublin,  which  had  been  a  fine  Anglo- 
Irish  city  in  the  middle  eighteenth  century,  was  gradually  de- 
serted by  its  intellectual  and  political  life,  and  invaded  by  the 
outer  Irish  of  Ireland.     Its  fashionable  life  became  more  and 
more  official,  centering  upon  the  Lord  Lieutenant  in  Dublin 
Castle ;  its  intellectual  life  flickered  and  for  a  time  nearly  died. 
But  while  the  Ireland  of  Swift  and  Goldsmith  was  part 
and   lot  with   the   England   of  Pope,    Dr.   Johnson,   and   Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds,  while  there  has  never  been  and  is  not  now 
any  real  definable  difference  except  one  of  geography  between 
the  "governing  class"  in  Ireland  and  in  Britain,  the  Irish  under- 
world and  the  English  underworld  were  essentially  dissimilar. 
The  upward  struggle  of  the  English  "democracy"  to  education, 
to  political  recognition,  was  different  in  many  respects  from  the 
struggle  of  the  Irish  underworld.     Britain  was  producing  a 
great  industrial  population,  Protestant  or  sceptical;  she  had 
agricultural  labourers  indeed,  but  no  peasants.     Ireland,  with 
no  coal,  with  a  poorer  soil  and  landlords  who  lived  in  England, 
had  become  a  land  of  rent-paying  peasants.     Their  cultivation 
was  allowed  to  degenerate  more  and  more  into  a  growing  of 
potatoes  and  a  feeding  of  pigs.    The  people  married  and  bred ; 
except  for  the  consumption  of  whisky  when  it  could  be  got,  and 
a  little  fighting,  family  life  was  their  only  amusement.     Here 
are  the  appalling  consequences.     The  population  of  Ireland 
in  1785  was  2,845,932, 
in  1803  was  5,536,594, 
in  1845  was  8,295,061, 

at  which  date  the  weary  potato  gave  way  under  its  ever-growing 
burthen  and  there  was  a  frightful  famine.  Many  died,  many 
emigrated,  especially  to  the  United  States;  an  outflow  of  emi- 
gration began  that  made  Ireland  for  a  time  a  land  of  old  people 
and  empty  nests. 


1018  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Now  because  of  the  Union  of  the  Parliaments,  the  enfran- 
chisement of  the  English  and  Irish  populations  went  on  simul- 
taneously. Catholic  enfranchisement  in  England  meant  Cath- 
olic enfranchisement  in  Ireland.  The  British  got  votes  be- 
cause they  wanted  them;  the  Irish  commonalty  got  votes  be- 
cause the  English  did.  Ireland  was  over-represented  in  the 
Union  Parliament,  because  originally  Irish  seats  had  been  easier 
for  the  governing  class  to  manipulate  than  English ;  and  so  it 
came  about  that  this  Irish  and  Catholic  Ireland,  which  had 
never  before  had  any  political  instrument  at  all,  and  which 
had  never  sought  a  political  instrument,  suddenly  found  itself 
with  the  power  to  thrust  a  solid  body  of  members  into  the  leg- 
islature of  Great  Britain.  After  the  general  election  of  1874, 
the  old  type  of  venal  Irish  member  was  swept  aside,  and  the 
newly  enfranchised  "democracy"  of  Britain  found  itself  con- 
fronted by  a  strange  and  perplexing  Irish  "democracy,"  dif- 
ferent in  its  religion,  its  traditions,  and  its  needs,  telling  a  tale 
of  wrongs  of  which  the  common  English  had  never  heard, 
clamouring  passionately  for  a  separation  which  they  could  not 
understand  and  which  impressed  them  chiefly  as  being  need- 
lessly unfriendly. 

The  national  egotism  of  the  Irish  is  intense;  their  circum- 
stances have  made  it  intense ;  they  were  incapable  of  considering 
the  state  of  affairs  in  England ;  the  new  Irish  party  came  into 
the  British  Parliament  to  obstruct  and  disorder  English  busi- 
ness until  Ireland  became  free,  and  to  make  themselves  a  nui- 
sance to  the  English.  This  spirit  was  only  too  welcome  to  the 
oligarchy  which  still  ruled  the  British  Empire;  they  allied 
themselves  with  the  "loyal"  Protestants  in  the  north  of  Ireland 
— loyal  that  is  to  the  Imperial  Government  because  of  their 
dread  of  a  Catholic  predominance  in  Ireland — and  they  watched 
and  assisted  the  gradual  exasperation  of  the  British  common 
people  by  this  indiscriminate  hostility  of  the  common  people 
of  Ireland. 

The  story  of  the  relation  of  Ireland  to  Britain  for  the  last 
half-century  is  one  that  reflects  the  utmost  discredit  upon  the 
governing  class  of  the  British  Empire,  but  it  is  not  one  of 
which  the  English  commons  need  be  ashamed.  Again  and 
again  they  have  given  evidences  of  goodwill.  British  legisla- 
tion in  relation  to  Ireland  for  nearly  half  a  century  shows  a 
series  of  clumsy  attempts  on  the  part  of  liberal  England,  made 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1019 

in  the  face  of  a  strenuous  opposition  from  the  Conservative 
Party  and  the  Ulster  Irish,  to  satisfy  Irish  complaints  and 
get  to  a  footing  of  fellowship.  The  name  of  Parnell,  an  Irish 
Protestant,  stands  out  as  that  of  the  chief  leader  of  the  Home 
Rule  movement.  In  1886  Gladstone,  the  liberal  British  prime 
minister,  brought  political  disaster  upon  himself  by  introduc- 
ing the  first  Irish  Home  Rule  Bill,  a  genuine  attempt  to  give 
over  Irish  affairs  for  the  first  time  in  history  to  the  Irish  peo- 
ple. The  bill  broke  the  Liberal  Party  asunder ;  and  a  coalition 
government,  the  Unionist  Government,  replaced  that  of  Mr. 
Gladstone. 

This  digression  into  the  history  of  Ireland  now  comes  up  to 
the  time  of  infectious  imperialism  in  Europe.  The  Unionist 
Government,  which  ousted  Mr.  Gladstone,  had  a  predomi- 
nantly Tory  element,  and  was  in  spirit  "imperialist"  as  no  pre- 
vious British  Government  had  been.  The  British  political 
history  of  the  subsequent  years  is  largely  a  history  of  the  conflict 
of  the  new  imperialism,  through  which  an  arrogant  "British" 
nationalism  sought  to  override  the  rest  of  the  empire  against 
the  temperamental  liberalism  and  reasonableness  of  the  Eng- 
lish, which  tended  to  develop  the  empire  into  a  confederation 
of  free  and  willing  allies.  Naturally  the  "British"  imperial- 
ists wanted  a  subjugated  Irish ;  naturally  the  English  Liberals 
wanted  a  free,  participating  Irish.  In  1892  Gladstone  strug- 
gled back  to  power  with  a  small  Home  Rule  majority;  and  in 
1893  his  second  Home  Rule  Bill  passed  the  Commons,  and 
was  rejected  by  the  Lords.  It  was  not,  however,  until  1895 
that  an  imperialist  government  took  office.  The  party  which 
sustained  it  was  called  not  Imperialist,  but  "Unionist" — an  odd 
name  when  we  consider  how  steadily  and  strenuously  it  has 
worked  to  destroy  any  possibility  of  an  Empire  commonweal. 
These  Imperialists  remained  in  power  for  ten  years.  We  have 
already  noted  their  conquest  of  South  Africa.  They  were  de- 
feated in  1905  in  an  attempt  to  establish  a  .tariff  wall  on  the 
Teutonic  model.  The  ensuing  Liberal  Government  then  turned 
the  conquered  South  African  Dutch  into  contented  fellow- 
subjects  by  creating  the  self-governing  Dominion  of  South 
Africa.  After  which  it  embarked  upon  a  long-impending  strug- 
gle with  the  persistently  imperialist  House  of  Lords. 

This  was  a  very  fundamental  struggle  in  British  affairs.  On 
the  one  hand  were  the  Liberal  majority  of  the  people  of  Great 


1020  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Britain  honestly  and  wisely  anxious  to  put  this  Irish  affair 
upon  a  new  and  more  hopeful  footing,  and;  if  possible,  to  change 
the  animosity  of  the  Irish  into  friendship;  on  the  other  were 
all  the  factors  of  this  new  British  Imperialism  resolved  at  any 
cost  and  in  spite  of  every  electoral  verdict,  legally,  if  possible, 
but  if  not,  illegally,  to  maintain  their  ascendancy  over  the  af- 
fairs of  the  English,  Scotch,  and  Irish  and  all  the  rest  of  the 
empire  alike.  It  was,  under  new  names,  the  age-long  internal 
struggle  of  the  English  community;  that  same  conflict  of  a 
free  and  liberal-spirited  commonalty  against  powerful  "big 
men"  and  big  adventurers  and  authoritative  persons  which  we 
have  already  dealt  with  in  our  account,  of  the  liberation  of 
America.  Ireland  was  merely  a  battleground  as  America  had 
been.  In  India,  in  Ireland,  in  England,  the  governing  class 
and  their  associated  adventurers  were  all  of  one  mind ;  but  the 
Irish  people,  thanks  to  their  religious  difference,  had  little 
sense  of  solidarity  with  the  English.  Yet  such  Irish  states- 
men as  Redmond,  the  leader  of  the  Irish  party  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  transcended  this  national  narrowness  for  a  time, 
and  gave  a  generous  response  to  English  good  intentions. 
Slowly  yet  steadily  the  barrier  of  the  House  of  Lords  was 
broken  down,  and  a  third  Irish  Home  Rule  Bill  was  brought 
in  by  Mr.  Asquith,  the  Prime  Minister,  in  1912.  Throughout 
1913  and  the  early  part  of  1914  this  bill  was  fought  and  re- 
fought  through  Parliament.  At  first  it  gave  Home  Rule  to  all 
Ireland;  but  an  Amending  Act,  excluding  Ulster  on  certain  con- 
ditions, was  promised.  Thus  struggle  lasted  right  up  to  the 
outbreak  of  the  Great  War.  The  royal  assent  was  given  to  this 
bill  after  the  actual  outbreak  of  war,  and  also  to  a  bill  suspend- 
ing the  coming  into  force  of  Irish  Home  Rule  until  after  the 
end  of  the  war.  These  bills  were  put  upon  the  Statute  Book. 

But  from  the  introduction  of  the  third  Home  Rule  Bill 
onward,  the  opposition  to  it  had  assumed  a  violent  and  extrava- 
gant form.  Sir  Edward  Carson,  a  Dublin  lawyer  who  had 
become  a  member  of  the  English  Bar,  and  who  had  held  a  legal 
position  in  the  ministry  of  Mr.  Gladstone  (before  the  Home 
Rule  split)  and  in  the  subsequent  imperialist  government,  was 
the  organizer  and  leader  of  this  resistance  to  a  reconciliation 
of  the  two  peoples.  In  spite  of  his  Dublin  origin,  he  set  up 
to  be  a  leader  of  the  Ulster  Protestants ;  and  he  brought  to  the 
conflict  that  contempt  for  law  which  is  all  too  common  a  char- 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1021 

acteristic  of  the  successful  barrister,  and  those  gifts  of  per- 
sistent, unqualified,  and  uncompromising  hostility  which  dis- 
tinguish a  certain  type  of  Irishman.  He  was  the  most  "un- 
English"  of  men,  dark,  romantic,  and  violent;  and  from  the 
opening  of  the  struggle  he  talked  with  gusto  of  armed  resist- 
ance to  this  freer  reunion  of  the  English  and  Irish  which  the 
third  Home  Rule  Bill  contemplated.  A  body  of  volunteers 
had  been  organized  in  Ulster  in  1911,  arms  were  now  smug- 
gled into  the  country,  and  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  a  rising 
lawyer  named  F.  E.  Smith,  trapped  up  in  semi-military  style, 
toured  Ulster,  inspecting  these  volunteers  and  inflaming  local 
passion.  The  arms  of  these  prospective  rebels  were  obtained 
from  Germany,  and  various  utterances  of  Sir  Edward  Car- 
son's associates  hinted  at  support  from  "a  great  Protestant 
monarch."  Contrasted  with  Ulster,  the  rest  of  Ireland  was 
at  that  time  a  land  of  order  and  decency,  relying  upon  its 
great  leader  Redmond  and  the  good  faith  of  the  three  British 
peoples. 

Now  these  threats  of  civil  war  from  Ireland  were  not  in 
themselves  anything  very  exceptional  in  the  record  of  that  un- 
happy island;  what  makes  them  significant  in  the  world's 
history  at  this  time  is  the  vehement  support  they  found  among 
the  English  military  and  governing  classes,  and  the  immunity 
from  punishment  and  restraint  of  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  his 
friends.  The  virus  of  reaction  which  came  from  the  success 
and  splendour  of  German  imperialism  had  spread  widely,  as  we 
have  explained,  throughout  the  prevalent  and  prosperous  classes 
in  Great  Britain.  A  generation  had  grown  up  forgetful  of 
the  mighty  traditions  of  their  forefathers,  and  ready  to  ex- 
change the  greatness  of  English  fairness  and  freedom  for 
the  tawdriest  of  imperialisms.  A  fund  of  a  million  pounds  was 
raised,  chiefly  in  England,  to  support  the  Ulster  Rebellion,  an 
Ulster  Provisional  Government  was  formed,  prominent  English 
people  mingled  in  the  fray  and  careered  about  Ulster  in  auto- 
mobiles, assisting  in  the  gun-running,  and  there  is  evidence 
that  a  number  of  British  officers  and  generals  were  prepared 
for  a  pronunciamento  upon  South  American  lines  rather  than 
obedience  to  the  law.  The  natural  result  of  all  this  upper-class 
disorderliness  was  to  alarm  the  main  part  of  Ireland,  never 
a  ready  friend  to  England.  That  Ireland  also  began  in  its 
turn  to  organize  "National  Volunteers"  and  to  smuggle  arms. 


1022  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

The  military  authorities  showed  themselves  much  keener  in 
the  suppression  of  the  Nationalist  than  of  the  Ulster  gun 
importation,  and  in  July,  1914,  an  attempt  to  run  guns 
at  Howth,  near  Dublin,  led  to  fighting  and  bloodshed  in  the 
Dublin  streets.  The  British  Isles  were  on  the  verge  of  civil 
war. 

Such  in  outline  is  the  story  of  the  imperialist  revolutionary 
movement  in  Great  Britain  up  to  the  eve  of  the  Great  War. 
For  revolutionary  this  movement  of  Sir  Edward  Carson  and 
his  associates  was.  It  was  plainly  an  attempt  to  set  aside  par- 
liamentary government  and  the  slow-grown,  imperfect  liberties 
of  the  British  peoples,  and,  with  the  assistance  of  the  army,  to 
substitute  a  more  Prussianized  type  of  rule,  using  the  Irish 
conflict  as  the  point  of  departure.  It  was  the  reactionary  effort 
of  a  few  score  thousand  people  to  arrest  the  world  movement 
towards  democratic  law  and  social  justice,  strictly  parallel  to 
and  closely  sympathetic  with  the  new  imperialism  of  the  Ger- 
man junkers  and  rich  men.  But  in  one  very  important  re- 
spect British  and  German  imperialism  differed.  In  Germany 
it  centred  upon  the  crown ;  its  noisiest,  most  conspicuous  advo- 
cate was  the  heir-apparent.  In  Great  Britain  the  king  stood 
aloof.  By  no  single  public  act  did  King  George  V  betray  the 
slightest  approval  of  the  new  movement,  and  the  behaviour 
of  the  Prince  of  Wales,  his  son  and  heir,  has  been  equally 
correct. 

In  August,  1914,  the  storm  of  the  Great  War  burst  upon 
the  world.  In  September,  Sir  Edward  Carson  was  denouncing 
the  placing  of  the  Home  Rule  Bill  upon  the  Statute  Book. 
On  the  same  day,  Mr.  John  Eedmond,  the  leader  of  the  Irish 
majority,  the  proper  representative  of  Ireland,  was  calling 
upon  the  Irish  people  to  take  their  equal  part  in  the  burthen 
and  effort  of  the  war.  For  a  time  Ireland  played  her  part  in 
the  war  side  by  side  with  England  faithfully  and  well,  until 
in  1915  the  Liberal  Government  was  replaced  by  a  coalition, 
in  which,  through  the  moral  feebleness  of  Mr.  Asquith,  the 
prime  minister,  this  Sir  Edward  Carson  figured  as  Attorney- 
General  (with  a  salary  of  £7,000  and  fees),  to  be  replaced 
presently  by  his  associate  in  the  Ulster  sedition,  Sir  F.  E. 
Smith. 

Grosser  insult  was  never  offered  to  a  friendly  people.  The 
work  of  reconciliation,  begun  by  Gladstone  in  1886,  and  brought 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF   1914  1023 

so  near  to  completion,  in  1914,  was  completely  and  finally 
wrecked. 

In  the  spring  of  1916  Dublin  revolted  unsuccessfully  against 
this  new  government.  The  ringleaders  of  this  insurrection, 
many  of  them  mere  boys,  were  shot  with  a  deliberate  and 
clumsy  sternness  that,  in  view  of  the  treatment  of  the  Ulster 
rebel  leaders,  impressed  all  Ireland  as  atrociously  unjust.  A 
traitor,  Sir  Roger  Casement,  who  had  been  knighted  for  pre- 
vious services  to  the  empire,  was  tried  and  executed,  no  doubt 
deservedly,  but  his  prosecutor  was  Sir  F.  E.  Smith  of  the  Ulster 
insurrection,  a  shocking  conjunction.  The  Dublin  revolt  had. 
had  little  support  in  Ireland  generally,  but  thereafter  the  move- 
ment for  an  independent  republic  grew  rapidly  to  great  pro- 
portions. Against  this  strong  emotional  drive  there  struggled 
the  more  moderate  ideas  of  such  Irish  statesmen  as  Sir  Hor- 
ace Plunkett,  who  wished  to  see  Ireland  become  a  Dominion, 
a  "crowned  republic"  that  is,  within  the  empire,  on  an  equal 
footing  with  Canada  and  Australia. 

When  in  December,  1919,  Mr.  Lloyd  George  introduced  his 
Home  Rule  Bill  into  the  Imperial  Parliament  there  were  no 
Irish  members,  except  Sir  Edward  Carson  and  his  followers, 
to  receive  it.  The  rest  of  Ireland  was  away.  It  refused  to 
begin  again  that  old  dreary  round  of  hope  and  disappointment. 
Let  the  British  and  their  pet  Ulstermen  do  as  they  would, 
said  the  Irish. 


Our  studies  of  modern  imperialism  in  Germany  and  Britain 
bring  out  certain  forces  common  to  the  two  countries,  and  we 
shall  find  these  same  forces  at  work  in  variable  degrees  and 
with  various  modifications  in  the  case  of  the  other  great  modern 
communities  at  which  we  shall  now  glance.  This  modern  im- 
perialism is  not  a  synthetic  world  uniting  movement  like  the 
older  imperialism ;  it  is  essentially  a  megalomaniac  nationalism, 
a  nationalism  made  aggressive  by  prosperity;  and  always  it 
finds  its  strongest  support  in  the  military  and  official  castes, 
and  in  the  enterprising  and  acquisitive  strata  of  society,  in 
new  money,  that  is,  and  big  business;  its  chief  critics  in  the 
educated  poor,  and  its  chief  opponents  in  the  peasantry  and  the 


1024 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


labour  masses.  It  accepts  monarchy  where  it  finds  it,  but  it 
is  not  necessarily  a  monarchist  movement.  It  does,  however, 
need  a  foreign  office  of  the  traditional  type  for  its  full  develop- 
ment. Its  origin,  which  we  have  traced  very  carefully  in  this 
book  of  our  history,  makes  this  clear.  Modern  imperialism  is 


Bulgarian  territory  _ 
required  ly  ~Rumaiua. 


the  natural  development  of  the  Great  Power  system  which  arose 
with  the  foreign  office  method  of  policy,  out  of  the  Machia- 
vellian monarchies  after  the  break-up  of  Christendom.  It  will 
only  come  to  an  end  when  the  intercourse  of  nations  and  peo- 
ples through  embassies  and  foreign  offices  is  replaced  by  an 
assembly  of  elected  representatives  in  direct  touch  with  their 
peoples. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1025 

French  imperialism  during  the  period  of  the  Armed  Peace 
in  Europe  was  naturally  of  a  less  confident  type  than  the  Ger- 
man. It  called  itself  "nationalism"  rather  than  imperialism, 
and  it  set  itself,  by  appeals  to  patriotic  pride,  to  thwart  the 
efforts  of  those  socialists  and  rationalists  who  sought  to  get 
into  touch  with  liberal  elements  in  German  life.  It  brooded 
upon  the  Revanche,  the  return  match  with  Prussia.  But  in 
spite  of  that  preoccupation,  it  set  itself  to  the  adventure  of 
annexation  and  exploitation  in  the  Far  East  and  in  Africa, 
narrowly  escaping  a  war  with  Britain  upon  the  Fashoda  clash 
(1898),  and  it  never  relinquished  a  dream  of  acquisitions  in 
Syria.  Italy,  too,  caught  the  imperialist  fever ;  the  blood-letting 
of  Adowa  cooled  her  for  a  time,  and  then  she  resumed  in  1911 
with  a  war  upon  Turkey  and  the  annexation  of  Tripoli.  The 
Italian  imperialists  exhorted  their  countrymen  to  forget  Maz- 
zini  and  remember  Julius  Caesar ;  for  were  they  not  the  heirs 
of  the  Roman  Empire  ?  Imperialism  touched  the  Balkans ; 
little  countries  not  a  hundred  years  from  slavery  began  to 
betray  exalted  intentions;  King  Ferdinand  of  Bulgaria  as- 
sumed the  title  of  Tsar,  the  latest  of  the  pseudo-CaBsars,  and  in 
the  shop-windows  of  Athens  the  curious  student  could  study 
maps  showing  the  dream  of  a  vast  Greek  empire  in  Europe 
and  Asia. 

In  1913  the  three  states  of  Serbia,  Bulgaria,  and  Greece 
fell  upon  Turkey,  already  weakened  by  her  war  with  Italy, 
and  swept  her  out  of  all  her  European  possessions  except  the 
country  between  Adrianople  and  Constantinople;  later  in  that 
year  they  quarrelled  among  themselves  over  the  division  of  the 
spoils.  Rumania  joined  in  the  game  and  helped  to  crush 
Bulgaria.  Turkey  recovered  Adrianople.  The  greater  im- 
perialisms of  Austria,  Russia,  and  Italy  watched  that  conflict 
and  one  another.  , 


§5 

While  all  the  world  to  the  west  of  her  was  changing  rapidly, 
Russia  throughout  the  nineteenth  century  changed  very  slowly 
indeed.  At  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  as  at  its  be- 
ginning, she  was  s*ill  a  Grand  Monarchy  of  the  later  seven- 
teenth-century type  standing  on  a  basis  of  barbarism,  she  was 


1026  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

still  at  a  stage  where  court  intrigues  and  imperial  favourites 
could  control  her  international  relations.  She  had  driven  a 
great  railway  across  Siberia  to  find  the  disasters  of  the  Japa- 
nese war  at  the  end  of  it;  she  was  using  modern  methods 
and  modern  weapons  so  far  as  her  undeveloped  industrialism 
and  her  small  supply  of  sufficiently  educated  people  permitted ; 
such  writers  as  Dostoievski  had  devised  a  sort  of  mystical  im- 
perialism based  on  the  idea  of  Holy  Russia  and  her  mission, 
coloured  by  racial  illusions  and  anti-Semitic  passion ;  but,  as 
events  were  to  show,  this  had  not  sunken  very  deeply  into  the 
imagination  of  the  Russian  masses.  A  vague,  very  simple 
Christianity  pervaded  the  illiterate  peasant  life,  mixed  with 
much  superstition.  It  was  like  the  pre-reformation  peasant 
life  of  France  or  Germany.  The  Russian  moujik  was  sup- 
posed to  worship  and  revere  his  Tsar  and  to  love  to  serve  a  gen- 
tleman; in  1913  reactionary  English  writers  were  still  praising 
his  simple  and  unquestioning  loyalty.  But,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  western  European  peasant  of  the  days  of  the  peasant  re- 
volts, this  reverence  for  the  monarchy  was  mixed  up  with  the 
idea  that  the  monarch  and  the  nobleman  had  to  be  good  and 
beneficial,  and  this  simple  loyalty  could,  under  sufficient  prov- 
ocation, be  turned  into  the  same  pitiless  intolerance  of  social 
injustice  that  burnt  the  chateaux  in  the  Jacquerie  (see  Chapter 
XXXIV,  §  3)  and  set  up  the  theocracy  in  Minister  (Chapter 
XXXIV,  §  3).  Once  the  commons  were  moved  to  anger,  there 
were  no  links  of  understanding  in  a  generally  diffused  education 
in  Russia  to  mitigate  the  fury  of  the  outbreak.  The  upper 
classes  were  as  much  beyond  the  sympathy  of  the  lower  as  a 
different  species  of  animal.  These  Russian  masses  were  three 
centuries  away  from  such  nationalist  imperialism  as  Germany 
displayed. 

And  in  another  respect  Russia  differed  from  modern  West- 
ern Europe  and  paralleled  its  mediaeval  phase,  and  that  was 
in  the  fact  that  her  universities  were  the  resort  of  many  very 
poor  students  quite  out  of  touch  and  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
bureaucratic  autocracy.  Before  1917  the  significance  of  the 
proximity  of  these  two  factors  of  revolution,  the  fuel  of  dis- 
content and  the  match  of  free  ideas,  was  not  recognized  in 
European  thought,  and  few  people  realized  that  in  Russia 
more  than  in  any  other  country  lay  the  possibilities  of  a  fun- 
damental revolution. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1027 

§6 

When  we  turn  from  these  European  Great  Powers,  with 
their  inheritance  of  foreign  offices  and  national  policies,  to  the 
United  States  of  America,  which  broke  away  completely  from 
the  Great  Power  System  in  1776,  we  find  a  most  interesting 
contrast  in  the  operation  of  the  forces  which  produced  the 
expansive  imperialism  of  Europe.  For  America  as  for  Europe 
the  mechanical  revolution  had  brought  all  the  world  within  the 
range  of  a  few  days'  journey.  The  United  States,  like  the 
Great  Powers,  had  world-wide  financial  and  mercantile  inter- 
ests; a  great  industrialism  had  grown  up  and  was  in  need  of 
overseas  markets;  the  same  crises  of  belief  that  had  shaken 
the  moral  solidarity  of  Europe  had  occurred  in  the  American 
world.  Her  people  were  as  patriotic  and  spirited  as  any.  Why 
then  did  not  the  United  States  develop  armaments  and  an 
aggressive  policy  ?  Why  was  not  the  stars  and  stripes  waving 
over  Mexico,  and  why  was  there  not  a  new  Indian  system 
growing  up  in  China  under  that  flag?  It  was  the  American 
who  had  opened  up  Japan.  After  doing  so,  he  had  let  that 
power  Europeanize  itself  and  become  formidable  without  a 
protest.  That  alone  was  enough  to  make  Machiavelli,  the  father 
of  modern  foreign  policy,  turn  in  his  .^rave.  If  a  European- 
ized  Great  Power  had  been  in  the  place  of  the  United  States, 
Great  Britain  would  have  had  to  fortify  the  Canadian  frontier 
from  end  to  end — it  is  now  absolutely  unarmed — and  to  main- 
tain a  great  arsenal  in  the  St.  Lawrence.  All  the  divided 
states  of  Central  and  South  America  would  long  since  have 
been  subjugated  and  placed  under  the  disciplinary  control  of 
United  States  officials  of  the  "governing  class."  There  would 
have  been  a  perpetual  campaign  to  Americanize  Australia  and 
New  Zealand,  and  yet  another  claimant  for  a  share  in  tropical 
Africa. 

And  by  an  odd  accident  America  had  produced  in  President 
Eoosevelt  (President  1901-1908)  a  man  of  an  energy  as  rest- 
less as  the  German  Kaiser's,  as  eager  for  large  achievements, 
as  florid  and  eloquent,  an  adventurous  man  with  a  turn  for 
world  politics  and  an  instinct  for  armaments,  the  very  man, 
we  might  imagine,  to  have  involved  his  country  in  the  scram- 
ble for  overseas  possession. 

There  does  not  appear  to  be  any  other  explanation  of  this 


1028  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

general  restraint  and  abstinence  on  the  part  of  the  United 
States  except  in  their  fundamentally  different  institutions  and 
traditions.  In  the  first  place  the  United  States  Government 
has  no  foreign  office  and  no  diplomatic  corps  of  the  European 
type,  no  body  of  "experts"  to  maintain  the  tradition  of  an  ag- 
gressive policy.  The  president  has  great  powers,  but  they  are 
subject  to  the  control  of  the  senate,  which  again  is  responsible 
to  the  state  legislatures  and  the  people.  The  foreign  relations 
of  the  country  are  thus  under  open  and  public  control.  Secret 
treaties  are  impossible  under  such  a  system,  and  foreign  pow- 
ers complain  of  the  difficulty  and  uncertainty  of  "understand- 
ings"  with  the  United  States,  a  very  excellent  state  of  affairs. 
The  United  States  is  l  constitutionally  incapacitated,  therefore, 
from  the  kind  of  foreign  policy  that  has  kept  Europe  for  so 
long  constantly  on  the  verge  of  war. 

And,  secondly,  there  has  hitherto  existed  in  the  States  no 
organization  for  and  no  tradition  of  what  one  may  call  non- 
assimilable  possessions.  Where  there  is  no  crown  there  cannot 
be  crown  colonies.  In  spreading  across  the  American  conti- 
nent, the  United  States  had  developed  a  quite  distinctive 
method  of  dealing  with  new  territories,  admirably  adapted  for 
unsettled  lands,  but  very  inconvenient  if  applied  too  freely  to 
areas  already  containing  an  alien  population.  This  method  was 
based  on  the  idea  that  there  cannot  be  in  the  United  States 
system  a  permanently  subject  people.  The  first  stage  of  the 
ordinary  process  of  assimilation  had  been  the  creation  of  a  "ter- 
ritory" under  the  federal  government,  having  a  considerable 
measure  of  self-government,  sending  a  delegate  (who  could  not 
vote)  to  congress,  and  destined,  in  the  natural  course  of  things, 
as  the  country  became  settled  and  population  increased,  to 
flower  at  last  into  full  statehood.  This  had  been  the  process 
of  development  of  all  the  latter  states  of  the  Union ;  the  latest 
territories  to  become  states  being  Arizona  and  New  Mexico 
in  1910.  The  frozen  wilderness  of  Alaska,  bought  from  Rus- 
sia, remained  politically  undeveloped  simply  because  it  had  an 
insufficient  population  for  state  organization.  As  the  annexa- 
tions of  Germany  and  Great  Britain  in  the  Pacific  threatened 
to  deprive  the  United  States  navy  of  coaling  stations  in  that 
ocean,  a  part  of  the  Samoan  Islands  (1889)  and  the  Sandwich 
Islands  (Hawaii)  were  annexed  (1898).  Here  for  the  first 

1  "Is,"  not  "are."    Since  the  Civil  War  the  U.  S.  A.  is  one  nation.    A.  C. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1029 

time  the  United  States  had  real  subject  populations  to  deal 
with.  But  in  the  absence  of  any  class  comparable  to  the  Anglo- 
Indian  officials  who  sway  British  opinion,  the  American  pro- 
cedure followed  the  territorial  method.  Every  effort  was  made 
to  bring  the  educational  standards  of  Hawaii  up  to  the  Ameri- 
can level,  and  a  domestic  legislature  on  the  territorial  pattern 
was  organized  so  that  these  dusky  islanders  seem  destined  ulti- 
mately to  obtain  full  United  States  citizenship.  (The  small 
Samoan  Islands  are  taken  care  of  by  a  United  States  naval 
administrator. ) 

In  1895  occurred  a  quarrel  between  the  United  States  and 
Britain  upon  the  subject  of  Venezuela,  and  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine was  upheld  stoutly  by  President  Cleveland.  Then  Mr. 
Olney  made  this  remarkable  declaration:  "To-day  the  United 
States  is  practically  sovereign  on  this  continent,  and  its  fiat 
is  law  upon  the  subjects  to  which  it  confines  its  interposition." 
This,  together  with  the  various  Pan-American  congresses  that 
have  been  held,  point  to  a  real  open  "foreign  policy"  of  alli- 
ance and  mutual  help  throughout  America.  Treaties  of  ar- 
bitration hold  good  over  all  that  continent,  and  the  future  seems 
to  point  to  a  gradual  development  of  inter-state  organization, 
a  Pax  Americana,  of  the  English-speaking  and  Spanish-speak- 
ing peoples,  the  former  in  the  role  of  elder  brother.  Here  is 
something  we  cannot  even  call  an  empire,  something  going  far 
beyond  the  great  alliance  of  the  British  Empire  in  the  open 
equality  of  its  constituent  parts. 

Consistently  with  this  idea  of  a  common  American  welfare, 
the  United  States  in  1898  intervened  in  the  affairs  of  Cuba, 
which  had  been  in  a  state  of  chronic  insurrection  against  Spain 
for  many  years.  A  brief  war  ended  in  the  acquisition  of  Cuba, 
Porto  Rico,  and  the  Philippine  Islands.  Cuba  is  now  an  inde- 
pendent self-governing  republic.  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philip- 
pines have,  however,  a  special  sort  of  government,  with  a  pop- 
ularly elected  lower  house  and  an  upper  body  containing  mem- 
bers appointed  by  the  United  States  senate.  It  is  improbable 
that  either  Porto  Rico  or  the  Philippines  will  become  states  in 
the  Union.  They  are  much  more  likely  to  become  free  states 
in  some  comprehensive  alliance  with  both  English-speaking  and 
Latin  America. 

Both  Cuba  and  Porto  Rico  welcomed  the  American  inter- 
vention in  their  affairs,  but  in  the  Philippine  Islands  there 


10SO  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

was  a  demand  for  complete  and  immediate  freedom  after  the 
Spanish  war,  and  a  considerable  resistance  to  the  American 
military  administration.  There  it  was  that  the  United  States 
came  nearest  to  imperialism  of  the  Great  Power  type,  and  that 
her  record  is  most  questionable.  There  was  much  sympathy  with 
the  insurgents  in  the  states.  Here  is  the  point  of  view  of  ex- 
President  Roosevelt  as  he  wrote  it  in  his  Autobiography  (1913) : 

"As  regards  the  Philippines,  my  belief  was  that  we  should 
train  them  for  self-government  as  rapidly  as  possible,  and  then 
leave  them  free  to  decide  their  own  fate.  I  did  not  believe  in 
setting  the  time-limit  within  which  we  would  give  them  inde- 
pendence, because  I  did  not  believe  it  wise  to  try  to  forecast 
how  soon  they  would  be  fit  for  self-government;  and  once 
having  made  the  promise,  I  would  have  felt  that  it  was  impera- 
tive to  keep  it.  Within  a  few  months  of  my  assuming  office 
we  had  stamped  out  the  last  armed  resistance  in  the  Philip- 
pines that  was  not  of  merely  sporadic  character;  and  as  soon 
as  peace  was  secured,  we  turned  our  energies  to  developing 
the  islands  in  the  interests  of  the  natives.  We  established 
schools  everywhere;  we  built  roads;  we  administered  an  even- 
handed  justice;  we  did  everything  possible  to  encourage  agri- 
culture and  industry;  and  in  constantly  increasing  measure 
we  employed  natives  to  do  their  own  governing,  and  finally 
provided  a  legislative  chamber.  .  .  .  We  are  governing,  and 
have  been  governing,  the  islands  in  the  interests  of  the  Fili- 
pinos themselves.  If  after  due  time  the  Filipinos  themselves 
decide  that  they  do  not  wish  to  be  thus  governed,  then  I  trust 
that  we  will  leave ;  but  when  we  do  leave,  it  must  be  distinctly 
understood  that  we  retain  no  protectorate — and  above  all  that 
we  take  part  in  no  joint  protectorate — over  the  islands,  and  give 
them  no  guarantee,  of  neutrality  or  otherwise;  that  in  short, 
we  are  absolutely  quit  of  responsibility  for  them,  of  every  kind 
and  description." 

This  is  an  entirely  different  outlook  from  that  of  a  British 
or  French  foreign  office  or  colonial  office  official.  But  it  is  not 
very  widely  different  from  the  spirit  that  created  the  Domin- 
ions of  Canada,  South  Africa,  and  Australia,  and  brought 
forward  the  three  Home  Rule  Bills  for  Ireland.  It  is  in  the 
older  and  more  characteristic  English  tradition  from  which  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  derives.  It  sets  aside,  without 
discussion,  the  detestable  idea  of  "subject  peoples." 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1031 

Here  we  will  not  enter  into  political  complications  attendant 
upon  the  making  of  the  Panama  Canal,  for  they  introduce  no 
fresh  light  upon  this  interesting  question  of  the  American 
method  in  world  politics.  The  history  of  Panama  is  American 
history  purely.  But  manifestly  just  as  the  internal  political 
structure  of  the  Union  was  a  new  thing  in  the  world,  so,  too, 
were  its  relations  with  the  world  beyond  its  borders. 

§  7 

We  have  been  at  some  pains  to  examine  the  state  of  mind 
of  Europe  and  of  America  in  regard  to  international  relations 
in  the  years  that  led  up  to  the  world  tragedy  of  1914  because, 
as  more  and  more  people  are  coming  to  recognize,  that  great 
war  or  some  such  war  was  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  men- 
tality of  the  period.  All  the  things  that  men  and  nations  do 
are  the  outcome  of  instinctive  motives  reacting  upon  the  ideas 
which  talk  and  books  and  newspapers  and  schoolmasters  and 
so  forth  have  put  into  people's  heads.  Physical  necessities, 
pestilences,  changes  of  climate,  and  the  like  outer  things  may 
deflect  and  distort  the  growth  of  human  history,  but  its  living 
root  is  thought. 

All  human  history  is  fundamentally  a  history  of  ideas.  Be- 
tween the  man  of  to-day  and  the  Cro-M  agnard  the  physical  and 
mental  differences  are  very  slight;  their  essential  difference 
lies  in  the  extent  and  content  of  the  mental  background  which 
we  have  acquired  in  the  five  or  six  hundred  generations  that 
intervene. 

We  are  too  close  to  the  events  of  the  Great  War  to  pretend 
that  this  Outline  can  record  the  verdict  of  history  thereupon, 
but  we  may  hazard  the  guess  that  when  the  passions  of  the 
conflict  have  faded,  it  will  be  Germany  that  will  be  most  blamed 
for  bringing  it  about,  and  she  will  be  blamed  not  because  she 
was  morally  and  intellectually  very  different  from  her  neigh- 
bours, but  because  she  had  the  common  disease  of  imperialism 
in  its  most  complete  and  energetic  form.  No  self-respecting 
historian,  however  superficial  and  popular  his  aims  may  be,  can 
countenance  the  legend,  produced  by  the  stresses  of  the  war, 
that  the  German  is  a  sort  of  human  being  more  cruel  and 
abominable  than  any  other  variety  of  men.  All  the  great  states 
of  Europe  before  1914  were  in  a  condition  of  aggressive  na- 


1032  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

tlonalism  and  drifting  towards  war;  the  government  of  Ger- 
many did  but  lead  the  general  movement.  She  fell  into  the 
pit  first,  and  she  floundered  deepest.  She  hecame  the  dreadful 
example  at  which  all  her  fellow  sinners  could  cry  out. 

For  long,  Germany  and  Austria  had  been  plotting  an  exten- 
sion of  German  influence  eastward  through  Asia  Minor  to  the 
East.  The  German  idea  was  crystallized  in  the  phrase  "Berlin 
to  Bagdad."  Antagonized  to  the  German  dreams  were  those 
of  Russia,  which  was  scheming  for  an  extension  of  the  Slav 
ascendancy  to  Constantinople  and  through  Serbia  to  the  Ad- 
riatic. These  lines  of  ambition  lay  across  one  another  and 
were  mutually  incompatible.  The  feverish  state  of  affairs  in 
the  Balkans  was  largely  the  outcome  of  the  intrigues  and  propa- 
gandas sustained  by  the  German  and  Slav  schemes.  Turkey 
turned  for  support  to  Germany,  Serbia  to  Russia.  Rumania 
and  Italy,  both  Latin  in  tradition,  both  nominally  allies  of 
Germany,  pursued  remoter  and  deeper  schemes  in  common. 
Ferdinand,  the  Tsar  of  Bulgaria,  was  following  still  darker 
ends ;  and  the  squalid  mysteries  of  the  Greek  court,  whose  king 
was  the  German  Kaiser's  brother-in-law,  are  beyond  our  pres- 
ent powers  of  inquiry. 

But  the  tangle  did  not  end  with  Germany  on  the  one  hand 
and  Russia  on  the  other.  The  greed  of  Germany  in  1871  had 
made  France  her  inveterate  enemy.  The  French  people,  aware 
of  their  inability  to  recover  their  lost  provinces  by  their  own 
strength,  had  conceived  exaggerated  ideas  of  the  power  and 
helpfulness  of  Russia.  The  French  people  had  subscribed 
enormously  to  Russian  loans.  France  was  the  ally  of  Russia. 
If  the  German  powers  made  war  upon  Russia,  France  would 
certainly  attack  them. 

Now  the  short  eastern  French  frontier  was  very  strongly 
defended.  There  was  little  prospect  of  Germany  repeating  the 
successes  of  1870-71  against  that  barrier.  But  the  Belgian 
frontier  of  France  was  longer  and  less  strongly  defended.  An 
attack  in  overwhelming  force  on  France  through  Belgium 
might  repeat  1870  on  a  larger  scale.  The  French  left  might 
be  swung  back  south-eastwardly  on  Verdun  as  a  pivot,  and 
crowded  back  upon  its  right,  as  one  shuts  an  open  razor.  This 
scheme  the  German  strategists  had  worked  out  with  great  care 
and  elaboration.  Its  execution  involved  an  outrage  upon  the 
law  of  nations  because  Prussia  had  undertaken  to  guarantee 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1033 

the  neutrality  of  Belgium  and  had  no  quarrel  with  her,  and  it 
involved  the  risk  of  bringing  in  Great.  Britain  (which  power 
was  also  pledged  to  protect  Belgium)  against  Germany.  Yet 
the  Germans  believed  that  their  fleet  had  grown  strong  enough 
to  make  Great  Britain  hesitate  to  interfere,  and  with  a  view 
to  possibilities  they  had  constructed  a  great  system  of  strategic 
railways  to  the  Belgian  frontier,  and  made  every  preparation 
for  the  execution  of  this  scheme.  So  they  might  hope  to  strike 
down  France  at  one  blow,  and  deal  at  their  leisure  with  Russia. 

In  1914  all  things  seemed  moving  together  in  favour  of  the 
two  Central  Powers.  Russia,  it  is  true,  had  been  recovering 
since  1906,  but  only  very  slowly;  France  was  distracted  by 
financial  scandals.  The  astounding  murder  of  M.  Calmette, 
the  editor  of  the  Figaro,  by  the  wife  of  M.  Caillaux,  the  min- 
ister of  finance,  brought  these  to  a  climax  in  March;  Britain, 
all  Germany  was  assured,  was  on  the  verge  of  a  civil  war  in 
Ireland.  Repeated  efforts  were  made  both  by  foreign  and  Eng- 
lish people  to  get  some  definite  statement  of  what  Britain 
would  do  if  Germany  and  Austria  assailed  France  and  Russia ; 
but  the  British  Foreign  Secretary  maintained  a  front  of  heavy 
ambiguity  up  to  the  very  day  of  the  British  entry  into  the  war. 
As  a  consequence,  there  was  a  feeling  on  the  continent  that 
Britain  would  either  not  fight  or  delay  fighting,  and  this  may 
have  encouraged  Germany  to  go  on  threatening  France.  Events 
were  precipitated  on  June  28th  by  the  assassination  of 
the  Archduke  Francis  Ferdinand,  the  heir  to  the  Austrian 
Empire,  when  on  a  state  visit  to  Sarajevo,  the  capital  of  Bos- 
nia. Here  was  a  timely  excuse  to  set  the  armies  marching. 
"It  is  now  or  never,"  said  the  German  Emperor.  Serbia  was 
accused  of  instigating  the  murderers,  and  notwithstanding  the 
fact  that  Austrian  commissioners  reported  that  there  was  no 
evidence  to  implicate  the  Serbian  government,  the  Austro-Hun- 
garian  government  contrived  to  press  this  grievance  towards 
war.  On  July  23rd  Austria  discharged  an  ultimatum  at  Serbia, 
and,  in  spite  of  a  practical  submission  on  the  part  of  Serbia, 
and  of  the  efforts  of  Sir  Edward  Grey,  the  British  Foreign 
Secretary,  to  call  a  conference  of  the  powers,  declared  war 
against  Serbia  on  July  28th. 

Russia  mobilized  her  army  on  July  30th,  and  on  August  1st 
Germany  declared  war  upon  her.  German  troops  crossed  into 
French  territory  next  day,  and,  simultaneously  with  the  deliv- 


1034  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

ery  of  an  ultimatum  to  the  unfortunate  Belgians,  the  big 
flanking  movement  through  Luxembourg  and  Belgium  began. 
Westward  rode  the  scouts  and  advance  guards.  Westward 
rushed  a  multitude  of  automobiles  packed  with  soldiers.  Enor- 
mous columns  of  grey-clad  infantry  followed;  round-eyed,  fair 
young  Germans  they  were  for  the  most  part — law-abiding, 
educated  youngsters  who  had  never  yet  seen  a  shot  fired  in 
anger.  "This  was  war/7  they  were  told.  They  had  to  be 
bold  and  ruthless.  Some  of  them  did  their  best  to  carry  out 
these  militarist  instructions  at  the  expense  of  the  ill-fated 
Belgians. 

A  disproportionate  fuss  has  been  made  over  the  detailed 
atrocities  in  Belgium,  disproportionate,  that  is,  in  relation  to  the 
fundamental  atrocity  of  August,  1914,  which  was  the  invasion 
of  Belgium.  Given  that,  the  casual  shootings  and  lootings,  the 
wanton  destruction  of  property,  the  plundering  of  inns  and  of 
food  and  drink  shops  by  hungry  and  weary  men,  and  the  con- 
sequent rapes  and  incendiarism  follow  naturally  enough.  Only 
very  simple  people  believe  that  an  army  in  the  field  can  main- 
tain as  high  a  level  of  honesty,  decency,  and  justice  as  a  settled 
community  at  home.  And  the  tradition  of  the  Thirty  Years' 
War  still  influenced  the  Prussian  army.  It  has  been  customary 
in  the  countries  allied  against  Germany  to  treat  all  this  vileness 
and  bloodshed  of  the  Belgian  months  as  though  nothing  of  the 
sort  had  ever  happened  before,  and  as  if  it  were  due  to  some 
distinctively  evil  strain  in  the  German  character.  They  were 
nicknamed  "Huns."  But  nothing  could  be  less  like  the  sys- 
tematic destructions  of  these  nomads  (who  once  proposed  to 
exterminate  the  entire  Chinese  population  in  order  to  restore 
China  to  pasture)  than  the  German  crimes  in  Belgium.  Much 
of  that  crime  was  the  drunken  brutality  of  men  who  for  the 
first  time  in  their  lives  were  free  to  use  lethal  weapons,  much 
of  it  was  the  hysterical  violence  of  men  shocked  at  their  own 
proceedings  and  in  deadly  fear  of  the  revenge  of  the  people 
whose  country  they  had  outraged,  and  much  of  it  was  done 
under  duress  because  of  the  theory  that  men  should  be  terrible 
in  warfare  and  that  populations  are  best  subdued  by  fear.  The 
German  common  people  were  bundled  from  an  orderly  obedi- 
ence into  this  war  in  such  a  manner  that  atrocities  were  bound 
to  ensue.  They  certainly  did  horrible  and  disgusting  things. 
But  any  people  who  had  been  worked  up  for  war  and  led  into 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914 


1035 


war  as  the  Germans  were,  would  have  behaved  in  a  similar 
manner. 

•  On  the  night  of  August  2nd,  while  most  of  Europe,  still  under 
the  tranquil  inertias  of  half  a  century  of  peace,  still  in  the 
habitual  enjoyment  of  such  a  widely  diffused  plenty  and 


TVfap  to  Ulnstrate  the  Oruy£nal  GERMAN  Flaxi,1914~ 

>-.          ±=  ~—         v— ^r^y-t— U..P fCHOLLANDT"? 7 T^[\ 7: 


cheapness  and  freedom  as  no  man  living  will  ever  see  again, 
was  thinking  about  its  summer  holidays,  the  little  Belgian 
village  of  Vise  was  ablaze,  and  stupefied  rustics  were  being  led 
out  and  shot  because  it  was  alleged  someone  had  fired  on  the 
invaders.  The  officers  who  ordered  these  acts,  the  men  who 
obeyed,  must  surely  have  felt  scared  at  the  strangeness  of  the 
things  they  did.  Most  of  them  had  never  yet  seen  a  violent 
death.  And  they  had  set  light  not  to  a  village,  but  a  world. 


1036  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

It  was  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  an  age  of  comfort,  confi- 
dence, and  gentle  and  seemly  behaviour  in  Europe. 

So  soon  as  it  was  clear  that  Belgium  was  to  be  invaded, 
Great  Britain  ceased  to  hesitate,  and  (at  eleven  at  night  on 
August  4th)  declared  war  upon  Germany.  The  following  day 
a  German  mine-laying  vessel  was  caught  off  the  Thames  mouth 
by  the  cruiser  Amphion  and  sunk, — the  first  time  that  the 
British  and  Germans  had  ever  met  in  conflict  under  their  own 
national  flags  upon  land  or  water.  .  .  . 

All  Europe  still  remembers  the  strange  atmosphere  of  those 
eventful  sunny  August  days,  the  end  of  the  Armed  Peace.  For 
nearly  half  a  century  the  Western  world  had  been  tranquil 
and  had  seemed  safe.  Only  a  few  middle-aged  and  ageing 
people  in  France  had  had  any  practical  experience  of  warfare. 
The  newspapers  spoke  of  a  world  catastrophe,  but  that  con- 
veyed very  little  meaning  to  those  for  whom  the  world  had 
always  seemed  secure,  who  were  indeed  almost  incapable  of 
thinking  of  it  as  otherwise  than  secure.  In  Britain  particu- 
larly for  some  weeks  the  peace-time  routine  continued  in  a 
slightly  dazed  fashion.  It  was  like  a  man  still  walking  about  the 
world  unaware  that  he  has  contracted  a  fatal  disease  which  will 
alter  every  routine  and  habit  in  his  life.  People  went  on  with 
their  summer  holidays;  shops  reassured  their  customers  with 
the  announcement  "business  as  usual."  There  was  much  talk 
and  excitement  when  the  newspapers  came,  but  it  wras  the  talk 
and  excitement  of  spectators  who  have  no  vivid  sense  of  par- 
ticipation in  the  catastrophe  that  was  presently  to  involve 
them  all. 


§  8 

We  will  now  review  very  briefly  the  main  phases  of  the  world 
struggle  which  had  thus  commenced.  Planned  by  Germany,  it 
began  with  a  swift  attack  designed  to  "knock  out"  France  while 
Russia  was  still  getting  her  forces  together  in  the  East.  For 
a  time  all  went  well.  Military  science  is  never  up  to  date 
under  modern  conditions,  because  military  men  are  as  a  class 
unimaginative,  there  are  always  at  any  date  undeveloped  in- 
ventions capable  of  disturbing  current  tactical  and  strategic 
practice  which  the  military  intelligence  has  declined.  The 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1037 

German  plan  had  been  made  for  some -years;  it  was  a  stale 
plan;  it  could  probably  have  been  foiled  at  the  outset  by  a 
proper  use  of  entrenchments  and  barbed  wire  and  machine 
guns,  but  the  French  were  by  no  means  as  advanced  in  their 
military  science  as  the  Germans,  and  they  trusted  to  methods 
of  open  warfare  that  were  at  least  fourteen  years  behind  the 
times.  They  had  a  proper  equipment  neither  of  barbed  wire 
nor  machine  guns,  and  there  wTas  a  ridiculous  tradition  that 
the  Frenchman  did  not  fight  well  behind  earthworks.  The  Bel- 
gian frontier  was  defended  by  the  fortress  of  Liege,  ten  or 
twelve  years  out  of  date,  with  forts  whose  armament  had  been 
furnished  and  fitted  in  many  cases  by  German  contractors ;  and 
the  French  north-eastern  frontier  was  very  badly  equipped. 
Naturally  the  German  armament  firm  of  Krupp  had  provided 
nutcrackers  for  these  nuts  in  the  form  of  exceptionally  heavy 
guns  firing  high  explosive  shell.  These  defences  proved  there- 
fore to  be  mere  traps  for  their  garrisons.  The  French  attacked 
and  failed  in  the  southern  Ardennes.  The  German  hosts 
swung  round  the  French  left  with  an  effect  of  being  irresistible ; 
Liege  fell  on  August  9th,  Brussels  was  reached  on  August  20th, 
and  the  small  British  army  of  about  70,000,  which  had  arrived 
in  Belgium,  was  struck  at  Mons  (August  22nd)  in  overwhelm- 
ing force,  and  driven  backward  in  spite  of  the  very  deadly  rifle 
tactics  it  had  learnt  during  the  South  African  War.  The  little 
British  force  was  pushed  aside  westward,  and  the  German 
right  swept  down  so  as  to  leave  Paris  to  the  west  and  crumple 
the  entire  French  army  back  upon  itself. 

So  confident  was  the  German  higher  command  at  this  stage 
of  having  won  the  war,  that  by  the  end  of  August  German 
troops  were  already  being  withdrawn  for  the  Eastern  front, 
where  the  Russians  were  playing  havoc  in  East  and  West  Prus- 
sia. And  then  came  the  French  counter-attack,  strategically 
a  very  swift  and  brilliant  counter-attack.  The  French  struck 
back  on  their  centre,  they  produced  an  unexpected  army  on 
their  left,  and  the  small  British  army,  shaken  but  reinforced, 
was  still  fit  to  play  a  worthy  part  in  the  counter-stroke.  The 
German  right  overran  itself,  lost  its  cohesion,  and  was  driven 
back  from  the  Marne  to  the  Aisne  (Battle  of  the  Marne,  Sep- 
tember 6th  to  10th).  It  would  have  been  driven  back  farther 
had  it  not  had  the  art  of  entrenchment  in  reserve.  Upon  the 
Aisne  it  stood  and  dug  itself  in.  The  heavy  guns;  the  high 


10S8  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

explosive  shell,  the  tanks,  needed  by  the  allies  to  smash  up 
these  entrenchments,  did  not  yet  exist. 

The  Battle  of  the  Marne  shattered  the  original  German  plan. 
For  a  time  France  was  saved.  But  the  German  was  not  de- 
feated; he  had  still  a  great  offensive  superiority  in  men  and 
equipment.  His  fear  of  the  Russian  in  the  east  had  been  re- 
lieved by  a  tremendous  victory  at  Tannenberg.  His  next  phase 
was  a  headlong,  less  elaborately  planned  campaign  to  outflank 
the  left  of  the  allied  armies  and  to  seize  the  Channel  ports  and 
cut  off  supplies  coming  from  Britain  to  France.  Both  armies 
extended  to  the  west  in  a  sort  of  race  to  the  coast.  Then  the 
Germans,  with  a  great  superiority  of  guns  and  equipment, 
struck  at  the  British  round  and  about  Ypres.  They  came 
very  near  to  a  break  through,  but  the  British  held  them. 

The  war  on  the  Western  front  settled  down  to  trench  war- 
fare. Neither  side  had  the  science  and  equipment  needed  to 
solve  the  problem  of  breaking  through  modern  entrenchments 
and  entanglements,  and  both  sides  were  now  compelled  to  resort 
to  scientific  men,  inventors,  and  such-like  unmilitary  persons 
for  counsel  and  help  in  their  difficulty.  At  that  time  the  essen- 
tial problem  of  trench  warfare  had  already  been  solved;  there 
existed  in  England,  for  instance,  the  model  of  a  tank,  which 
would  have  given  the  allies  a  swift  and  easy  victory  before 
1916;  but  the  professional  military  mind  is  by  necessity  an  in- 
ferior and  unimaginative  mind ;  no  man  of  high  intellectual 
quality  would  willingly  imprison  his  gifts  in  such  a  calling; 
nearly  all  supremely  great  soldiers  have  been  either  inexperi- 
enced fresh-minded  young  men  like  Alexander,  Napoleon,  and 
Hoche,  politicians  turned  soldiers  like  Julius  Caesar,  nomads 
like  the  Hun  and  Mongol  captains,  or  amateurs  like  Crom- 
well and  Washington;  whereas  this  war  after  fifty  years  of 
militarism  was  a  hopelessly  professional  war;  from  first  to 
last  it  was  impossible  to  get  it  out  of  the  hands  of  the  regular 
generals,  and  neither  the  German  nor  allied  headquarters  was 
disposed  to  regard  an  invention  with  toleration  that  would  de- 
stroy their  traditional  methods.  The  tank  was  not  only  dis- 
agreeably strange  to  these  military  gentlemen,  but  it  gave  an 
unprofessional  protection  to  the  common  soldiers  within  it.  The 
Germans,  however,  did  make  some  innovations.  In  February 
(28)  they  produced  a  rather  futile  novelty,  the  flame  projector, 
the  user  of  which  was  in  constant  danger  of  being  burnt  alive, 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF   1914 


1039 


and  in  April,  in  the  midst  of  a  second  great  offensive  upon  the 
British  (second  Battle  of  Ypres,  April  17th  to  May  17th), 
they  employed  a  cloud  of  poison  gas.  This  horrible  device  was 
used  against  Algerian  and  Canadian  troops;  it  shook  them 
hy  the  physical  torture  it  inflicted,  and  by  the  anguish  of  those 


KOled  Urn.  March  1915 

••     April   1917 ........... 

German.  lh\&  ,  July 
AUled  line.  tNw.  11"  1918 


who  died,  but  it  failed  to  break  through  them.  For  some 
weeks  chemists  were  of  more  importance  than  soldiers  on  the 
allied  front,  and  within  six  weeks  the  defensive  troops  were 
already  in  possession  of  protective  methods  and  devices. 

For  a  year  and  a  half,  until  July,  1916,  the  Western  front 
remained  in  a  state  of  indecisive  tension.  There  were  heavy 
attacks  on  either  side  that  ended  in  bloody  repulses.  The 
French  made  costly  but  glorious  thrusts  at  Arras  and  in  Cham- 


1040  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

pagne  in  1915,  the  British  at  Loos.  From  Switzerland  to  the 
North  Sea  there  ran  two  continuous  lines  of  entrenchment, 
sometimes  at  a  distance  of  a  mile  or  more,  sometimes  at  a  dis- 
tance of  a  few  feet  (at  Arras  e.g.),  and  in  and  behind  these 
lines  of  trenches  millions  of  men  toiled,  raided  their  enemies, 
and  prepared  for  sanguinary  and  foredoomed  offensives.  In 
any  preceding  age  these  stagnant  masses  of  men  would  have 
engendered  a  pestilence  inevitably,  but  here  again  modern  sci- 
ence had  altered  the  conditions  of  warfare.  Certain  novel 
diseases  appeared,  trench  feet  for  instance,  caused  by  prolonged 
standing  in  cold  water,  new  forms  of  dysentery,  and  the  like, 
but  none  developed  to  an  extent  to  disable  either  combatant 
force.  Behind  this  front  the  whole  life  of  the  belligerent  na- 
tions was  being  turned  more  and  more  to  the  task  of  maintain- 
ing supplies  of  food,  munitions,  and,  above  all,  men  to  supply 
the  places  of  those  who  day  by  day  were  killed  or  mangled. 
The  Germans  had  had  the  luck  to  possess  a  considerable  number 
of  big  siege  guns  intended  for  the  frontier  fortresses;  these 
were  now  available  for  trench  smashing  with  high  explosive, 
a  use  no  one  had  foreseen  for  them.  The  Allies  throughout 
the  first  years  were  markedly  inferior  in  their  supply  of  big 
guns  and  ammunition,  and  their  losses  were  steadily  greater 
than  the  German.  Mr.  Asquith,  the  British  Prime  Min- 
ister, though  a  very  fine  practitioner  in  all  the  arts  of  Par- 
liament, was  wanting  in  creative  ability;  and  it  is  probably 
due  to  the  push  and  hustle  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George  (who  pres- 
ently ousted  him  in  December,  1916)  and  the  clamour  of  the 
British  press  that  this  inferiority  of  supplies  was  eventually 
rectified. 

There  was  a  tremendous  German  onslaught  upon  the  French 
throughout  the  first  half  of  1916  round  and  about  Verdun. 
The  Germans  suffered  enormous  losses  and  were  held,  after 
pushing  in  the  French  lines  for  some  miles.  The  French  losses 
were  as  great  or  greater.  "Us  ne  passeront  pas"  said  and  sang 
the  French  infantry — and  kept  their  word. 

The  Eastern  German  front  was  more  extended  and  less  sys- 
tematically entrenched  than  the  Western.  For  a  time  the  Rus- 
sian armies  continued  to  press  westward  in  spite  of  the  Tan- 
nenberg  disaster.  They  conquered  nearly  the  whole  of  Galicia 
from  the  Austrians,  took  Lemberg  on  September  2nd,  1914,  and 
the  great  fortress  of  Przemysl  on  March  22nd,  1915.  But 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1041 

after  the  Germans  had  failed  to  break  the  Western  front  of 
the  Allies,  and  after  an  ineffective  Allied  offensive  made  with- 
out proper  material,  they  turned  to  Russia,  and  a  series  of 
heavy  blows,  with  a  novel  use  of  massed  artillery,  were  struck 
first  in  the  south  and  then  at  the  north  of  the  Russian  front. 
On  June  22nd,  Przemysl  was  retaken,  and  the  whole  Russian 
line  was  driven  back  until  Vilna  (September  2nd)  was  in 
German  hands. 

In  May,  1915  (23rd),  Italy  joined  the  allies,  and  declared 
war  upon  Austria.  (Not  until  a  year  later  did  she  declare 
war  on  Germany.)  She  pushed  over  her  eastern  boundary 
towards  Goritzia  (which  fell  in  the  summer  of  1916),  but  her 
intervention  was  of  little  use  at  that  time  to  either  Russia  or 
the  two  Western  powers.  She  merely  established  another  line 
of  trench  warfare  among  the  high  mountains  of  her  picturesque 
north-eastern  frontier. 

While  the  main  fronts  of  the  chief  combatants  were  in  this 
state  of  exhaustive  deadlock,  both  sides  were  attempting  to 
strike  round  behind  the  front  of  their  adversaries.  The  Ger- 
mans made  a  series  of  Zeppelin,  and  later  of  aeroplane  raids 
upon  Paris  and  the  east  of  England.  Ostensibly  these  aimed 
at  depots,  munition  works,  and  the  like  targets  of  military 
importance,  but.  practically  they  bombed  promiscuously  at  in- 
habited places.  At  first  these  raiders  dropped  not  very  effective 
bombs,  but  later  the  size  and  quality  of  these  missiles  increased, 
considerable  numbers  of  people  were  killed  and  injured,  and 
very  much  damage  was  done.  The  English  people  were  roused 
to  a  pitch  of  extreme  indignation  by  these  outrages.  Although 
the  Germans  had  possessed  Zeppelins  for  some  years,  no  one 
in  authority  in  Great  Britain  had  thought  out  the  proper 
methods  of  dealing  with  them,  and  it,  was  not  until  late  in 
1916  that  an  adequate  supply  of  anti-aircraft  guns  was  brought 
into  play  and  that  these  raiders  were  systematically  attacked 
by  aeroplanes.  Then  came  a  series  of  Zeppelin  disasters,  and 
after  the  spring  of  1917  they  ceased  to  be  used  for  any  purpose 
but  sea  scouting,  and  their  place  as  raiders  was  taken  by  large 
aeroplanes  (the  Gothas).  The  visits  of  these  latter  machines 
to  London  and  the  east  of  England  became  systematic  after 
the  summer  of  1917.  All  through  the  winter  of  1917-18,  Lon- 
don on  every  moonlight  night  became  familiar  with  the  banging 
of  warning  maroons,  the  shrill  whistles  of  the  police  alarm,  the 


1042  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

hasty  clearance  of  the  streets,  the  distant  rumbling  of  scores 
and  hundreds  of  anti-aircraft  guns  growing  steadily  to  a  wild 
uproar  of  thuds  and  crashes,  the  swish  of  flying  shrapnel,  and 
at  last,  if  any  of  the  raiders  got  through  the  barrage,  with  the 
dull  heavy  bang  of  the  bursting  bombs.  Then  presently,  amidst 
the  diminuendo  of  the  gunfire  would  come  the  inimitable  rush- 
ing sound  of  the  fire  brigade  engines  and  the  hurry  of  the 
ambulances.  .  .  .  War  was  brought  home  to  every  Londoner 
by  these  experiences. 

While  the  Germans  were  thus  assailing  the  nerve  of  their 
enemy  home  population  through  the  air,  they  were  also  attack- 
ing the  overseas  trade  of  the  British  by  every  means  in  their 
power.  At  the  outset  of  the  war  they  had  various  trade  de- 
stroyers scattered  over  the  world,  and  a  squadron  of  powerful 
modern  cruisers  in  the  Pacific,  namely,  the  Scliarnliorst,  the 
Gneisenau,  the  Leipzig,  the  Numberg,  and  the  Dresden.  Some 
of  the  detached  cruisers,  and  particularly  the  Emden,  did  a 
considerable  amount  of  commerce  destroying  before  they  were 
hunted  down,  and  the  main  squadron  caught  an  inferior  Brit- 
ish force  off  the  coast  of  Chile  and  sank  the  Good  Hope  and 
the  Monmouth  on  November  1st,  1914.  A  month  later  these 
German  ships  were  themselves  pounced  upon  by  a  British  force, 
and  all  (except  the  Dresden)  sunk  by  Admiral  Sturdee  in  the 
Battle  of  the  Falkland  Isles.  After  this  conflict  the  allies  re- 
mained in  undisputed  possession  of  the  surface  of  the  sea,  a 
supremacy  which  the  great  naval  Battle  of  Jutland  (May  1st, 
191G)  did  nothing  to  shake.  The  Germans  concentrated  their 
attention  more  and  more  upon  submarine  warfare.  From  the 
beginning  of  the  war  they  had  had  considerable  submarine  suc- 
cesses. On  one  day,  September  22nd,  1914,  they  sank  three 
powerful  cruisers,  the  Aboukir,  the  Hogue,  and  the  Cressy,  with 
1,473  men.  They  continued  to  levy  a  toll  upon  British  ship- 
ping throughout  the  war;  at  first  they  hailed  and  examined 
passenger  and  mercantile  shipping,  but  this  practice  they  dis- 
continued for  fear  of  traps,  and  in  the  spring  of  1915  they 
began  to  sink  ships  without  notice.  In  May,  1915,  they  sank 
the  great  passenger  liner,  the  Lusiiania,  without  any  warning, 
drowning  a  number  of  American  citizens.  This  embittered 
American  feeling  against  them,  but  the  possibility  of  injuring 
and  perhaps  reducing  Britain  by  a  submarine  blockade  was 
so  great,  that  they  persisted  in  a  more  and  more  intensified 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1043 

submarine  campaign,  regardless  of  the  danger  of  dragging  the 
United  States  into  the  circle  of  their  enemies. 

Meanwhile,  Turkish  forces,  very  ill-equipped,  were  making 
threatening  gestures  at  Egypt  across  the  desert  of  Sinai. 

And  while  the  Germans  were  thus  striking  at  Britain,  their 
least  accessible  and  most  formidable  antagonist,  through  the 
air  and  under  the  sea,  the  French  and  British  were  also  em- 
barking upon  a  disastrous  flank  attack  in  the  east  upon  the 
Central  Powers  through  Turkey.  The  Gallipoli  campaign  was 
finely  imagined,  but  disgracefully  executed.  Had  it  succeeded, 
the  Allies  would  have  captured  Constantinople  in  1915.  But 
the  Turks  were  given  two  months'  notice  of  the  project  by  a 
premature  bombardment  of  the  Dardanelles  in  February,  the 
scheme  was  also  probably  betrayed  through  the  Greek  Court, 
and  when  at  last  British  and  French  forces  were  landed  upon 
the  Gallipoli  peninsula  in  April,  they  found  the  Turks  well 
entrenched  and  better  equipped  for  trench  warfare  than  them- 
selves. The  Allies  trusted  for  heavy  artillery  to  the  great  guns 
of  the  ships,  which  were  comparatively  useless  for  battering 
down  entrenchments,  and  among  every  other  sort  of  thing  that 
they  had  failed  to  foresee,  they  had  not  foreseen  hostile  sub- 
marines. Several  great  battleships  were  lost ;  they  went  down  in 
the  same  clear  waters  over  which  the  ships  of  Xerxes  had  once 
sailed  to  their  fate  at  Salamis.  The  story  of  the  Gallipoli  cam- 
paign from  the  side  of  the  Allies  is  at  once  heroic  and  pitiful,  a 
story  of  courage  and  incompetence,  and  of  life,  material,  and 
prestige  wasted,  culminating  in  a  withdrawal  in  January,  1916. 

Linked  up  closely  with  the  vacillation  of  Greece  was  the 
entry  of  Bulgaria  into  the  war  (October  12th,  1915).  The 
king  of  Bulgaria  had  hesitated  for  more  than  a  year  to  make 
any  decision  between  the  two  sides.  Now  the  manifest  failure 
of  the  British  at  Gallipoli,  coupled  with  a  strong  Austro-Ger- 
man  attack  in  Serbia,  swung  him  over  to  the  Central  Powers. 
While  the  Serbs  were  hotly  engaged  with  the  Austro-German 
invaders  upon  the  Danube  he  attacked  Serbia  in  the  rear,  and 
in  a  few  weeks  the  country  had  been  completely  overrun.  The 
Serbian  army  made  a  terrible  retreat  through  the  mountains 
of  Albania  to  the  coast,  where  its  remains  were  rescued  by 
an  Allied  fleet. 

An  Allied  force  landed  at  Salonika  in  Greece,  and  pushed 
inland  towards  Monastir,  but  was  unable  to  render  any  effectual 


1044  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

assistance  to  the  Serbians.  It  was  the  Salonika  plan  which 
sealed  the  fate  of  the  Gallipoli  expedition. 

To  the  east,  in  Mesopotamia,  the  British,  using  Indian 
troops  chiefly,  made  a  still  remoter  flank  attack  upon  the  Central 
Powers.  An  army,  very  ill  provided  for  the  campaign,  was 
landed  at  Basra  in  the  November  of  1914,  and  pushed  up  to- 
wards Bagdad  in  the  following  year.  It  gained  a  victory  at 
Ctesiphon,  the  ancient  Arsacid  and  Sassanid  capital  within 
twenty-five  miles  of  Bagdad,  but  the  Turks  were  heavily  rein- 
forced, there  was  a  retreat  to  Kut,  and  there  the  British  army, 
under  General  Townshend,  was  surrounded  and  starved  into 
surrender  on  April  29th,  1916. 

All  these  campaigns  in  the  air,  under  the  seas,  in  Russia, 
Turkey,  and  Asia,  were  subsidiary  to  the  main  front,  the  front 
of  decision,  between  Switzerland  and  the  sea;  and  there  the 
main  millions  lay  entrenched,  slowly  learning  the  necessary 
methods  of  modern  scientific  warfare.  There  was  a  rapid  prog- 
ress in  the  use  of  the  aeroplane.  At  the  outset  of  the  war  this 
had  been  used  chiefly  for  scouting,  and  by  the  Germans  for 
the  dropping  of  marks  for  the  artillery.  Such  a  thing  as 
aerial  fighting  was  unheard  of.  In  1916  the  aeroplanes  carried 
machine  guns  and  fought  in  the  air;  their  bombing  work  was 
increasingly  important,  they  had  developed  a  wonderful  art 
of  aerial  photography,  and  all  the  aerial  side  of  artillery  work, 
both  with  aeroplanes  and  observation  balloons,  had  been  enor- 
mously developed.  But  the  military  mind  was  still  resisting 
the  use  of  the  tank,  the  obvious  weapon  for  decision  in  trench 
warfare. 

Many  intelligent  people  outside  military  circles  understood 
this  quite  clearly.  The  use  of  the  tank  against  trenches  was  an 
altogether  obvious  expedient.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  invented  an 
early  tank,  but  what  military  "expert"  has  ever  had  the  wits 
to  study  Leonardo  ?  Soon  after  the  South  African  War,  in 
1903,  there  were  stories  in  magazines  describing  imaginary 
battles  in  which  tanks  figured,  and  a  complete  working  model 
of  a  tank  made  by  Mr.  J.  A.  Corry  of  Leeds,  was  shown  to  the 
British  military  authorities — who  of  course  rejected  it — in 
1911.  Tanks  had  been  invented  and  re-invented  before  the 
war  began.  But  had  the  matter  rested  entirely  in  the  hands 
of  the  military,  there  would  never  have  been  any  use  of  tanks. 
It  was  Mr.  Winston  Churchill,  who  was  at  the  British  Admir- 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1045 

alty  in  1915-16,  who  insisted  upon  the  manufacture  of  the  first 
tanks,  and  it  was  in  the  teeth  of  the  grimmest  opposition  that 
they  were  sent  to  France.  To  the  British  navy,  and  not  to  the 
army,  military  science  owes  the  use  of  these  devices.  The 
German  military  authorities  were  equally  set  against  them.  In 
July,  1916,  Sir  Douglas  Haig,  the  British  commander-in-chief, 
began  a  great  offensive  which  failed  to  break  through  the  Ger- 
man line.  In  some  places  he  advanced  a  few  miles ;  in  others 
he  was  completely  defeated.  There  was  a  huge  slaughter  of 
the  new  British  armies.  And  he  did  not  use  tanks. 

In  September,  when  the  season  was  growing  too  late  for  a 
sustained  offensive,  tanks  first  appeared  in  warfare.  A  few 
were  put  into  action  by  the  British  in  a  not  very  intelligent  fash- 
ion. Their  effect  upon  the  German  was  profound,  they  pro- 
duced something  like  a  panic,  and  there  can  be  little  doubt  that, 
had  they  been  used  in  July  in  sufficient  numbers  and  handled 
by  a  general  of  imagination  and  energy,  they  would  have  ended 
the  war  there  and  then.  At  that  time  the  Allies  were  in  greater 
strength  than  the  Germans  upon  the  Western  front.  The  odds 
were  roughly  seven  to  four.  Russia,  though  fast  approaching 
exhaustion,  was  still  fighting,  Italy  was  pressing  the  Austrians 
hard,  and  Rumania  was  just  entering  the  war  on  the  side  of 
the  Allies.  But  the  waste  of  men  in  this  disastrous  July  of- 
fensive, and  the  incompetence  of  the  British  military  command, 
brought  the  Allied  cause  to  the  very  brink  of  disaster. 

Directly  the  British  failure  of  July  had  reassured  the 
Germans,  they  turned  on  the  Rumanians,  and  the  winter  of 
1916  saw  the  same  fate  overtake  Rumania  that  had  fallen  upon 
Serbia  in  1915.  The  year  that  had  begun  with  the  retreat 
from  Gallipoli  and  the  surrender  of  Kut,  ended  with  the  crush- 
ing of  Rumania  and  with  volleys  fired  at  a  landing  party  of 
French  and  British  marines  by  a  royalist  crowd  in  the  port  of 
Athens.  It  looked  as  though  King  Constantine  of  Greece  meant 
to  lead  his  people  in  the  footsteps  of  King  Ferdinand  of  Bul- 
garia. But  the  coast-line  of  Greece  is  one  much  exposed  to 
naval  action.  Greece  was  blockaded,  and  a  French  force  from 
Salonika  joined  hands  with  an  Italian  force  from  Valona  to 
cut  the  king  of  Greece  off  from  his  Central  European  friends. 

(In  July,  1917,  Constantine  was  forced  to  abdicate  by  the 
Allies,  and  his  son  Alexander  was  made  king  in  his  place.) 

On  the  whole,  things  looked  much  less  dangerous  for  the 


1046  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Hohenzollern  imperialism  at  the  end  of  1916  than  they  had  done 
after  the  failure  of  the  first  great  rush  at  the  Marne.  The 
Allies  had  wasted  two  years  of  opportunity.  Belgium,  Serbia, 
and  Rumania,  and  large  areas  of  Franc©  and  Russia,  were 
occupied  by  Austro-German  troops.  Counterstroke  after  coun- 
terstroke  had  failed,  and  Russia  was  now  tottering  towards  a 
collapse.  Had  Germany  been  ruled  with  any  wisdom,  she 
might  have  made  a  reasonable  peace  at  this  time.  But  the 
touch  of  success  had  intoxicated  her  imperialists.  They  wanted 
not  safety,  but  triumph,  not  world  welfare,  but  world  empire. 
"World  power  or  downfall"  was  their  formula;  it  gave  their 
antagonists  no  alternative  but  a  fight  to  a  conclusive  end. 

§9 

Early  in  1917  Russia  collapsed. 

By  this  time  the  enormous  strain  of  the  war  was  telling 
hardly  upon  all  the  European  populations.  There  had  been 
a  great  disorganization  of  transport  everywhere,  a  discontinu- 
ance of  the  normal  repairs  and  replacements  of  shipping,  rail- 
ways, and  the  like,  a  using-up  of  material  of  all  sorts,  a 
dwindling  of  food  production,  a  withdrawal  of  greater  and 
greater  masses  of  men  from  industry,  a  cessation  of  educa- 
tional work,  and  a  steady  diminution  of  the  ordinary  securi- 
ties and  honesties  of  life.  Nowhere  was  the  available  direc- 
tive ability  capable  of  keeping  a  grip  upon  affairs  in  the  face 
of  the  rupture  of  habitual  bonds  and  the  replacement  of  the 
subtle  disciplines  of  peace  by  the  clumsy  brutalities  of  military 
"order."  More  and  more  of  the  European  population  was  being 
transferred  from  surroundings  and  conditions  to  which  it  was 
accustomed,  to  novel  circumstances  which  distressed,  stimulated, 
and  demoralized  it.  But  Russia  suffered  first  and  most  from 
this  universal  pulling  up  of  civilization  from  its  roots.  The 
Russian  autocracy  was  dishonest  and  incompetent.  The  Tsar, 
like  several  of  his  ancestors,  had  now  given  way  to  a  crazy 
pietism,  and  the  court  was  dominated  by  a  religious  impostor, 
Rasputin,  whose  cult  was  one  of  unspeakable  foulness,  a  reek- 
ing scandal  in  the  face  of  the  world.  Beneath  the  rule  of  this 
dirty  mysticism,  indolence  and  scoundrelism  mismanaged  the 
war.  The  Russian  common  soldiers  were  sent  into  battle  with- 
out guns  to  support  them,  without  even  rifle  ammunition;  they 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1047 

were  wasted  by  their  officers  and  generals  in  a  delirium  of 
militarist  enthusiasm.  For  a  time  they  seemed  to  be  suffering 
mutely  as  the  beasts  suffer;  but  there  is  a  limit  to  the  endur- 
ance even  of  the  most  ignorant.  A  profound  disgust  for  the 
Tsardom  was  creeping  through  these  armies  of  betrayed  and 
wasted  men.  From  the  close  of  1915  onwards  Russia  was  a 
source  of  deepening  anxiety  to  her  Western  allies.  Through- 
out 1916  she  remained  largely  on  the  defensive,  and  there 
were  rumours  of  a  separate  peace  with  Germany.  She  gave 
little  help  to  Rumania. 

On  December  29th,  1916,  the  monk  Rasputin  was  mur- 
dered at  a  dinner-party  in  Petrograd,  and  a  belated  attempt 
was  made  to  put  the  Tsardom  in  order.  By  March  things  were 
moving  rapidly;  food  riots  in  Petrograd  developed  into  a  revo- 
lutionary insurrection;  there  was  an  attempted  suppression  of 
the  Duma,  the  representative  body,  attempted  arrests  of  lib- 
eral leaders,  the  formation  of  a  provisional  government  under 
Prince  Lvoff,  and  an  abdication  (March  15th)  by  the  Tsar. 
For  a  time  it  seemed  that  a  moderate  and  controlled  revolution 
might  be  possible — perhaps  under  a  new  Tsar.  Then  it  be- 
came evident  that  the  destruction  of  confidence  in  Russia  had 
gone  too  far  for  any  such  adjustments.  The  Russian  people 
were  sick  to  death  of  the  old  order  of  things  in  Europe,  of 
Tsars  and  of  wars  and  great  powers ;  it  wanted  relief,  and  that 
speedily,  from  unendurable  miseries.  The  Allies  had  no  un- 
derstanding of  Russian  realities;  their  diplomatists  were  igno- 
rant of  Russian,  genteel  persons,  with  their  attention  directed 
to  the  Russian  Court  rather  than  Russia,  they  blundered  stead- 
ily with  the  new  situation.  There  was  little  goodwill  among 
the  diplomatists  for  republicanism,  and  a  manifest  disposition 
to  embarrass  the  new  government  as  much  as  possible.  At 
the  head  of  the  Russian  republican  government  was  an  eloquent 
and  picturesque  leader,  Kerensky,  who  found  himself  assailed 
by  the  deep  forces  of  a  profounder  revolutionary  movement, 
the  asocial  revolution,"  at  home  and  cold-shouldered  by  the 
Allied  governments  abroad.  His  allies  would  neither  let  him 
give  the  Russian  people  land  nor  peace  beyond  their  frontiers. 
The  French  and  the  British  press  pestered  their  exhausted  ally 
for  a  fresh  offensive,  but  when  presently  the  Germans  made 
a  strong  attack  by  sea  and  land  upon  Ri^a,  the  British  Ad- 
miralty quailed  before  the  prospect  of  a  Baltic  expedition  in 


1048  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

relief.  The  new  Russian  republic  had  to  fight  unsupported. 
In  spite  of  their  great  naval  predominance  and  the  bitter  pro- 
tests of  the  great  English  admiral,  Lord  Fisher  (1841-1920), 
it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  Allies,  except  for  some  submarine  at- 
tacks, left  the  Germans  the  complete  mastery  of  the  Baltic 
throughout  the  war. 

The  Russian  masses  were  resolute  to  end  the  war.  There 
had  come  into  existence  in  Petrograd  a  body  representing  the 
workers  and  common  soldiers,  the  Soviet,  and  this  body  clam- 
oured for  an  international  conference  of  socialists  at  Stock- 
holm. Food  riots  were  occurring  in  Berlin  at  this  time,  war 
weariness  in  Austria  and  Germany  was  profound,  and  there 
can  be  little  doubt,  in  the  light  of  subsequent  events,  that  such 
a  conference  would  have  precipitated  a  reasonable  peace  on 
democratic  lines  in  1917  and  a  German  revolution.  Kerensky 
implored  his  Western  allies  to  allow  this  conference  to  take 
place,  but,  fearful  of  a  world-wide  outbreak  of  socialism  and 
republicanism,  they  refused,  in  spite  of  the  favourable  re- 
sponse of  a  small  majority  of  the  British  Labour  Party.  With- 
out either  moral  or  physical  help  from  the  Allies,  the  "moderate" 
Russian  republic  still  fought  on  and  made  a  last  desperate 
offensive  effort  in  July.  It  failed  after  some  preliminary  suc- 
cesses and  another  great  slaughtering  of  Russians. 

The  limit  of  Russian  endurance  was  reached.  Mutinies 
broke  out  in  the  Russian  armies,  and  particularly  upon  the 
northern  front,  and  upon  November  7th,  1917,  Kerensky' s 
government  was  overthrown  and  power  was  seized  by  the  Soviet 
Government,  dominated  by  the  Bolshevik  socialists  under  Lenin, 
and  pledged  to  make  peace  regardless  of  the  Western  powers. 
Russia  passed  definitely  "out  of  the  war." 

In  the  spring  of  1917  there  had  been  a  costly  and  ineffec- 
tive French  attack  upon  the  Champagne  front  which  had  failed 
to  break  through  and  sustained  enormous  losses.  Here,  then, 
by  the  end  of  1917,  was  a  phase  of  events  altogether  favourable 
to  Germany,  had  her  government  been  fighting  for  security 
and  well-being  rather  than  for  pride  and  victory.  But  to  the 
very  end,  to  the  pitch  of  final  exhaustion,  the  people  of  the  Cen- 
tral Powers  were  held  to  the  effort  to  realize  an  impossible 
world  imperialism. 

To  that  end  it  was  necessary  that  Britain  should  be  not 
merely  resisted,  but  subjugated,  and  in  order  to  do  that  Ger- 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1049 

many  had  already  dragged  America  into  the  circle  of  her  ene- 
mies. Throughout  1916  the  submarine  campaign  had  been 
growing  in  intensity,  but  hitherto  it  had  respected  neutral  ship- 
ping. In  January,  1917,  a  completer  "blockade"  of  Great 
Britain  and  France  was  proclaimed,  and  all  neutral  powers 
were  warned  to  withdraw  their  shipping  from  the  British 
seas.  An  indiscriminate  sinking  of  the  world's  shipping  began 
which  compelled  the  United  States  to  enter  the  war  in  April 
(6th)  1917.  Throughout  1917,  while  Russia  was  breaking  up 
and  becoming  impotent,  the  American  people  were  changing 
swiftly  and  steadily  into  a  great  military  nation.  And  the 
unrestricted  submarine  campaign  for  which  the  German  im- 
perialists had  accepted  the  risk  of  this  fresh  antagonist,  was 
far  less  successful  than  had  been  hoped.  The  British  navy 
proved  itself  much  more  inventive  and  resourceful  than  the 
British  army ;  there  was  a  rapid  development  of  anti-submarine 
devices  under  water,  upon  the  surface,  and  in  the  air;  and 
after  a  month  or  so  of  serious  destruction,  the  tale  of  sub- 
marine sinkings  declined.  The  British  found  it  necessary  to 
put  themselves  upon  food  rations;  but  the  regulations  were 
well  framed  and  ably  administered,  the  public  showed  an  ex- 
cellent spirit  and  intelligence,  and  the  danger  of  famine  and 
social  disorder  was  kept  at  arm's  length. 

Yet  the  German  imperial  government  persisted  in  its  course. 
If  the  submarine  was  not  doing  all  that  had  been  expected, 
and  if  the  armies  of  America  gathered  like  a  thunder-cloud, 
yet  Russia  was  definitely  down;  and  in  October  the  same  sort 
of  autumn  offensive  that  had  overthrown  Serbia  in  1915  and 
Rumania  in  1916  was  now  turned  with  crushing  effect  against 
Italy.  The  Italian  front  collapsed  after  the  Battle  of  Capo- 
retto,  and  the  Austro-German  armies  poured  down  into  ^7enetia 
and  came  almost  within  gunfire  of  Venice.  Germany  felt  justi- 
fied, therefore,  in  taking  a  high  line  with  the  Russian  peace  pro- 
posals, and  the  peace  of  Brest  Litovsk  (March  2nd,  1918)  gave 
the  Western  allies  some  intimation  of  what  a  German  victory 
would  mean  to  them.  It  was  a  crushing  and  exorbitant  peace, 
dictated  with  the  utmost  arrogance  of  confident  victors. 

All  through  the  winter  German  troops  had  been  shifting 
from  the  Eastern  to  the  Western  front,  and  now,  in  the  spring 
of  1918,  the  jaded  enthusiasm  of  hungry,  "weary,  and  bleeding 
Germany  was  lashed  up  for  the  one  supreme  effort  that  was 


1050  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

really  and  truly  to  end  the  war.  For  some  months  American 
troops  had  been  in  France,  but  the  bulk  of  the  American  army 
was  still  across  the  Atlantic.  It  was  high  time  for  the  final 
conclusive  blow  upon  the  Western  front,  if  such  a  blow  was 
ever  to  be  delivered.  The  first  attack  was  upon  the  British 
in  the  Somme  region.  The  not  very  brilliant  cavalry  generals 
who  were  still  in  command  of  a  front  upon  which  cavalry  was 
a  useless  encumbrance  were  caught  napping;  and  on  March 
21st,  in  "Gough's  Disaster,"  the  fifth  British  army  was  driven 
back  in  disorder.  The  jealousies  of  the  British  and  French 
generals  had  prevented  any  unified  command  of  the  Allied 
armies  in  France,  and  there  was  no  general  reserve  whatever 
behind  Gough.  Thousands  of  guns  were  lost,  and  scores  of 
thousands  of  prisoners.  Many  of  these  losses  were  due  to  the 
utter  incompetence  of  the  higher  command.  No  less  than  a 
hundred  tanks  were  abandoned  because  they  ran  out  of  petrol! 
The  British  were  driven  back  almost  to  Amiens.  Through- 
out April  and  May  the  Germans  rained  offensives  on  the  Allied 
front.  They  came  near  to  a  break  through  in  the  north,  and 
they  made  a  great  drive  back  to  the  Mariie,  which  they  reached 
again  on  May  30th,  1918. 

This  was  the  climax  of  the  German  effort.  Behind  it  was 
nothing  but  an  exhausted  homeland.  The  Allied  politicians 
intervened  in  the  quarrels  of  their  professional  soldiers,  and 
Marshal  Foch  was  put  in  supreme  command  of  all  the  Allied 
armies.  Fresh  troops  were  hurrying  from  Britain  across  the 
Channel,  and  America  was  now  pouring  men  into  France  by 
the  hundred  thousand.  In  June  the  weary  Austrians  made  a 
last  effort  in  Italy,  and  collapsed  before  an  Italian  counter- 
attack. Early  in  June  Foch  began  to  develop  a  counter-attack 
in  the  Marne  angle.  By  July  the  tide  was  turning,  and  the 
Germans  were  reeling  back.  The  Battle  of  Chateau  Thierry 
(July  18th)  proved  the  quality  of  the  new  American  armies. 
In  August  the  British  opened  a  great  and  successful  thrust 
into  Belgium,  and  the  bulge  of  the  German  lines  towards 
Amiens  wilted  and  collapsed.  Germany  had  finished.  The 
fighting  spirit  passed  out  of  her  army,  and  October  was  a  story 
of  defeat  and  retreat  along  the  entire  Western  front.  Early 
in  November  British  troops  were  in  Valenciennes  and  Ameri- 
cans in  Sedan.  In  Italy  also  the  Austrian  armies  were  in  a 
state  of  disorderly  retreat.  But  everywhere  now  the  Hohen- 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1051 

zollern  and  Habsburg  forces  were  collapsing.  The  smash  at 
the  end  was  amazingly  swift.  Frenchmen  and  Englishmen  could 
not  believe  their  newspapers  as  day  after  day  they  announced 
the  capture  of  more  hundreds  of  guns  and  more  thousands  of 
prisoners. 

In  September  a  great  allied  offensive  against  Bulgaria  had 
produced  a  revolution  in  that  country  and  peace  proposals. 
Turkey  had  followed  with  a  capitulation  at  the  end  of  October, 
and  Austro-Hungary  on  November  4th.  There  was  an  attempt 
to  bring  out  the  German  Fleet  for  a  last  fight,  but  the  sailors 
mutinied  (November  7th). 

The  Kaiser  and  the  Crown  Prince  bolted  hastily,  and  with- 
out a  scrap  of  dignity,  into  Holland.  On  November  llth  an 
armistice  was  signed  and  the  war  was  at  an  end.  .  .  . 

For  four  years  and  a  quarter  the  war  had  lasted,  and  grad- 
ually it  had  drawn  nearly  everyone  in  the  Western  world,  at 
least,  into  its  vortex.  Upwards  of  ten  millions  of  people  had 
been  actually  killed  through  the  fighting,  another  twenty  or 
twenty-five  million  had  died  through  the  hardships  and  dis- 
orders entailed.  Scores  of  millions  were  suffering  and  en- 
feebled by  under-nourishment  and  misery.  A  vast  proportion 
of  the  living  were  now  engaged  in  war  work,  in  drilling  and 
armament,  in  making  munitions,  in  hospitals,  in  working  as 
substitutes  for  men  who  had  gone  into  the  armies  and  the  like. 
Business  men  had  been  adapting  themselves  to  the  more  hectic 
methods  necessary  for  profit  in  a  world  in  a  state  of  crisis.  The 
war  had  become,  indeed,  an  atmosphere,  a  habit  of  life,  a  new 
social  order.  Then  suddenly  it  ended. 

In  London  the  armistice  was  proclaimed  about  midday  on 
November  llth.  It  produced  a  strange  cessation  of  every 
ordinary  routine.  Clerks  poured  out  of  their  offices  and  would 
not  return,  assistants  deserted  their  shops,  omnibus  drivers  and 
the  drivers  of  military  lorries  set  out  upon  journeys  of  their 
own  devising  with  picked-up  loads  of  astounded  and  cheering 
passengers  going  nowhere  in  particular  and  careless  whither 
they  went,  ^7ast  vacant  crowds  presently  choked  the  streets, 
and  every  house  and  shop  that  possessed  such  adornments  hung 
out  flags.  When  night  came,  many  of  the  main  streets,  which 
had  been  kept  in  darkness  for  many  months  because  of  the 
air  raids,  were  brightly  lit.  It  was  very  strange  to  see  throng- 
ing multitudes  assembled  in  an  artificial  light  again.  Every- 


1052 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


Sept.22  Thru  British  avixn 
sank  by  submarines 


Nov.  1  German  victory  in  S. 
Dtc.8  Etidi' 


FROMT 


fastuxi 

A?"1]  SaLui  Bittie  cf  VPRE5 
May  J  Germans  /irrt  us«  poison,  g-as 


t» 

0 

^i 


,- German  bU»rari  Aunt 
Germa/c  Kadi  *!Niarn0 
13  French  counter-attack 


Aug.9  Jtaiians  1 
*     Gorizui 


24  G«rman-.flus*r{an 


7T500RS 
^FRCM 
RUSSIA 


Juna-  Austrian  offvnsbw  ori 
Piav«  .front: 
offensive  collapsu 

Oct.29  JtaZian  advanc« 
Nbv.4  Aurtria  capt'fti7afej 
Nov.1oy.c//«ia^gito5'IHfjh 


one  felt  aimless,  with  a  kind  of  strained  and  aching  relief. 
It  was  over  at  last.  There  would  be  no  more  killing  in  France, 
no  more  air  raids — and  ^things  wotild  get  better.  People 
wanted  to  laugh,  and  weep — and  could  do  neither.  Youths  of 
spirit  and  young  soldiers  on  leave  formed  thin  noisy  proces- 
sions that  shoved  their  way  through  the  general  drift,  and  did 
their  best  to  make  a  jollification.  A  captured  German  gun 
was  hauled  from  the  Mall,  where  a  vast  array  of  such  trophies 
had  been  set  out,  into  Trafalgar  Square,  and  its  carriage  burnt. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF   1914 


1053 


Squibs  and  crackers  were  thrown  about.  But  there  was  little 
concerted  rejoicing.  Nearly  everyone  had  lost  too  much  and 
suffered  too  much  to  rejoice  with  any  fervour. 


§  10 

The  world  in  the  year  after  the  great  war  was  like  a  man  who 
has  had  some  vital  surgical  operation  very  roughly  performed, 
and  who  is  not  yet  sure  whether  he  can  now  go  on  living  or 


1054  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

whether  he  has  not  been  so  profoundly  shocked  and  injured 
that  he  will  presently  fall  down  and  die.  It  was  a  world  dazed 
and  stunned.  German  militarist  imperialism  had  been  de- 
feated, but  at  an  overwhelming  cost.  It  had  come  very  near 
to  victory.  Everything  went  on,  now  that  the  strain  of  the 
conflict  had  ceased,  rather  laxly,  rather  weakly,  and  with  a 
gusty  and  uncertain  temper.  There  was  a  universal  hunger 
for  peace,  a  universal  desire  for  the  lost  safety  and  liberty  and 
prosperity  of  pre-war  times,  without  any  power  of  will  to 
achieve  and  secure  these  things. 

Just  as  with  the  Roman  Republic  under  the  long  strain 
of  the  Punic  War,  so  now  there  had  been  a  great  release  of 
violence  and  cruelty,  and  a  profound  deterioration  in  financial 
and  economic  morality.  Generous  spirits  had  sacrificed  them- 
selves freely  to  the  urgent  demands  of  the  war,  but  the  sly  and 
base  of  the  worlds  of  business  and  money  had  watched  the 
convulsive  opportunities  of  the  time  and  secured  a  firm  grip 
upon  the  resources  and  political  power  of  their  countries. 
Everywhere  men  who  would  have  been  regarded  as  shady  ad- 
venturers before  1914  had  acquired  power  and  influence  while 
better  men  toiled  unprofitably.  Such  men  as  Lord  Rhondda, 
the  British  food  controller,  killed  themselves  with  hard  work, 
while  the  war  profiteer  waxed  rich  and  secured  his  grip  upon 
press  and  party  organization. 

In  the  course  of  the  war  there  had  been  extraordinary  ex- 
periments in  collective  management  in  nearly  all  the  belligerent 
countries.  It  was  realized  that  the  common  expedients  of  peace- 
time commerce,  the  higgling  of  the  market,  the  holding  out  for 
a  favourable  bargain,  were  incompatible  with  the  swift  needs 
of  warfare.  Transport,  fuel,  food  supply,  and  the  distribution 
of  the  raw  materials  not  only  of  clothing,  housing,  and  the 
like,  but  of  everything  needed  for  war  munitions,  had  been 
brought  under  public  control.  No  longer  had  farmers  been 
allowed  to  under-farm ;  cattle  had  been  put  upon  deer-parks 
and  grasslands  ploughed  up,  with  or  without  the  owner's  ap- 
proval. Luxury  building  and  speculative  company  promotion 
had  been  restrained.  In  effect,  a  sort  of  emergency  socialist 
state  had  been  established  throughout  belligerent  Europe.  It 
was  rough-and-ready  and  wasteful,  but  it  was  more  effective  than 
the  tangled  incessant  profit-seeking,  the  cornering  and  fore- 
stalling and  incoherent  productiveness  of  "private  enterprise." 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1055 

In  the  earlier  years  of  the  war  there  was  a  very  widespread 
feeling  of  brotherhood  and  the  common  interest  in  all  the 
belligerent  states.  The  common  men  were  everywhere  sacrific- 
ing life  and  health  for  what  they  believed  to  be  the  common 
good  of  the  state.  In  return,  it  was  promised,  there  would 
be  less  social  injustice  after  the  war,  a  more  universal  devotion 
to  the  common  welfare.  In  Great  Britain,  for  instance,  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  was  particularly  insistent  upon  his  intention  to 
make  the  after-war  Britain  "a  land  fit  for  heroes."  He  fore- 
shadowed the  continuation  of  this  new  war  communism  into 
the  peace  period  in  discourses  of  great  fire  and  beauty.  In 
Great  Britain,  there  was  created  a  Ministry  of  Reconstruction, 
which  was  understood  to  be  planning  a  new  and  more  generous 
social  order,  better  labour  conditions,  better  housing,  extended 
education,  a  complete  and  scientific  revision  of  the  economic 
system.  Similar  hopes  of  a  better  world  sustained  the  com- 
mon soldiers  of  France  and  Germany  and  Italy.  It  was  pre- 
mature disillusionment  that  caused  the  Russian  collapse.  So 
that  two  mutually  dangerous  streams  of  anticipation  were  run- 
ning through  the  minds  of  men  in  Western  Europe  towards 
the  end  of  the  war.  The  rich  and  adventurous  men,  and  par- 
ticularly the  new  war  profiteers,  were  making  their  plans  to 
prevent  such  developments  as  that  air  transport  should  become 
a  state  property,  and  to  snatch  back  manufactures,  shipping, 
land  transport,  the  public  services  generally,  and  the  trade  in 
staples  from  the  hands  of  the  commonweal  into  the  grip  of 
private  profit ;  they  were  securing  possession  of  newspapers  and 
busying  themselves  with  party  caucuses  and  the  like  to  that 
end;  while  the  masses  of  common  men  were  looking  forward 
naively  to  a  new  state  of  society  planned  almost  entirely  in 
their  interest  and  according  to  generous  general  ideas.  The 
history  of  1919  is  largely  the  clash  of  these  two  streams  of  an- 
ticipation. There  was  a  hasty  selling  off,  by  the  "business"  gov- 
ernment in  control,  of  every  remunerative  public  enterprise  to 
private  speculators.  .  .  .  By  the  middle  of  1919  the  labour 
masses  throughout  the  world  were  manifestly  disappointed  and 
in  a  thoroughly  bad  temper.  The  British  "Minister  of  Recon- 
struction" and  its  foreign  equivalents  were  exposed  as  a  soothing 
sham.  The  common  man  felt  he  had  been  cheated.  There  was 
to  be  no  reconstruction,  but  only  a  restoration  of  the  old  order — 
in  the  harsher  form  necessitated  by  the  poverty  of  the  new  time. 


1056  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

For  four  years  the  drama  of  the  war  had  obscured  the  social 
question  which  had  been  developing  in  the  Western  civilizations 
throughout  the  nineteenth  century.  Now  that  the  war  was  over, 
this  question  reappeared  gaunt  and  bare,  as  it  had  never  been 
seen  before. 

And  the  irritations  and  hardships  and  the  general  insecurity 
of  the  new  time  were  exacerbated  by  a  profound  disturbance  of 
currency  and  credit.  Money,  a  complicated  growth  of  conven- 
tions rather  than  a  system  of  values,  had  been  deprived  within 
the  belligerent  countries  of  the  support  of  a  gold  standard. 
Gold  had  been  retained  only  for  international  trade,  and  every 
government  had  produced  excessive  quantities  of  paper  money 
for  domestic  use.  With  the  breaking  down  of  the  war-time 
barriers  the  international  exchange  became  a  wildly  fluctuating 
confusion,  a  source  of  distress  to  everyone  except  a  few  gamblers 
and  wily  speculators.  Prices  rose  and  rose — with  an  infuriating 
effect  upon  the  wage-earner.  On  the  one  hand  was  the  employer 
resisting  his  demands  for  more  pay;  on  the  other  hand,  food, 
house-room,  and  clothing  were  being  steadily  cornered  against 
him.  And,  which  was  the  essential  danger  of  the  situation,  he 
had  lost  any  confidence  he  had  ever  possessed  that  any  patience 
or  industrial  willingness  lie  displayed  would  really  alleviate  the 
shortages  and  inconveniences  by  which  he  suffered. 

In  the  speeches  of  politicians  towards  the  close  of  1919  and 
the  spring  of  1920,  there  was  manifest  an  increasing  recognition 
of  the  fact  that  what  is  called  the  capitalist  system — the  private 
ownership  system  that  is,  in  which  private  profit  is  the  working 
incentive — was  on  its  trial.  It  had  to  produce  general  prosperity, 
they  admitted,  or  it  had  to  be  revised.  It  is  interesting  to  note 
such  a  speech  as  that  of  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  the  British  premier, 
delivered  on  Saturday,  December  6th,  1919.  Mr.  Lloyd  George 
had  had  the  education  and  training  of  a  Welsh  solicitor;  he 
entered  politics  early,  and  in  the  course  of  a  brilliant  parlia- 
mentary career  he  had  had  few  later  opportunities  for  reading 
and  thought.  But.  being  a  man  of  great  natural  shrewdness,  he 
was  expressing  here  very  accurately  the  ideas  of  the  more  in- 
telligent of  the  business  men  and  wealthy  men  and  ordinary 
citizens  who  supported  him. 

"There  is  a  new  challenge  to  civilization,"  he  said.  "What  is 
it?  It  is  fundamental.  It  affects  the  whole  fabric  of  society  as 
we  know  it;  its  commerce,  its  trade,  its  industry,  its  finance, 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1057 

its  social  order — all  are  involved  in  it.  There  are  those  who 
maintain  that  the  prosperity  and  strength  of  the  country  have 
been  built  up  by  the  stimulating  and  invigorating  appeal  to  in- 
dividual impulse,  to  individual  action.  That  is  one  view.  The 
State  must  educate ;  the  State  must  assist  where  necessary ;  the 
State  mustt control  where  necessary;  the  State  must  shield  the 
weak  against  the  arrogance  of  the  strong;  but  the  life  springs 
from  individual  impulse  and  energy.  (Cheers.)  That  is  one 
view.  What  is  the  other  ?  That  private  enterprise  is  a  failure, 
tried,  and  found  wanting — a  complete  failure,  a  cruel  failure. 
It  must  be  rooted  out,  and  the  community  must  take  charge  as 
a  community,  to  produce,  to  distribute,  as  well  as  to  control. 

"Those  are  great  challenges  for  us  to  decide.  We  say  that 
the  ills  of  private  enterprise  can  be  averted.  They  say,  'No, 
they  cannot.  JsTo  ameliorative,  no  palliative,  no  restrictive,  no 
remedial  measure  will  avail.  These  evils  are  inherent  in  the 
system.  They  are  the  fruit  of  the  tree,  and  you  must  cut  it 
down.7  That  is  the  challenge  we  hear  ringing  through  the 
civilized  world  to-day,  from  ocean  to  ocean,  through  valley  and 
plain.  You  hear  it  in  the  whining  and  maniacal  shrieking  of 
the  Bolshevists.  You  hear  it  in  the  loud,  clear,  but  more  re- 
strained tones  of  Congresses  and  Conferences.  The  Bolshevists 
would  blow  up  the  fabric  with  high  explosive,  with  horror. 
Others  would  pull  down  with  the  crowbars  and  with  cranks — 
especially  cranks.  (Laughter.) 

"Unemployment,  with  its  injustice  for  the  man  who  seeks 
and  thirsts  for  employment,  who  begs  for  labour  and  cannot  get 
it,  and  who  is  punished  for  failure  he  is  not  responsible  for 
by  the  starvation  of  his  children — that  torture  is  something  that 
private  enterprise  ought  to  remedy  for  its  own  sake.  (Cheers.) 
Sweating,  slums,  the  sense  of  semi-slavery  in  labour,  must  go. 
We  must  cultivate  a  sense  of  manhood  by  treating  men  as  men. 
If  I — and  I  say  this  deliberately — if  I  had  to  choose  between 
this  fabric  I  believe  in,  and  allowing  millions  of  men  and  women 
and  children  to  rot  in  its  cellars,  I  would  not  hesitate  one  hour. 
That  is  not  the  choice.  Thank  God  it  is  not  the  choice.  Pri- 
vate enterprise  can  produce  more,  so  that  all  men  get  a  fair 
share  of  it.  .  .  ."  * 

Here,  put  into  quasi-eloquent  phrasing,  and  with  a  jest 
adapted  to  the  mental  habits  of  the  audience,  we  have  the  com- 
1The  Times,  December  8th,  1919. 


1058  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

mon-sense  view  of  the  ordinary  prosperous  man  not  only  of 
Great  Britain,  but  of  America  or  France  or  Italy  or  Germany. 
In  quality  and  tone  it  is  a  fair  sample  of  British  political 
thought  in  1919.  The  prevailing  economic  system  has  made 
us  what  we  are,  is  the  underlying  idea;  and  we  do  not  want 
any  process  of  social  destruction  to  precede  a  renascence  of 
society,  we  do  not  want  to  experiment  with  the  fundamentals  of 
our  social  order.  Let  us  accept  that.  Adaptation,  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  admitted,  there  had  to  be.  Now  this  occasion  of  his 
speaking  was  a  year  and  a  month  after  the  Armistice,  and  for 
all  that  period  private  enterprise  had  been  failing  to  do  all 
that  Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  so  cheerfully  promising  it  would  do. 
The  community  was  in  urgent  need  of  houses.  Throughout  the 
war  there  had  been  a  cessation  not  only  of  building,  but  of 
repairs.  The  shortage  of  houses  in  the  last  months  of  1919 
amounted  to  scores  of  thousands  in  Britain  alone.1  Multitudes 
of  people  were  living  in  a  state  of  exasperating  congestion,  and 
the  most  shameless  profiteering  in  apartments  and  houses  was 
going  on.  It  was  a  difficult,  but  not  an  impossible  situation. 
Given  the  same  enthusiasm  and  energy  and  self-sacrifice  that 
had  tided  over  the  monstrous  crisis  of  1916,  the  far  easier  task 
of  providing  a  million  houses  could  have  been  performed  in  a 
year  or  so.  But  there  had  been  corners  in  building  materials, 
transport  was  in  a  disordered  state,  and  it  did  not  pay  private 
enterprise  to  build  houses  at  any  rents  within  the  means  of  the 
people  who  needed  them.  Private  enterprise,  therefore,  so  far 
from  bothering  about  the  public  need  of  housing,  did  nothing 
but  corner  and  speculate  in  rents  and  sub-letting.  It  now  de- 
manded grants  in  aid  from  the  State — in  order  to  build  at  a 
profit.  And  there  was  a  great  crowding  and  dislocation  of 
goods  at  the  depots  because  there  was  insufficient  road  trans- 
port. There  was  an  urgent  want  of  cheap  automobiles  to  move 
about  goods  and  workers.  But  private  enterprise  in  the  auto- 
mobile industry  found  it  far  more  profitable  to  produce  splendid 
and  costly  cars  for  those  whom  the  war  had  made  rich.  The 
munition  factories  built  with  public  money  could  have  been 
converted  very  readily  into  factories  for  the  mass  production 
of  cheap  automobiles,  but  private  enterprise  had  insisted  upon 
these  factories  being1  sold  by  the  State,  and  would  neither  meet 
the  public  need  itself  nor  let  the  State  do  so.  So,  too,  with  the 
1  Authorities  vary  between  250,000  and  a  million  houses. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1059 

world  in  the  direst  discomfort  for  need  of  shipping,  private 
enterprise  insisted  upon  the  shutting  down  of  the  newly  con- 
structed State  shipyards.  Currency  was  dislocated  everywhere, 
but  private  enterprise  was  busy  buying  and  selling  francs  or 
marks  and  intensifying  the  trouble.  While  Mr.  George  was 
making  the  very  characteristic  speech  we  have  quoted,  the  dis- 
content of  the  common  man  was  gathering  everywhere,  and  little 
or  nothing  was  being  done  to  satisfy  his  needs.  It  was  becoming 
very  evident  that  unless  there  was  to  be  some  profound  change 
in  the  spirit  of  business,  under  an  unrestrained  private  enter- 
prise system  there  was  little  or  no  hope,  in  Europe  at  any  rate, 
of  decent  housing,  clothing,  or  education  for  the  workers  for 
two  or  three  generations. 

These  are  facts  that  the  historian  of  mankind  is  obliged  to 
note  with  as  little  comment  as  possible.  Private  enterprise  in 
Europe  in  1919  and  1920  displayed  neither  will  nor  capacity 
for  meeting  the  crying  needs  of  the  time.  So  soon  as  it  was 
released  from  control,  it  ran  naturally  into  speculation,  corner- 
ing, and  luxury  production.  It  followed  the  line  of  maximum 
profit.  It  displayed  no  sense  of  its  own  dangers ;  and  it  resisted 
any  attempt  to  restrain  and  moderate  its  profits  and  make  itself 
serviceable,  even  in  its  own  interest.  And  this  went  on  in 
the  face  of  the  most  striking  manifestations  of  the  extreme  re- 
calcitrance on  the  part  of  the  European  masses  to  the  prolonged 
continuance  of  the  privations  and  inconveniences  they  suffered. 
In  1913  these  masses  were  living  as  they  had  lived  since  birth ; 
they  were  habituated  to  the  life  they  led.  The  masses  of  1919, 
on  the  other  hand,  had  been  uprooted  everywhere,  to  go  into 
the  armies,  to  go  into  munition  factories,  and  so  on.  They 
had  lost  their  habits  of  acquiescence,  and  they  were  hardier  and 
more  capable  of  desperate  action.  Great  multitudes  of  men 
had  gone  through  such  brutalizing  training  as,  for  instance, 
bayonet  drill ;  they  had  learnt  to  be  ferocious,  and  to  think  less 
either  of  killing  or  being  killed.  Social  unrest  had  become, 
therefore,  much  more  dangerous.  Everything  seemed  to  point 
to  a  refusal  to  tolerate  the  current  state  of  affairs  for  many 
years.  Unless  the  educated  and  prosperous  and  comfortable 
people  of  Europe  could  speedily  get  their  private  enterprise 
under  sufficient  restraint  to  make  it  work  well  and  rapidly  for 
the  common  good,  unless  they  could  develop  the  idea  of  business 
as  primarily  a  form  of  public  service  and  not  primarily  a  method 


1060  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

of  profit-making,  unless  they  could  in  their  own  interest  achieve  a 
security  of  peace  that  would  admit  of  a  cessation  not  only  of  war 
preparation,  but  of  international  commercial  warfare,  strike  and 
insurrection  promised  to  follow  strike  and  insurrection  up  to  a 
complete  social  and  political  collapse.  It  was  not  that  the  masses 
had  or  imagined  that  they  had  the  plan  of  a  new  social,  political, 
and  economic  system.  They  had  not,  and  they  did  not  believe 
they  had.  The  defects  we  have  pointed  out  in  the  socialist  scheme 
(Chapter  XXXVIII,  §  5)  were  no  secret  from  them.  It  was  a 
much  more  dangerous  state  of  affairs  than  that.  It  was  that  they 
were  becoming  so  disgusted  with  the  current  system,  with  its 
silly  luxury,  its  universal  waste,  and  its  general  misery,  that  they 
did  not  care  what  happened  afterward  so  long  as  they  could 
destroy  it.  It  was  a  return  to  a  state  of  mind  comparable  to  that 
which  had  rendered  possible  the  debacle  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

Already  in  1919  the  world  had  seen  one  great  community 
go  that  way,  the  Russian  people.  The  Russians  overturned  the 
old  order  and  submitted  to  the  autocratic  rule  of  a  small  group 
of  doctrinaire  Bolshevik  socialists,  because  these  men  seemed  to 
have  something  new  to  try.  They  wrecked  the  old  system,  and 
at  any  cost  they  would  not  have  it  back.  The  information  avail- 
able from  Russia  at  the  time  of  writing  this  summary  is  still 
too  conflicting  and  too  obviously  tainted  by  propagandist  aims 
for  us  to  form  any  judgment  upon  the  proceedings  and  methods 
of  the  Soviet  Government,  but  it  is  very  plain  that  from  No- 
vember, 19 17,  Russia  has  not  only  endured  that  government 
and  its  mainly  socialistic  methods,  but  has  fought  for  it  success- 
fully against  anything  that  seemed  to  threaten  a  return  to  the 
old  regime. 

We  have  already  (§5)  pointed  out  the  very  broad  differences 
between  the  Russian  and  the  Western  communities,  and  the 
strong  reasons  there  are  for  doubting  that  they  will  move  upon 
parallel  lines  and  act  in  similar  ways.  The  Russian  peasants 
were  cut  off  by  want  of  education  and  sympathy  from  the  small 
civilized  community  of  prosperous  and  educated  people  which 
lived  upon  them.  These  latter  were  a  little  separate  nation. 
The  peasants  below,  under  the  really  quite  alien  incitement  of 
the  Bolshevik  socialists,  have  thrown  that  separate  nation  off 
and  destroyed  it.  In  the  towns,  and  in  the  towns  alone,  com- 
munism rules  (1920)  ;  the  rest  of  Russia  is  now  no  more  than 
a  wilderness  of  barbaric  peasantry.  But  there  is  much  more 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1061 

unity  of  thought  and  feeling  between  class  and  class  in  the 
West  than  in  Russia,  and  particularly  in  the  Atlantic  commu- 
nities. Even  if  they  wrangle,  classes  can  talk  together  and 
understand  each  other.  There  is  no  unbroken  stratum  of 
illiterates.  The  groups  of  rich  and  speculative  men,  the  "bad 
men"  in  business  and  affairs,  whose  freedoms  are  making  the 
very  name  of  "private  enterprise"  stink  in  the  nostrils  of  the 
ordinary  man,  are  only  the  more  active  section  of  very  much 
larger  classes,  guilty  perhaps  of  indolence  and  self-indulgence, 
but  capable  of  being  roused  to  a  sense  not  merely  of  the  wicked- 
ness but  of  the  danger  of  systematic  self-seeking  in  a  strained, 
impoverished,  and  sorely  tried  world. 

In  one  way  or  another  it  seems  inevitable  now  that  the  new 
standard  of  well-being  which  the  mechanical  revolution  of  the 
last  century  has  rendered  possible,  should  become  the  general 
standard  of  life.  Revolution  is  conditional  upon  public  dis- 
comfort. Social  peace  is  impossible  without  a  rapid  ameliora- 
tion of  the  needless  discomforts  of  the  present  time.  A  rapid 
resort  to  willing  service  and  social  reconstruction  on  the  part 
of  those  who  own  and  rule,  or  else  a  world-wide  social  revolu- 
tion leading  towards  an  equalization  of  conditions  and  an  at- 
tempt to  secure  comfort  on  new  and  untried  lines,  seem  now  to 
be  the  only  alternatives  before  mankind.  The  choice  which 
route  shall  be  taken  lies,  we  believe,  in  western  Europe,  and 
still  more  so  in  America,  with  the  educated,  possessing,  and 
influential  classes.  The  former  route  demands  much  sacrifice, 
for  prosperous  people  in  particular,  a  voluntary  assumption  of 
public  duties  and  a  voluntary  acceptance  of  class  discipline  and 
self-denial ;  the  latter  may  take  an  indefinite  time  to  traverse, 
it  will  certainly  be  a  very  destructive  and  bloody  process,  and 
whether  it  will  lead  to  a  new  and  better  state  of  affairs  at  last 
is  questionable.  A  social  revolution,  if  ultimately  the  Western 
European  States  blunder  into  it,  may  prove  to  be  a  process  ex- 
tending over  centuries;  it  may  involve  a  social  breakdown  as 
complete  as  that  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  it  may  necessitate 
as  slow  a  recuperation. 

§  11 

We  have  dealt  with  the  social  and  economic  disorder  of  the 
European  communities,  and  the  rapid  return  of  the  "class-war" 


1062  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  the  foreground  of  attention,  before  giving  any  account  of 
the  work  of  world  settlement  that  centred  on  the  Peace  Confer- 
ence at  Paris,  because  the  worried  and  preoccupied  state  of 
everyone  concerned  with  private  problems  of  income,  prices, 
employment,  and  the  like  goes  far  to  explain  the  jaded  atmos- 
phere in  which  that  Conference  addressed  itself  to  the  vast 
task  before  it. 

The  story  of  the  Conference  turns  very  largely  upon  the  ad- 
venture of  one  particular  man,  one  of  those  men  whom  accident 
or  personal  quality  picks  out  as  a  type  to  lighten  the  task  of 
the  historian.  We  have  in  the  course  of  this  history  found  it 
very  helpful  at  times  to  focus  our  attention  upon  some  indi- 
vidual, Buddha,  Alexander  the  Great,  Yuan  Chwang,  the  Em- 
peror Frederick  II  and  Charles  V  and  Napoleon  I  for  example, 
and  to  let  him  by  reflection  illuminate  the  period  in  which  he 
lived.  The  conclusion  of  the  Great  War  can  be  seen  most  easily 
as  the  rise  of  the  American  President,  President  Wilson,  to  pre- 
dominant importance  in  the  world's  hopes  and  attention,  and 
his  failure  to  justify  that  predominance. 

President  Wilson  (born  1856)  had  previously  been  a  promi- 
nent student  and  teacher  of  history,  constitutional  law,  and  the 
political  sciences  generally.  lie  had  held  various  professorial 
chairs,  and  had  been  President  of  Princeton  University  (New 
Jersey).  There  is  a  long  list  of  books  to  his  credit,  and  they 
show  a  mind  rather  exclusively  directed  to  American  history  and 
American  politics.  He  was  mentally  the  new  thing  in  history, 
negligent  of  and  rather  ignorant  of  the  older  things  out  of 
which  his  new  world  had  arisen.  He  retired  from  academic 
life,  and  was  elected  Democratic  Governor  of  New  Jersey  in 
1910.  In  1913  he  became  the  Democratic  presidential  candi- 
date, and  as  a  consequence  of  a  violent  quarrel  between  ex- 
President  Roosevelt  and  President  Taft,  which  split  the  domi- 
nant Republican  party,  he  became  President  of  the  United 
States. 

The  events  of  August,  1914,  seem  to  have  taken  President 
Wilson,  like  the  rest  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  by  surprise.  We 
find  him  cabling  an  offer  of  his  services  as  a  mediator  on 
August  3rd.  Then,  for  a  time,  he  and  America  watched  the 
conflict.  At  first  neither  the  American  people  nor  their  Presi- 
dent seem  to  have  had  a  very  clear  or  profound  understanding 
of  that  long-gathered  catastrophe.  Their  tradition  for  a  century 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  IOCS 

had  been  to  disregard  the  problems  of  the  Old  World,  and  it 
was  not  to  be  lightly  changed.  The  imperialistic  arrogance  of 
the  German  Court  and  the  stupid  inclination  of  the  German 
military  authorities  towards  melodramatic  "frightfulness,"  their 
invasion  of  Belgium,  their  cruelties  there,  their  use  of  poison 
gas,  and  the  nuisance  of  their  submarine  campaign,  created  a 
deepening  hostility  to  Germany  in  the  United  States  as  the 
war  proceeded;  but  the  tradition  of  political  abstinence  and 
the  deep-rooted  persuasion  that  America  possessed  a  political 
morality  altogether  superior  to  European  conflicts,  restrained 
the  President  from  active  intervention.  He  adopted  a  lofty 
tone.  He  professed  to  be  unable  to  judge  the  causes  and  justice 
of  the  Great  War.  It  was  largely  his  high  pacific  attitude  that- 
secured  his  re-election  as  President  for  a  second  term.  But 
the  world  is  not  to  be  mended  by  merely  regarding  evil-doers 
with  an  expression  of  rather  undiscriminating  disapproval.  By 
the  end  of  1916  the  Germans  had  been  encouraged  to  believe 
that  under  no  circumstances  whatever  would  the  United  States 
fight,  and  in  1917  they  began  their  unrestricted  submarine  war- 
fare and  the  sinking  of  American  ships  without  notice.  Presi- 
dent Wilson  and  the  American  people  were  dragged  into  the 
war  by  this  supreme  folly.  And  also  they  were  dragged  into  a 
reluctant  attempt  to  define  their  relations  to  Old  World  politics 
in  some  other  terms  than  those  of  mere  aloofness.  Their 
thoughts  and  temper  changed  very  rapidly.  They  came  into 
the  war  side  by  side  with  the  Allies,  but  not  in  any  pact  with 
the  Allies.  They  came  into  the  war,  in  the  name  of  their  own 
modern  civilization,  to  punish  and  end  an  intolerable  political 
and  military  situation. 

Slow  and  belated  judgments  are  sometimes  the  best  judg- 
ments. In  a  series  of  "notes,"  too  long  and  various  for  detailed 
treatment  in  this  Outline,  thinking  aloud,  as  it  were,  in  the 
hearing  of  all  mankind,  President  Wilson  sought  to  state  the 
essential  differences  of  the  American  State  from  the  Great 
Powers  of  the  Old  World.  We  have  been  at  some  pains  in  this 
history  to  make  plain  the  development  of  these  differences.  He 
unfolded  a  conception  of  international  relationships  that  came 
like  a  gospel,  like  the  hope  of  a  better  world,  to  the  whole  eastern 
hemisphere.  Secret  agreements  were  to  cease,  "nations"  were 
to  determine  their  own  destinies,  militarist  aggression  was  to 
cease,  the  seaways  were  to  be  free  to  all  mankind.  These  com- 


10C4  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

monplaces  of  American  thought,  these  secret  desires  of  every 
sane  man,  came  like  a  great  light  upon  the  darkness  of  anger 
and  conflict  in  Europe.  At  last,  men  felt,  the  ranks  of  diplo- 
macy were  broken,  the  veils  of  Great  Power  "policy"  were  rent 
in  twain.  Here  with  authority,  with  the  strength  of  a  powerful 
new  nation  behind  it,  was  the  desire  of  the  common  man 
throughout  the  world,  plainly  said. 

Manifestly  there  was  needed  some  over-riding  instrument  of 
government  to  establish  world  law  and  maintain  these  broad 
and  liberal  generalizations  upon  human  intercourse.  A  number 
of  schemes  had  floated  in  men's  minds  for  the  attainment  of  that 
end.  In  particular  there  was  a  movement  for  some  sort  of  world 
league,  a  "League  of  Nations."  The  American  President 
adopted  this  phrase  and  sought  to  realize  it.  An  essential  con- 
dition of  the  peace  he  sought  through  the  overthrow  of  German 
imperialism  was,  he  declared,  to  be  this  federal  organ.  This 
League  of  Nations  was  to  be  the  final  court  of  appeal  in  inter- 
national affairs.  It  was  to  be  the  substantial  realization  of  the 
peace.  Here  again  he  awakened  a  tremendous  echo. 

President  Wilson  was  the  spokesman  of  a  new  age.  Through- 
out the  war,  and  for  some  little  time  after  it  had  ended,  he  held, 
so  far  as  the  Old  World  was  concerned,  that  exalted  position. 
But  in  America,  where  they  knew  him  better,  there  were  doubts. 
And  writing  as  we  do  now  with  the  wisdom  of  subsequent  events, 
we  can  understand  these  doubts.  America,  throughout  a  century 
and  more  of  detachment  and  security,  had  developed  new  ideals 
and  formula}  of  political  thought,  without  realizing  with  any 
intensity  that,  under  conditions  of  stress  and  clanger,  these  ideals 
and  formulae  might  have  to  be  passionately  sustained.  To  her 
community  many  things  were  platitudes  that  had  to  the  Old 
World  communities,  entangled  still  in  ancient  political  compli- 
cations, the  quality  of  a  saving  gospel.  President  Wilson  was 
responding  to  the  thought  and  conditions  of  his  own  people  and 
his  own  country,  based  on  a  liberal  tradition  that  had  first  found 
its  full  expression  in  English  speech;  but  to  Europe  and  Asia 
he  seemed  to  be  thinking  and  saying,  for  the  first  time  in  his- 
tory, things  hitherto  undeveloped  and  altogether  secret.  And 
that  misconception  he  may  have  shared. 

We  are  dealing  here  with  an  able  and  successful  professor  of 
political  science,  who  did  not  fully  realize  what  he  owed  to  his 
contemporaries  and  the  literary  and  political  atmosphere  he  had 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1065 

breathed  throughout  his  life ;  and  who  passed  very  rapidly,  after 
his  re-election  as  President,  from  the  mental  attitudes  of  a  po- 
litical leader  to  those  of  a  Messiah.  His  "notes"  are  a  series  of 
explorations  of  the  elements  of  the  world  situation.  When  at 
last,  in  his  address  to  Congress  of  January  8th,  1918,  he  pro- 
duced his  Fourteen  Points  as  a  definite  statement  of  the  Ameri- 
can peace  intentions,  they  were,  as  a  statement,  far  better  in 
their  spirit  than  in  their  arrangement  and  matter.  This  docu- 
ment demanded  open  agreements  between  nations  and  an  end 
to  secret  diplomacy,  free  navigation  of  the  high  seas,  free  com- 
merce, disarmament,  and  a  number  of  political  readjustments 
upon  the  lines  of  national  independence.  Finally  in  the  Four- 
teenth Point  it  required  "a  general  association  of  nations"  to 
guarantee  the  peace  of  the  world. 

These  Fourteen  Points  had  an  immense  reception  throughout 
the  world.  Here  at  last  seemed  a  peace  for  reasonable  men 
everywhere,  as  good  and  acceptable  to  honest  and  decent  Ger- 
mans and  Russians,  as  to  honest  and  decent  Frenchmen  and 
Englishmen  and  Belgians ;  and  for  some  months  the  whole  world 
was  lit  by  faith  in  Wilson.  Could  they  have  been  made  the 
basis  of  a  world  settlement  in  1919,  they  would  forthwith  have 
opened  a  new  and  more  hopeful  era  in  human  affairs. 

But,  as  we  must  tell,  they  did  not  do  that.  There  was  about 
President  Wilson  a  certain  egotism ;  there  was  in  the  generation 
of  people  in  the  United  States  to  whom  this  great  occasion  came, 
a  generation  born  in  security,  reared  in  plenty  and,  so  far  as 
history  goes,  in  ignorance,  a  generation  remote  from  the  tragic 
issues  that  had  made  Europe  grave,  a  certain  superficiality  and 
lightness  of  mind.  It  was  not  that  the  American  people  were 
superficial  by  nature  and  necessity,  but  that  they  had  never 
been  deeply  stirred  by  the  idea  of  a  human  community  larger 
than  their  own.  It  was  an  intellectual  but  not  a  moral  convic- 
tion, with  them.  One  had  on  the  one  hand  these  new  people 
of  the  new  world,  with  their  new  ideas,  their  finer  and  better 
ideas,  of  peace  and  world  righteousness,  and  on  the  other  the  old, 
bitter,  deeply  entangled  peoples  of  the  Great  Power  system; 
and  the  former  were  crude  and  rather  childish  in  their  immense 
inexperience,  and  the  latter  were  seasoned  and  bitter  and  in- 
tricate. The  theme  of  this  clash  of  the  raw  idealist  youthfulness 
of  a  new  age  with  the  experienced  ripeness  of  the  old,  was  treated 
years  ago  by  that  great  novelist,  Henry  James,  in  a  very 


1066 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


typical  story  called  Daisy  Miller.  It  is  the  pathetic  story  of  a 
frank,  trustful,  high-minded,  but  rather  simple-minded  Ameri- 
can girl,  with  a  real  disposition  towards  righteousness  and  a 
great  desire  for  a  "good  time,"  and  how  she  came  to  Europe 
and  was  swiftly  entangled  and  put  in  the  wrong,  and  at  last 
driven  to  welcome  death  by  the  complex  tortuousness  and  obsti- 
nate limitations  of  the  older  world.  There  have  been  a  thou- 
sand variants  of  that  theme  in  real  life,  a  thousand  such  trans- 
Atlantic  tragedies,  and  the  story 
of  President  Wilson  is  one  of 
them.  But  it  is  not  to  be  sup- 
posed, because  the  new  thing 
succumbs  to  the  old  infections, 
that  is  the  final  condemnation 
of  the  new  thing. 

Probably  no  fallible  human 
being  manifestly  trying  to  do 
his  best  amidst  overwhelming 
circumstances  has  been  sub- 
jected to  such  minute,  search- 
ing, and  pitiless  criticism  as 
President  Wilson.  He  is 
blamed,  and  it  would  seem  that 
he  is  rightly  blamed,  for  conducting  the  war  and  the  ensuing 
peace  negotiations  on  strictly  party  lines.  He  remained  the 
President  representing  the  American  Democratic  Party,  when 
circumstances  conspired  to  make  him  the  representative  of  the 
general  interests  of  mankind.  He  made  no  attempt  to  forget 
party  issues  for  a  time,  and  to  incorporate  with  himself  such 
great  American  leaders  as  ex-President  Roosevelt,  ex-President 
Taft,  and  the  like.  He  did  not  draw  fully  upon  the  moral  and 
intellectual  resources  of  the  States;  he  made  the  whole  issue 
too  personal,  and  he  surrounded  himself  with  merely  personal 
adherents.  And  a  still  graver  error  was  his  decision  to  come  to 
the  Peace  Conference  himself.  Nearly  every  experienced  critic 
seems  to  be  of  opinion  that  he  should  have  remained  in  Amer- 
ica, in  the  role  of  America,  speaking  occasionally  as  if  a  nation 
spoke.  Throughout  the  concluding  years  of  the  war  he  had 
by  that  method  achieved  an  unexampled  position  in  the  world. 
Says  Dr.  Dillon :  1  "Europe,  when  the  President  touched 
*In  his  book,  The  Peace  Conference. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914 


1067 


its  shores,  was  as  clay  ready  for  the  creative  potter.     Never 

before  were  the  nations  so  eager  to  follow  a  Moses  who  would 

take  them  to  the  long-promised  land  where  wars  are  prohibited 

and  blockades  unknown.     And  to  their  thinking  he  was  that 

great  leader.    In  France  men  bowed  down  before  him  with  awe 

and  affection.     Labour  leaders  in  Paris  told  me  that  they  shed 

tears  of  joy  in  his  presence,  and  that  their  comrades  would  go 

through  fire  and  water  to  help  him  to  realize  his  noble  schemes. 

To  the  working  classes  in  Italy 

his  name  was  a  heavenly  clarion 

at  the  sound  of  which  the  earth 

would  be  renewed.      The  Ger- 

mans   regarded    him    and    his 

humane  doctrine  as  their  sheet- 

anchor  of  safety.     The  fearless 

Herr  Muehlon  said:    'If  Presi- 

dent Wilson  were  to  address  the 

Germans,     and     pronounce     a 

severe  sentence  upon  them,  they 

would   accept  it   with   resigna- 

tion and  without  a  murmur  and 

set  to  work  at  once.7     In  Ger- 

man-Austria his  fame  was  that 


Clcmcnceau 


of  a  saviour,  and  the  mere  mention  of  his  name  brought  balm 
to  the  suffering  and  surcease  of  sorrow  to  the  afflicted.  .  .  ." 

Such  was  the  overpowering  expectation  of  the  audience 
to  which  President  Wilson  prepared  to  show  himself.  He 
reached  France  on  board  the  George  Washington  in  December, 
1918. 

He  brought  his  wife  with  him.  That  seemed  no  doubt  a  per- 
fectly natural  and  proper  thing  to  an  American  mind.  Quite 
a  number  of  the  American  representatives  brought  their  wives. 
Unhappily  a  social  quality,  nay,  almost  a  tourist  quality,  was 
introduced  into  the  world  settlement  by  these  ladies.  Transport 
facilities  were  limited,  and  most  of  them  arrived  in  Europe  with 
a  radiant  air  of  privilege.  They  came  as  if  they  came  to  a 
treat.  They  were,  it  was  intimated,  seeing  Europe  under  ex- 
ceptionally interesting  circumstances.  They  would  visit  Ches- 
ter, or  Warwick,  or  Windsor  en  route  —  for  they  might  not  have 
a  chance  of  seeing  these  celebrated  places  again.  Important 
interviews  would  be  broken  off  to  get  in  a  visit  to  some  "old 


1068 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


historical  mansion."  This  may  seem  a  trivial  matter  to  note  in 
a  History  of  Mankind,  but  it  was  such  small  human  things  as 
this  that  threw  a  miasma  of  futility  over  the  Peace  Conference 
of  1919.  In  a  little  while  one  discovered  that  Wilson,  the  Hope 
of  Mankind,  had  vanished,  and  that  all  the  illustrated  fashion 
papers  contained  pictures  of  a  delighted  tourist  and  his  wife, 
grouped  smilingly  with  crowned  heads  and  suck-like  enviable 
company.  .  .  7  It  is  so  easy  to  be  wise  after  the  event, 
and  to  perceive  that  he  should  not  have  come  over. 

The  men  he  had  chiefly  to 
deal  with,  for  example  M. 
Clemenceau  (France),  Mr. 
Lloyd  George  and  Mr.  Balfour 
(Britain),  Baron  Sonnino  and 
Signer  Orlando  (Italy),  were 
men  of  widely  dissimilar  his- 
torical traditions.  But  in  one 
respect  they  resembled  him  and 
appealed  to  his  sympathies. 
They,  too,  were  party  poli- 
ticians, who  had  led  their  coun- 
try through  the  war.  Like 
himself  they  had  failed  to 
grasp  the  necessity  of  entrust- 
ing the  work  of  settlement  to  more  specially  qualified  men. 
"They  were  the  merest  novices  in  international  affairs.  Geog- 
raphy, ethnology,  psychology,  and  political  history  were  sealed 
books  to  them.  Like  the  Rector  of  Louvain  University,  who 
told  Oliver  Goldsmith  that,  as  he  had  become  the  head  of  that 
institution  without  knowing  Greek,  he  failed  to  see  why  it 
should  be  taught  there,  the  chiefs  of  State,  having  obtained  the 
highest  position  in  their  respective  countries  without  more  than 
an  inkling  of  international  affairs,  were  unable  to  realize  the 
importance  of  mastering  them  or  the  impossibility  of  repairing 
the  omission  as  they  went  along.  .  .  ."  1 

"What  they  lacked,  however,  might  in  some  perceptible  de- 
gree have  been  supplied  by  enlisting  as  their  helpers  men  more 
happily  endowed  than  themselves.  But  they  deliberately  chose 
mediocrities.  It  is  a  mark  of  genial  spirits  that  they  are  well 
served,  but  the  plenipotentiaries  of  the  Conference  were  not 

1  Dillon. 


"Mr JJloiji  George 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1069 

characterized  by  it.  Away  in  the  background  some  of  them  had 
familiars  or  casual  prompters  to  whose  counsels  they  were  wont 
to  listen,  but  many  of  the  ad  joints  who  moved  in  the  limelight 
of  the  world-stage  were  gritless  and  pithless. 

"As  the  heads  of  the  principal  Governments  implicitly 
claimed  to  be  the  authorized  spokesmen  of  the  human  race,  and 
endowed  with  unlimited  powers,  it  is  worth  noting  that  this 
claim  was  boldly  challenged  by  the  people's  organs  in  the  Press. 
Nearly  all  the  journals  read  by  the  masses  objected  from  the 
first  to  the  dictatorship  of  the  group  of  Premiers,  Mr.  Wilson 
being  excepted.  .  .  ."  l 

The  restriction  upon  our  space  in  this  Outline  will  not 
allow  us  to  tell  here  how  the  Peace  Conference  shrank  from  a 
Council  of  Ten  to  a  Council  of  Four  (Wilson,  Clemenceau, 
Lloyd  George,  and  Orlando),  and  how  it  became  a  conference 
less  and  less  like  a  frank  and  open  discussion  of  the  future  of 
mankind,  and  more  and  more  like  some  old-fashioned  diplomatic 
conspiracy.  Great  and  wonderful  had  been  the  hopes  that  had 
gathered  to  Paris.  "The  Paris  of  the  Conference,"  says  Dr. 
Dillon,  "ceased  to  be  the  capital  of  France.  It  became  a  vast 
cosmopolitan  caravanserai  teeming  with  unwonted  aspects  of 
life  and  turmoil,  filled  with  curious  samples  of  the  races,  tribes, 
and  tongues  of  four  continents  who  came  to  watch  and  wait  for 
the  mysterious  to-morrow. 

"An  Arabian  Nights'  touch  was  imparted  to  the  dissolving 
panorama  by  strange  visitants  from  Tartary  and  Kurdistan, 
Korea  and  Aderbeijan,  Armenia,  Persia,  and  the  Hedjaz — 
men  with  patriarchal  beards  and  scimitar-shaped  noses,  and 
others  from  desert  and  oasis,  from  Samarkand  and  Bokhara. 
Turbans  and  fezes,  sugar-loaf  hats  and  head-gear  resembling 
episcopal  mitres,  old  military  uniforms  devised  for  the  embry- 
onic armies  of  new  states  on  the  eve  of  perpetual  peace,  snowy- 
white  burnouses,  flowing  mantles,  and  graceful  garments  like 
the  Roman  toga,  contributed  to  create  an  atmosphere  of  dreamy 
unreality  in  the  city  where  the  grimmest  of  realities  were  being 
faced  and  coped  with. 

"Then  came  the  men  of  wealth,  of  intellect,  of  industrial 
enterprise,  and  the  seed-bearers  of  the  ethical  new  ordering, 
members  of  economic  committees  from  the  United  States, 

1  Dillon.     And  see  his  The  Peace  Conference,  chapter  iii,  for  instances 
of  the  amazing  ignorance  of  various  delegates. 


1070  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Britain,  Italy,  Poland,  Russia,  India,  and  Japan,  representa- 
tives of  naphtha  industries  and  far-off  coal  mines,  pilgrims, 
fanatics  and  charlatans  from  all  climes,  priests  of  all  religions, 
preachers  of  every  doctrine,  who  mingled  with  princes,  field- 
marshals,  statesmen,  anarchists,  builders-up  and  pullers-down. 
All  of  them  burned  with  desire  to  be  near  to  the  crucible  in 
which  the  political  and  social  systems  of  the  world  were  to  be 
melted  and  recast.  Every  day,  in  my  walks,  in  my  apartment, 
or  at  restaurants,  I  met  emissaries  from  lands  and  peoples  whose 
very  names  had  seldom  been  heard  of  before  in  the  West.  A 
delegation  from  the  Pont-Euxine  Greeks  called  on  me,  and  dis- 
coursed of  their  ancient  cities  of  Trebizond,  Samsoun,  Tripoli, 
Kerassund,  in  which  I  resided  many  years  ago,  and  informed 
me  that  they,  too,  desired  to  become  welded  into  an  independent 
Greek  Republic,  and  had  come  to  have  their  claims  allowed. 
The  Albanians  were  represented  by  my  old  friend  Turkhan 
Pasha,  on  the  one  hand,  and  by  my  friend  Essad  Pasha  on  the 
other — the  former  desirous  of  Italy's  protection,  the  latter  de- 
manding complete  independence.  Chinamen,  Japanese,  Koreans, 
Hindus,  Kirghizes,  Lesghiens,  Circassians,  Mingrelians, 
Buryats,  Malays,  and  Negroes  and  Negroids  from  Africa  and 
America  were  among  the  tribes  and  tongues  foregathered  in 
Paris  to  watch  the  rebuilding  of  the  political  world  system  and 
to  see  where  they  'came  in.'  .  .  ." 

To  this  thronging,  amazing  Paris,  agape  for  a  new  world, 
came  President  Wilson,  and  found  its  gathering  forces  domi- 
nated by  a  personality  narrower,  in  every  way  more  limited  and 
beyond  comparison  more  forcible  than  himself :  the  French  Pre- 
mier, M.  Clemenceau.  At,  the  instance  of  President  Wilson,  M. 
Clemenceau  was  elected  President  of  the  Conference.  "It  was," 
said  President  Wilson,  "a  special  tribute  to  the  sufferings  and 
sacrifices  of  France."  And  that,  unhappily,  sounded  the  key- 
note of  the  Conference,  whose  sole  business  should  have  been 
with  the  future  of  mankind. 

Georges  Benjamin  Clemenceau  was  an  old  journalist  poli- 
tician, a  great  denouncer  of  abuses,  a  great  upsetter  of  govern- 
ments, a  doctor  who  had,  while  a  municipal  councillor,  kept  a 
free  clinic,  and  a  fierce,  experienced  duellist.  None  of  his 
duels  ended  fatally,  but  he  faced  them  with  great  intrepidity. 
He  had  passed  from  the  medical  school  to  republican  journalism 
in  the  days  of  the  Empire.  In  those  days  he  was  an  extremist 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1071 

of  the  left.  He  was  for  a  time  a  teacher  in  America,  and  he 
married  and  divorced  an  American  wife.  He  was  thirty  in  the 
eventful  year  1871.  He  returned  to  France  after  Sedan,  and 
flung  himself  into  the  stormy  politics  of  the  defeated  nation 
with  great  fire  and  vigour.  Thereafter  France  was  his  world, 
the  France  of  vigorous  journalism,  high-spirited  personal  quar- 
rels, challenges,  confrontations,  scenes,  dramatic  effects,  and 
witticisms  at  any  cost.  He  was  what  people  call  "fierce  stuff," 
he  was  nicknamed  the  "Tiger,"  and  he  seems  to  have  heen  rather 
proud  of  his  nickname.  Professional  patriot  rather  than  states- 
man and  thinker,  this  was  the  man  whom  the  war  had  flung  up 
to  misrepresent  the  fine  mind  and  the  generous  spirit  of  France. 
His  limitations  had  a  profound  effect  upon  the  conference,  which 
was  further  coloured  by  the  dramatic  resort  for  the  purpose  of 
signature  to  the  very  Hall  of  Mirrors  at  Versailles  in  which 
Germany  had  triumphed  and  proclaimed  her  unity.  There  the 
Germans  were  to  sign.  To  M.  Clemenceau  and  to  France,  in 
that  atmosphere,  the  war  ceased  to  seem  a  world  war;  it  was 
merely  the  sequel  of  the  previous  conflict  of  the  Terrible  Year, 
the  downfall  and  punishment  of  offending  Germany.  "The 
world  had  to  be  made  safe  for  democracy,"  said  President  Wil- 
son. That  from  M.  Clemenceau's  expressed  point  of  view  was 
"talking  like  Jesus  Christ."  The  world  had  to  be  made  safe 
for  Paris.  "Talking  like  Jesus  Christ"  seemed  a  very  ridicu- 
lous thing  to  many  of  those  brilliant  rather  than  sound  diplo- 
matists and  politicians  who  made  the  year  1919  supreme  in  the 
history  of  human  insufficiency. 

(Another  flash  of  the  "Tiger's"  wit,  it  may  be  noted,  was 
that  President  Wilson  with  his  fourteen  points  was  "worse" 
than  God  Almighty.  "Le  bon  Dieu"  only  had  ten.  .  .  .) 

M.  Clemenceau  sat  with  Signor  Orlando  in  the  more  central 
chairs  of  a  semicircle  of  four  in  front  of  the  fire,  says  Keynes. 
He  wore  a  black  frock-coat  and  grey  suede  gloves,  which  he 
never  removed  during  these  sessions.  He  was,  it  is  to  be  noted, 
the  only  one  of  these  four  reconstructors  of  the  world  who  could 
understand  and  speak  both  French  and  English. 

The  aims  of  M.  Clemenceau  were  simple  and  in  a  manner 
attainable.  He  wanted  all  the  settlement  of  1871  undone.  He 
wanted  Germany  punished  as  though  she  was  a  uniquely  sinful 
nation  and  France  a  sinless  martyr  land.  He  wanted  Germany 
so  crippled  and  devastated  as  never  more  to  be  able  to  stand  up 


1072  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

to  France.  He  wanted  to  hurt  and  humiliate  Germany  more 
than  France  had  heen  hurt  and  humiliated  in  1871.  lie  did 
not  care  if  in  breaking  Germany  Europe  was  broken  ;  his  mind 
did  not  go  far  enough  beyond  the  Rhine  to  understand  that  possi- 
bility. He  accepted  President  Wilson's  League  of  Nations  as 
an  excellent  proposal  if  it  would  guarantee  the  security  of 
France  whatever  she  did,  but  he  preferred  a  binding  alliance 
of  the  United  States  and  England  to  maintain,  uphold,  and 
glorify  France  under  practically  any  circumstances.  He  wanted 
wider  opportunities  for  the  exploitation  of  Syria,  North  Africa, 
and  so  forth  by  Parisian  financial  groups.  He  wanted  indemni- 
ties to  recuperate  France,  loans,  gifts,  and  tributes  to  France, 
glory  and  homage  to  France.  France  had  suffered,  and  France 
had  to  be  rewarded.  Belgium,  Russia,  Serbia,  Poland,  Armenia, 
Britain,  Germany,  and  Austria  had  all  suffered  too,  all  man- 
kind had  suffered,  but  what  would  you  ?  That  was  not  his  affair. 
These  were  the  supers  of  a  drama  in  which  France  was  for  him 
the  star.  ...  In  much  the  same  spirit  Signer  Orlando  seems 
to  have  sought  the  welfare  of  Italy. 

M  r.  Lloyd  George  brought  to  the  Council  of  Four  the  subtlety 
of  a  Welshman,  the  intricacy  of  a  European,  and  an  urgent 
necessity  for  respecting  the  nationalist  egotism  of  the  British 
imperialists  and  capitalists  who  had  returned  him  to  power. 
Into  the  secrecy  of  that  council  wrent  President  Wilson  with 
the  very  noblest  aims  for  his  newly  discovered  American  world 
policy,  his  rather  hastily  compiled  Fourteen  Points,  and  a 
project  rather  than  a  scheme  for  a  League  of  Nations. 

"There  can  seldom  have  been  a  statesman  of  the  first  rank 
more  incompetent  than  the  President  in  the  agilities  of  the 
Council  Chamber."  From  the  whispering  darknesses  and  fire- 
side disputes  of  that  council,  and  after  various  comings  and 
goings  we  cannot  here  describe,  he  emerged  at  last  with  his 
Fourteen  Points  pitifully  torn  and  dishevelled,  but  with  a  little 
puling  infant  of  a  League  of  Nations,  which  might  die  or  which 
might  live  and  grow  —  no  one  could  tell.  This  history  cannot 
tell.  We  are  at  the  end  of  our  term.  But  that  much,  at  least, 
he  had  saved.  .  .  . 


This  homunculus  in  a  bottle  which  it  was  hoped  might  be- 
come at  last  Man  ruling  the  Earth,  this  League  of  Nations  as 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1073 

it  was  embodied  in  the  Covenant  of  April  28th,  1919,  was  not  a 
league  of  peoples  at  all ;  it  was  the  world  discovered,  a  league 
of  "states,  dominions,  or  colonies."  It.  was  stipulated  that  these 
should  be  "fully  self-governing,"  but  there  was  no  definition 
whatever  of  this  phrase.  There  was  no  bar  to  a  limited  franchise 
and  no  provision  for  any  direct  control  by  the  people  of  any 
state.  India  figured — presumably  as  a  "fully  self-governing 
state !"  An  autocracy  would  no  doubt  have  been  admissible  as 
a  "fully  self-governing"  democracy  with  a  franchise  limited  to 
one  person.  The  League  of  the  Covenant  of  1919  was,  in  fact, 
a  league  of  "representatives"  of  foreign  offices,  and  it  did  not 
even  abolish  the  nonsense  of  embassies  at  every  capital.  The 
British  Empire  appeared  once  as  a  whole,  and  then  India  ( !) 
and  the  four  dominions  of  Canada,  Australia,  South  Africa,  and 
New  Zealand  appeared  as  separate  sovereign  states.  The  Indian 
representative  was,  of  course,  sure  to  be  merely  a  British  nomi- 
nee; the  other  four  would  be  colonial  politicians.  But  if  the 
British  Empire  was  to  be  thus  dissected,  a  representative  of 
Great  Britain  should  have  been  substituted  for  the  Imperial 
representative,  and  Ireland  and  Egypt  should  also  have  been 
given  representation.  Moreover,  either  New  York  State  or 
Virginia  was  historically  and  legally  almost  as  much  a  sovereign 
state  as  New  Zealand  or  Canada.  The  inclusion  of  India  raised 
logical  claims  for  French  Africa  and  French  Asia.  One  French 
representative  did  propose  a  separate  vote  for  the  little  princi- 
pality of  Monaco. 

There  was  to  be  an  assembly  of  the  League  in  which  every 
member  state  was  to  be  represented  and  to  have  an  equal  voice, 
but  the  working  directorate  of  the  League  was  to  vest  in  a 
Council,  which  was  to  consist  of  the  representatives  of  the 
United  States,  Britain,  France,  Italy,  and  Japan,  with  four 
other  members  elected  by  the  Assembly.  The  Council  was  to 
meet  once  a  year;  the  gatherings  of  the  Assembly  were  to  be 
at  "stated  intervals,"  not  stated. 

Except  in  certain  specified  instances  the  league  of  this  Cove- 
nant could  make  only  unanimous  decisions.  One  dissentient  on 
the  council  could  bar  any  proposal — on  the  lines  of  the  old 
Polish  liberum  veto  (Chapter  XXXV,  §  1).  This  was  a  quite 
disastrous  provision.  To  many  minds  it  made  the  Covenant 
League  rather  less  desirable  than  no  league  at  all.  It  was  a 
complete  recognition  of  the  unalienable  sovereignty  of  states, 


1074  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  a  repudiation  of  the  idea  of  an  overriding  commonweal 
of  mankind.  This  provision  practically  barred  the  way  to  all 
amendments  to  the  league  constitution  in  future  except  by  the 
clumsy  expedient  of  a  simultaneous  withdrawal  of  the  majority 
of  member  states  desiring  a  change,  to  form  the  league  again 
on  new  lines.  The  covenant  made  inevitable  such  a  final  wind- 
ing-up  of  the  league  it  created,  and  that  was  perhaps  the  best 
thing  about  it. 

The  following  powers,  it  was  proposed,  should  be  excluded 
from  the  original  league :  Germany,  Austria,  Russia,  and  what- 
ever remains  there  were  of  the  Turkish  Empire.  But  any  of 
these  might  subsequently  be  included  with  the  assent  of  two- 
thirds  of  the  Assembly.  The  original  membership  of  the  league 
as  specified  in  the  projected  Covenant  was:  the  United  States 
of  America,  Belgium,  Bolivia,  Brazil,  the  British  Empire 
(Canada,  Australia,  South  Africa,  New  Zealand,  and  India), 
China,  Cuba,  Ecuador,  France,  Greece,  Guatemala,  Haiti,  the 
Iledjaz,  Honduras,  Italy,  Japan,  Liberia,  Nicaragua,  Panama, 
Peru,  Poland,  Portugal,  Rumania,  the  Serb-Croat-Slovene 
State,  Siam,  Czecho-Slovakia,  and  Uruguay.  To  which  were 
to  be  added  by  invitation  the  following  powers  which  had  been 
neutral  in  the  war:  the  Argentine  Republic,  Chile,  Colombia, 
Denmark,  Holland,  Norway,  Paraguay,  Persia,  Salvador,  Spain, 
Sweden,  Switzerland,  and  Venezuela. 

Such  being  the  constitution  of  the  league,  it  is  scarcely  to  be 
wondered  at  that  its  powers  were  special  and  limited.  It  was 
given  a  seat  at  Geneva  and  a  secretariat.  It  had  no  powers 
even  to  inspect  the  military  preparations  of  its  constituent  states, 
or  to  instruct  a  military  and  naval  staff  to  plan  out  the  armed 
co-operation  needed  to  keep  the  peace  of  the  world.  The  French 
representative  in  the  League  of  Nations  Commission,  M.  Leon 
Bourgeois,  insisted  lucidly  and  repeatedly  on  the  logical  neces- 
sity of  such  powers.  As  a  speaker  he  was  rather  copious  and 
lacking  in  "spice"  of  the  Clemenceau  quality.  The  final  scene 
in  the  plenary  session  of  April  28th,  before  the  adoption  of  the 
Covenant,  is  described  compactly  by  Mr.  Wilson  Harris,  the 
crowded  Banqueting  Hall  at  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  with  its  "E" 
of  tables  for  the  delegates,  with  secretaries  and  officials  lining 
the  walls  and  a  solid  mass  of  journalists  at  the  lower  end  of 
the  room.  "At  the  head  of  the  room  the  'Big  Three'  diverted 
themselves  in  undertones  at  the  expense  of  the  worthy  M. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914 


1075 


1076  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Bourgeois,  now  launched,  with  the  help  of  what  must  have  been 
an  entirely  superfluous  sheaf  of  notes,  on  the  fifth  rendering  of 
his  speech  in  support  of  his  famous  amendments." 

They  were  so  often  "diverting  themselves  in  undertones," 
those  three  men  whom  God  had  mocked  with  the  most  tre- 
mendous opportunity  in  history.  Keynes  (op.  cit.)  gives  other 
instances  of  the  levities,  vulgarities,  disregards,  inattentions, 
and  inadequacies  of  these  meetings. 

This  poor  covenant  arrived  at  in  this  fashion  returned  with 
President  Wilson  to  America,  and  there  it  was  subjected  to  an 
amount  of  opposition,  criticism,  and  revision  which  showed, 
among  other  things,  how  relatively  unimpaired  was  the  mental 
energy  of  the  United  States.  The  Senate  refused  to  ratify  the 
covenant,  and  the  first  meeting  of  the  League  Council  was  held 
therefore  without  American  representatives.  The. close  of  1919 
and  the  opening  months  of  1920  saw  a  very  curious  change 
come  over  American  feeling  after  the  pro-French  and  pro- 
British  enthusiasms  of  the  war  period.  The  peace  nego- 
tiations reminded  the  Americans,  in  a  confused  and  very 
irritating  way,  of  their  profound  differences  in  international 
outlook  from  any  European  power  that  the  war  had  for  a  time 
helped  them  to  forget.  They  felt  they  had  been  "rushed"  into 
many  things  without  due  consideration.  They  experienced  a 
violent  revulsion  towards  that  policy  of  isolation  that  had  broken 
down  in  1917.  The  close  of  1919  saw  a  phase,  a  very  under- 
standable phase,  of  passionate  and  even  violent  "Americanism," 
in  which  European  imperialism  and  European  socialism  were 
equally  anathema.  There  may  have  been  a  sordid  element  in 
the  American  disposition  to  "cut"  the  moral  responsibilities  the 
United  States  had  incurred  in  the  affairs  of  the  Old  World,  and 
to  realize  the  enormous  financial  and  political  advantages  the 
war  had  given  the  new  world ;  but  the  broad  instinct  of  the 
American  people  seems  to  have  been  sound  in  its  distrust  of  the 
proposed  settlement. 

§  13 

The  main  terms  of  the  Treaties  of  1919-20  with  which  the 
Conference  of  Paris  concluded  its  labours  can  be  stated  much 
more  vividly  by  a  few  maps  than  by  a  written  abstract.  We 
need  scarcely  point  out  how  much  those  treaties  left,  unsettled, 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914 


1077 


1078  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

but  we  may  perhaps  enumerate  some  of  the  more  salient  breaches 
of  the  Twelve  that  survived  out  of  the  Fourteen  Points  at  the 
opening  of  the  Conference. 

One  initial  cause  of  nearly  all  those  breaches  lay,  we  believe, 
in  the  complete  unprep-aredness  and  unwillingness  of  that  pre- 
existing league  of  nations,  subjected  states  and  exploited  areas, 
the  British  Empire,  to  submit  to  any  dissection  and  adaptation 
of  its  system  or  to  any  control  of  its  naval  and  aerial  armament. 
A  kindred  contributory  cause  was  the  equal  unpreparedness  of 
the  American  mind  for  any  interference  with  the  ascendancy  of 
the  United  States  in  the  New  World  (compare  Secretary  Olney's 
declaration  in  this  chapter,  §  6).  Neither  of  those  Great  Powers, 
who  were  necessarily  dominant  and  leading  powers  at  Paris, 
had  properly  thought  out  the  implications  of  a  League  of 
Nations  in  relation  to  these  older  arrangements,  and  so  their 
support  of  that  project  had  to  most  European  observers  a  curi- 
ously hypocritical  air;  it  was  as  if  they  wished  to  retain  and 
ensure  their  own  vast  predominance  and  security  while  at  the 
same  time  restraining  any  other  power  from  such  expansions, 
annexations,  and  alliances  as  might  create  a  rival  and  competi- 
tive imperialism.  Their  failure  to  set  an  example  of  interna- 
tional confidence  destroyed  all  possibility  of  international  con- 
fidence in  the  other  nations  represented  at  Paris. 

Even  more  unfortunate  was  the  refusal  of  the  Americans  to 
assent  to  the  Japanese  demand  for  a  recognition  of  racial 
equality. 

Moreover,  the  foreign  offices  of  the  British,  the  French,  and 
the  Italians  were  haunted  by  traditional  schemes  of  aggression 
entirely  incompatible  with  the  new  ideas.  A  League  of  Nations 
that  is  to  be  of  any  appreciable  value  to  mankind  must  super- 
sede imperialisms;  it  is  either  a  super-imperialism,  a  liberal 
world-empire  of  united  states,  participant  or  in  tutelage,  or  it 
is  nothing;  but  few  of  the  people  at  the  Paris  Conference  had 
the  mental  vigour  even  to  assert  this  obvious  consequence  of 
the  League  proposal.  They  wanted  to  be  at  the  same  time  bound 
and  free,  to  ensure  peace  for  ever,  but  to  keep  their  weapons 
in  their  hands.  Accordingly  the  old  annexation  projects  of  the 
Great  Power  period  were  hastily  and  thinly  camouflaged  as 
proposed  acts  of  this  poor  little  birth  of  April  28th.  The"  newly 
born  and  barely  animate  League  was  represented  to  be  dis- 
tributing, with  all  the  reckless  munificence  of  a  captive  pope, 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914 


1079 


1080  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

"mandates"  to  the  old  imperialisms  that,  had  it  been  the  young 
Hercules  we  desired,  it  would  certainly  have  strangled  in  its 
cradle.  Britain  was  to  have  extensive  "mandates"  in  Mesopo- 
tamia and  East  Africa ;  France  was  to  have  the  same  in  Syria ; 
Italy  was  to  have  all  her  holdings  to  the  west  and  south-east 
of  Egypt  consolidated  as  mandatory  territory.  Clearly,  if  the 
weak  thing  that  was  heing  nursed  hy  its  Secretary  in  its  cradle 
at.  Geneva  into  some  semblance  of  life,  did  presently  succumb 
to  the  infantile  weakness  of  all  institutions  born  without  pas- 
sion, all  these  "mandates"  would  become  frank  annexations. 
Moreover,  all  the  Powers  fought  tooth  and  nail  at  the  Confer- 
ence for  "strategic"  frontiers — the  ugliest  symptom  of  all.  Why 
should  a  state  want  a  strategic  frontier  unless  it  contemplates 
war?  If  on  that  plea  Italy  insisted  upon  a  subject  population 
of  Germans  in  the  southern  Tyrol  and  a  subject  population  of 
Yugo-Slavs  in  Dalmatia,  and  if  little  Greece  began  landing 
troops  in  Asia  Minor,  neither  France  nor  Britain  was  in  a  posi- 
tion to  rebuke  these  outbreaks  of  pre-millennial  method. 

We  will  not  enter  here  into  any  detailed  account  of  how 
President  Wilson  gave  way  to  the  Japanese  and  consented  to 
their  replacing  the  Germans  at  Kiau  Chau,  which  is  Chinese 
property,  how  the  almost  purely  German  city  of  Danzig  was 
practically,  if  not  legally,  annexed  to  Poland,  and  how  the 
Powers  disputed  over  the  claim  of  the  Italian  imperialists,  a 
claim  strengthened  by  these  instances,  to  seize  the  Yugo-Slav  port 
of  Fiume  and  deprive  the  Yugo-Slavs  of  a  good  Adriatic  outlet. 
Nor  will  we  do  more  than  note  the  complex  arrangements  and 
justifications  that  put  the  French  in  possession  of  the  Saar  val- 
ley, which  is  German  territory,  or  the  entirely  iniquitous  breach 
of  the  right  of  "self-determination"  which  practically  forbade 
German  Austria  to  unite — as  it  is  natural  and  proper  that  she 
should  unite — with  the  rest  of  Germany.  These  burning  ques- 
tions of  1919-20  which  occupied  the  newspapers  and  the  minds 
of  statesmen  and  politicians,  and  filled  all  our  wastepaper 
baskets  with  propaganda  literature,  may  seem  presently  very 
incidental  things  in  the  larger  movement  of  these  times.  All 
these  disputes,  like  the  suspicions  and  tetchy  injustices  of  a 
weary  and  irritated  man,  may  lose  their  importance  as  the  tone 
of  the  world  improves,  and  the  still  inadequately  apprehended 
lessons  of  the  Great  War  and  the  Petty  Peace  that  followed  it, 
begin  to  be  digested  by  the  general  intelligence  of  mankind. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF   1914  1081 

It  is  worth  while  for  the  reader  to  compare  the  treaty  maps 
we  give  with  what  we  have  called  the  natural  political  map  of 
Europe.  The  new  arrangements  do  approach  this  latter  more 
closely  than  any  previous  system  of  boundaries.  It  may  be  a 
necessary  preliminary  to  any  satisfactory  league  of  peoples, 
that  each  people  should  first  be  in  something  like  complete 
possession  of  its  own  household. 


A  FORECAST  OF  THE  NEXT  WAR 

The  failure  to  produce  a  more  satisfactory  world  settlement 
in  1919-20  was,  we  have  suggested,  a  symptom  of  an  almost 
universal  intellectual  and  moral  lassitude  resulting  from  the 
overstrain  of  the  Great  War.  A  lack  of  fresh  initiative  is 
characteristic  of  a  fatigue  phase;  everyone,  for  sheer  inability 
to  change,  drifts  on  for  a  time  along  the  lines  of  mental  habit 
and  precedent. 

Nothing  could  be  more  illustrative  of  this  fatigue  inertia  than 
the  expressed  ideas  of  military  men  at  this  time.  It  will  round 
off  this  chapter  in  an  entirely  significant  way,  and  complete 
our  picture  of  the  immense  world  interrogation  on  which  our 
history  must  end,  if  we  give  here  the  briefest  summary  of  a 
lecture  that  was  delivered  to  a  gathering  of  field-marshals,  gen- 
erals, major-generals,  and  the  like  by  Major-General  Sir  Louis 
Jackson  at  the  Royal  United  Service  Institution  in  Lon- 
don one  day  in  December,  1919.  Lord  Peel,  the  British  Under- 
secretary for  War,  presided,  and  the  reader  must  picture  to 
himself  the  not  too  large  and  quite  dignified  room  of  assembly 
in  that  building,  and  all  these  fine,  grave,  soldierly  figures 
quietly  intent  upon  the  lecturer's  words.  He  is  describing, 
with  a  certain  subdued  enthusiasm,  the  probable  technical  de- 
velopments of  military  method  in  the  anext  war." 

Outside,  through  the  evening  twilight  of  Whitehall,  flows 
the  London  traffic,  not  quite  so  abundant  as  in  1914,  but  still 
fairly  abundant;  the  omnibuses  all  overcrowded  because  there 
are  now  not  nearly  enough  of  them,  and  the  c'othing  of  people 
generally  shabbier.  Some  little  way  down  Whitehall  is  a  tem- 
porary erection,  the  Cenotaph,  with  its  base  smothered  with  a 
vast,  pathetic  heap  of  decaying  wreaths,  bunches  of  flowers,  and 
the  like,  a  cenotaph  to  commemorate  the  eight  hundred  thou- 


1082  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

sand  young  men  of  the  Empire  who  have  been  killed  in  the 
recent  struggle.  A  few  people  are  putting  fresh  flowers  and 
wreaths  there.  One  or  two  are  crying. 

The  prospect  stretches  out  beyond  this  gathering  into  the 
grey  vastness  of  London,  where  people  are  now  crowded  as 
they  have  never  been  crowded  before,  whose  food  is  dear  and 
employment  more  uncertain  than  it  has  ever  been.  But  let  not 
the  spectacle  be  one  of  unrelieved  gloom ;  Regent  Street,  Oxford 
Street,  and  Bond  Street  are  bright  with  shoppers  and  congested 
with  new  automobiles,  because  we  must  remember  that  every- 
body does  not  lose  by  a  war.  Beyond  London  the  country  sinks 
into  night,  and  across  the  narrow  sea  are  North  France  and 
Belgium  devastated,  Germany  with  scores  of  thousands  of  her 
infants  dwindling  and  dying  for  want  of  milk,  all  Austria  starv- 
ing. Half  the  population  of  Vienna,  it  is  believed  unless 
American  relief  comes  quickly,  is  doomed  to  die  of  hardship 
before  the  spring.  Beyond  that  bleak  twilight  stretches  the 
darkness  of  Russia.  There,  at  least,  no  rich  people  are  buying 
anything,  and  no  military  men  are  reading  essays  on  the  next 
war.  But  in  icy  Petrograd  is  little  food,  little  wood,  and  no 
coal.  All  the  towns  of  Russia  southward  as  far  as  the  snow 
reaches  are  in  a  similar  plight,  and  in  the  Ukraine  and  to  the 
south  a  ragged  and  dingy  war  drags  to  its  end.  Europe  is 
bankrupt,  and  people's  pockets  rustle  with  paper  money  whose 
purchasing  power  dwindles  as  they  walk  about  with  it. 

But  now  we  will  return  to  Sir  Louis  in  the  well-lit  room  at 
the  United  Service  Institution. 

He  was  of  opinion — we  follow  the  report  in  next  morning's 
Times  l — that  we  were  merely  on  the  eve  of  the  most  extensive 
modifications  of  the  art  of  war  known  to  history.  It  behoved  us, 
therefore — us  being,  of  course,  the  British  and  not  the  whole 
of  mankind — to  get  on  with  our  armaments  and  to  keep  ahead ; 
a  fine  opening  generalization.  "It  was  necessary  to  develop 
new  arms.  .  .  .  The  nation  which  best  did  so  would  have  a 
great  advantage  in  the  next  war.  There  were  people  who  were 
crying  aloud  for  a  reduction  of  armaments 

(But  there  the  Director  of  Trench  Warfare  and  Supplies 
was  wrong.  They  were  just  crying  at  the  cenotaph,  poor,  soft, 

1  Checked  by  subsequent  comparison  with  the  published  article  in  the 
Jour,  of  the  Roy  United  Service  Institution,  vol.  lxv;  No,  457,  February, 
1920. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1083 

and  stupid  souls,  because  a  son  or  a  brother  or  a  father  was 
dead.) 

Sir  Louis  believed  that  one  of  the  greatest  developments  in 
the  art  of  warfare  would  be  brought  about  in  mechanical  trans- 
port. The  tank  he  treated  with  ingratitude.  These  military 
gentlemen  are  ungrateful  to  an  invention  which  shoved  and 
butted  them  into  victory  almost  in  spite  of  themselves.  The 
tank,  said  Sir  Louis,  was  aa  freak.  .  .  .  The  outstanding  fea- 
ture'7 of  the  tank,  he  said,  was  that  it  made  mechanical  trans- 
port independent  of  the  roads.  Hitherto  armies  on  the  march 
had  only  been  able  to  spoil  the  roads;  now  their  transport 
on  caterpillar  wheels  would  advance  in  open  order  on  a  broad 
front  carrying  guns,  munitions,  supplies,  bridging  equipment, 
rafts,  and  men — and  incidentally  ploughing  up  and  destroying 
hedges,  ditches,  fields,  and  cultivation  generally.  Armies 
would  wallow  across  the  country,  leaving  nothing  behind  but 
dust  and  mud. 

So  our  imaginations  are  led  up  to  the  actual  hostilities. 

Sir  Louis  was  in  favour  of  gas.  For  punitive  expeditions 
particularly,  gas  was  to  be  recommended.  And  here  he  startled 
and  disconcerted  his  hearers  by  a  gleam  of  something  approach- 
ing sentimentality.  "It  might  be  possible,"  he  said,  "to  come 
to  some  agreement  that  no  gas  should  be  used  which  caused 
unnecessary  suffering."  But  there  his  heart  spoke  rather  than 
his  head;  it  should  have  been  clear  to  him  that  if  law  can  so 
far  override  warfare  as  to  prohibit  any  sort  of  evil  device 
whatever,  it  can  override  warfare  to  the  extent  of  prohibiting 
it  altogether.  And  where  would  Sir  Louis  Jackson  and  his 
audience  be  then?  War  is  war;  its  only  law  is  the  law  that 
the  maximum  destruction  of  the  forces  of  the  enemy  is  neces- 
sary. To  that  law  in  warfare  all  considerations  of  humanity 
and  justice  are  subordinate. 

From  gas  Sir  Louis  passed  to  the  air.  Here  he  predicted 
"most  important  advances.  .  .  .  We  need  not  trouble  ourselves 
yet  with  flying  destroyers  or  flying  concrete  forts,  but  in  twenty 
years'  time  the  Air  Force  Estimates  might  be  the  most  impor- 
tant part  of  our  preparations  for  war."  He  discussed  the  con- 
version of  commercial  flying  machines  to  bombing  and  recon- 
naissance uses,  and  the  need  for  special  types  of  fighting  ma- 
chine in  considerable  numbers  and  always  ready.  He  gave 
reasons  for  supposing  that  the  bombers  in  the  next  war  would 


1084  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

not'  have  the  same  targets  near  the  front  of  the  armies,  and 
would  secure  better  results  by  going  further  afield  and  bombing 
the  centres  "where  stores  are  being  manufactured  and  troops 
trained."  As  everyone  who  stayed  in  London  or  the  east  of 
England  in  1917-18  knows,  this  means  the  promiscuous  bomb- 
ing of  any  and  every  centre  of  population.  But,  of  course, 
the  bombing  of  those  'prentice  days  would  be  child's  play  to 
the  bombing  of  the  anext  war."  There  would  be  countless  more 
aeroplanes,  bigger  and  much  nastier  bombs.  .  .  . 

Sir  Louis,  proceeding  with  the  sketch,  mentioned  the  "de- 
struction of  the  greater  part  of  London"  as  a  possible  incident 
in  the  coming  struggle.  And  so  on  to  the  culminating  moral, 
that  the  highest  pay,  the  utmost  importance,  the  freest  expendi- 
ture, must  be  allowed  to  military  gentlemen.  "The  expense 
entailed  is  in  the  nature  of  an  absolutely  necessary  insurance." 
With  which  his  particular  audience  warmly  agreed.  And  a 
certain  Major-General  Stone,  a  little  forgetful  of  the  source  of 
his  phrases,1  said  he  hoped  that  this  lecture  "may  be  the 
beginning  not  of  trusting  in  the  League  of  Nations,  but  in 
our  own  right  hand  and  our  stretched-out  arm !" 

But  we  will  not  go  on  with  the  details  of  this  dream.  For 
indeed  no  Utopia  was  ever  so  impossible  as  this  forecast  of  a 
world  in  which  scarcely  anything  but  very  carefully  sandbagged 
and  camouflaged  G.H.Q.  would  be  reasonably  safe,  in  which 
countless  bombers  would  bomb  the  belligerent  lands  incessantly 
and  great  armies  with  lines  of  caterpillar  transport  roll  to 
and  fro,  churning  the  fields  of  the  earth  into  blood-streaked  mud. 
There  is  not  energy  enough  and  no  will  whatever  left  in  the 
world  for  such  things.  Generals  who  cannot  foresee  tanks 
cannot  be  expected  to  foresee  or  understand  world  bankruptcy ; 
still  less  are  they  likely  to  understand  the  limits  imposed  upon 
military  operations  by  the  fluctuating  temper  of  the  common 
man.  Apparently  these  military  authorities  of  the  United 
Service  Institution  did  not  even  know  that  warfare  aims  at  the 
production  of  states  of  mind  in  the  enemy,  and  is  sustained  by 
states  of  mind.  The  chief  neglected  factor  in  the  calculations 
of  Sir  Louis  is  the  fact  that  no  people  whatever  will  stand 
such  warfare  as  he  contemplates,  not  even  the  people  on  the 
winning  side.  For  as  northern  France,  south-eastern  Britain, 
arid  north  Italy  now  understand,  the  victor  in  the  "next  war" 
*Cp.  Psalm  cxxxvi. 


THE  CATASTROPHE  OF  1914  1085 

may  be  bombed  and  starved  almost  as  badly  as  the  loser.  A 
phase  is  possible  in  which  a  war-tormented  population  may 
cease  to  discriminate  between  military  gentlemen  on  this  side 
or  that,  and  may  be  moved  to  destroy  them  as  the  common 
enemies  of  the  race.  The  Great  War  of  1914-18  was  the  cul- 
mination of  the  military  energy  of  the  Western  populations, 
and  they  fought  and  fought  well  because  they  believed  they 
were  fighting  athe  war  to  end  war."  They  were.  German 
imperialism,  with  its  organized  grip  upon  education  and  its 
close  alliance  with  an  aggressive  commercialism,  was  beaten 
and  finished.  The  militarism  and  imperialism  of  Britain  and 
France  and  Italy  are  by  comparison  feeble,  disorganized,  and 
disorganizing  survivals.  They  are  things  "left  over"  by  the 
Great  War.  They  have  no  persuasive  power.  They  go  on — 
for  sheer  want  of  wits  to  leave  off.  No  European  Government 
will  ever  get  the  same  proportion  of  its  people  into  the  ranks 
and  into  its  munition  works  again  as  the  governments  of  1914- 
18  did.  Our  world  is  very  weak  and  feeble  still  (1920),  but 
its  war  fever  is  over.  Its  temperature  is,  if  anything,  sub- 
normal. It  is  doubtful  if  it  will  take  the  fever  again  for  a  long 
time.  The  alterations  in  the  conditions  of  warfare  are  already 
much  profounder  than  such  authorities  as  Sir  Louis  Jackson 
suspect.1 

1  Here  is  another  glimpse  of  the  agreeable  dreams  that  fill  the  contem- 
porary military  mind.  It  is  from  Fuller's  recently  published  Tanks  in 
the  Creat  War.  Colonel  Fuller  does  not  share  that  hostility  to  tanks 
characteristic  of  the  older  type  of  soldier.  In  the  next  war,  he  tells  us: 
"Fast-moving  tanks,  equipped  with  tons  of  liquid  gas  .  .  .  will  cross  the 
frontier  and  obliterate  every  living  thing  in  the  fields  and  farms,  the 
villages,  and  cities  of  the  enemy's  country.  Whilst  life  is  being  swept 
away  around  the  frontier,  fleets  of  aeroplanes  will  attack  the  enemy's 
great  industrial  and  governing  centres.  All  these  attacks  will  be  made, 
at  first,  not  against  the  enemy's  army  .  .  .  but  against  the  civil  popula- 
tion, in  order  to  compel  it  to  accept  the  will  of  the  attacker." 

For  a  good,  well-balanced  account  of  what  modern  war  really  means 
see  Philip  Gibbs,  Realities  of  War. 


XL 
THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY 

1.  The  Possible  Unification  of  Men's  Witts  in  Political  Mat- 
ters. §  2.  How  a  Federal  World  Government  may  Come 
About.  §  3.  Some  Fundamental  Characteristics  of  a  Modern 
World  State.  §  4.  What  this  World  Might  be  were  it  under 
one  Law  and  Justice. 


WE  have  brought  this  Outline  of  History  up  to  the  thresh- 
old of  our  own  times,  but  we  have  brought  it  to  no 
conclusion.  It  breaks  off  at  a  dramatic  phase  of  ex- 
pectation. Nobody  believes  that  the  system  of  settlements 
grouped  about  the  Treaty  of  Versailles  is  a  permanent  arrange- 
ment of  the  world's  affairs.  These  Treaties  were  the  end  of 
the  war  and  not  the  establishment  of  a  new  order  in  the  world. 
That  new  order  has  now  to  be  established.  In  social  and  eco- 
nomic as  in  international  affairs  we  are  in  the  dawn  of  a  great 
constructive  effort.  The  story  of  life  which  began  inestimable 
millions  of  years  ago,  the  adventure  of  mankind  which  was  al- 
ready afoot  half  a  million  years  ago,  rises  to  a  crisis  in  the 
immense  interrogation  of  to-day.  The  drama  becomes  our- 
selves. It  is  you,  it  is  I,  it  is  all  that  is  happening  to  us  and 
all  that  we  are  doing  which  will  supply  the  next  chapter  of 
this  continually  expanding  adventure  of  mankind. 

Our  history  has  traced  a  steady  growth  of  the  social  and 
political  units  into  which  men  have  combined.  In  the  brief  pe- 
riod of  ten  thousand  years  these  units  have  grown  from  the 
small  family  tribe  of  the  early  neolithic  culture  to  the  vast 
united  realms — vast  yet  still  too  small  and  partial — of  the 
present  time.  And  this  change  in  size  of  the  state — a  change 
manifestly  incomplete — has  been  accompanied  by  profound 
changes  in  its  nature.  Compulsion  and  servitude  have  given 
way  to  ideas  of  associated  freedom,  and  the  sovereignty  that 

1086 


THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  1087 

was  once  concentrated  in  an  autocratic  king  and  god,  has  been 
widely  diffused  throughout  the  community.  Until  the  Roman 
republic  extended  itself  to  all  Italy,  there  had  been  no  free 
community  larger  than  a  city  state ;  all  great  communities  were 
communities  of  obedience  under  a  monarch.  The  great  united 
republic  of  the  United  States  would  have  been  impossible 
before  the  printing  press  and  the  railway.  The  telegraph 
and  telephone,  the  aeroplane,  the  continual  progress  of  land 
and  sea  transit,  are  now  insisting  upon  a  still  larger  political 
organization. 

If  our  Outline  has  been  faithfully  drawn,  and  if  these  brief 
conclusions  are  sound,  it  follows  that  we  are  engaged  upon  an 
immense  task  of  adjustment  to  these  great  lines  upon  which  our 
affairs  are  moving.  Our  wars,  our  social  conflict,  our  enor- 
mous economic  stresses,  are  all  aspects  of  that  adjustment. 
The  loyalties  and  allegiances  to-day  are  at  best  provisional 
loyalties  and  allegiances.  Our  true  State,  this  state  that  is 
already  beginning,  this  state  to  which  every  man  owes  his  ut- 
most political  effort,  must  be  now  this  nascent  Federal  World 
State  to  which  human  necessities  point.  Our  true  God  now 
is  the  God  of  all  men.  Nationalism  as  a  God  must  follow  the 
tribal  gods  to  limbo.  Our  true  nationality  is  mankind. 

How  far  will  modern  men  lay  hold  upon  and  identify  them- 
selves with  this  necessity  and  set  themselves  to  revise  their  ideas, 
remake  their  institutions,  and  educate  the  coming  generations 
to  this  final  extension  of  citizenship?  How  far  will  they  re- 
main dark,  obdurate,  habitual,  and  traditional,  resisting  the 
convergent  forces  that  offer  them  either  unity  or  misery  ? 
Sooner  or  later  that  unity  must  come  or  else  plainly  men  must 
perish  by  their  own  inventions.  We,  because  we  believe  in  the 
power  of  reason  and  in  the  increasing  good  will  in  men,  find 
ourselves  compelled  to  reject  the  latter  possibility.  But  the 
way  to  the  former  may  be  very  long  and  tedious,  very  tragic 
and  wearisome,  a  martydom  of  many  generations,  or  it  may  be 
travelled  over  almost  swiftly  in  the  course  of  a  generation  or  so. 
That  depends  upon  forces  whose  nature  we  understand  to  some 
extent  now,  but  not  their  power.  There  has  to  be  a  great  proc- 
ess of  education,  by  precept  and  by  information  and  by  ex- 
perience, but  there  are  as  yet  no  quantitative  measures  of  edu- 
cation to  tell  us  how  much  has  to  be  learnt  or  how  soon  that 
learning  can  be  done.  Our  estimates  vary  with  our  moods ;  the 


1088  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

time  may  be  much  longer  than  our  hopes  and  much  shorter  than 
our  fears. 

The  terrible  experiences  of  the  Great  War  have  made  very 
many  men  who  once  took  political  things  lightly  take  them  now 
very  gravely.  To  a  certain  small  number  of  men  and  women 
the  attainment  of  a  world  peace  has  become  the  supreme  work 
in  life,  has  become  a  religious  self-devotion.  To  a  much  greater 
number  it  has  become  at  least  a  ruling  motive.  Many  such 
people  now  are  seeking  ways  of  working  for  this  great  end, 
or  they  are  already  working  for  this  great  end,  by  pen  and 
persuasion,  in  schools  and  colleges  and  books,  and  in  the 
highways  and  byways  of  public  life.  Perhaps  now  most 
human  beings  in  the  world  are  well-disposed  towards  such  ef- 
forts, but  rather  confusedly  disposed;  they  are  without  any 
clear  sense  of  what  must  be  done  and  what  ought  to  be  pre- 
vented, that  human  solidarity  may  be  advanced.  The  world- 
wide outbreak  of  faith  and  hope  in  President  Wilson,  before 
he  began  to  wilt  and  fail  us,  was  a  very  significant  thing 
indeed  for  the  future  of  mankind.  Set  against  these  motives 
of  unity  indeed  are  other  motives  entirely  antagonistic,  the 
fear  and  hatred  of  strange  things  and  peoples,  love  of  and  trust 
in  the  old  traditional  thing,  patriotisms,  race  prejudices,  sus- 
picions, distrusts — and  the  elements  of  spite,  scoundrelism,  and 
utter  selfishness  that  are  so  strong  still  in  every  human  soul. 

The  overriding  powers  that  hitherto  in  the  individual  soul 
and  in  the  community  have  struggled  and  prevailed  against 
the  ferocious,  base,  and  individual  impulses  that  divide  us  from 
one  another,  have  been  the  powers  of  religion  and  education. 
Religion  and  education,  those  closely  interwoven  influences, 
have  made  possible  the  greater  human  societies  whose  growth 
we  have  traced  in  this  Outline;  they  have  been  the  chief  syn- 
thetic forces  throughout  this  great  story  of  enlarging  human 
co-operations  that  we  have  traced  from  its  beginnings.  We 
have  found  in  the  intellectual  and  theological  conflicts  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  explanation  of  that  curious  exceptional 
disentanglement  of  religious  teaching  from  formal  education 
which  is  a  distinctive  feature  of  our  age,  and  we  have  traced 
the  consequences  of  this  phase  of  religious  disputation  and  con- 
fusion in  the  reversion  of  international  politics  towards  a  brutal 
nationalism  and  in  the  backward  drift  of  industrial  and  busi- 
ness life  towards  harsh,  selfish,  and  uncreative  profit-seeking. 


THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  1089 

There  has  been  a  slipping  off  of  ancient  restraints;  a  real  de- 
civilization  of  men's  minds.  We  would  lay  stress  here  on  the 
suggestion  that  this  divorce  of  religious  teaching  from  organ- 
ized education  is  necessarily  a  temporary  one,  a  transitory  dis- 
location, and  that  presently  education  must  become  again  in 
intention  and  spirit  religious,  and  that  the  impulse  to  devo- 
tion, to  universal  service  and  to  a  complete  escape  from  self, 
which  has  been  the  common  underlying  force  in  all  the  great 
religions  of  the  last  five  and  twenty  centuries,  an  impulse  which 
ebbed  so  perceptibly  during  the  prosperity,  laxity,  disillusion- 
ment, and  scepticism  of  the  past  seventy  or  eighty  years,  will 
reappear  again,  stripped  and  plain,  as  the  recognized  funda- 
mental structural  impulse  in  human  society. 

Education  is  the  preparation  of  the  individual  for  the  com- 
munity, and  his  religious  training  is  the  core  of  that  prepara- 
tion. With  the  great  intellectual  restatements  and  expansions 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  an  educational  break-up,  a  confu- 
sion and  loss  of  aim  in  education,  was  inevitable.  We  can  no 
longer  prepare  the  individual  for  a  community  when  our  ideas 
of  a  community  are  shattered  and  undergoing  reconstruction. 
The  old  loyalties,  the  old  too  limited  and  narrow  political  and 
social  assumptions,  the  old  too  elaborate  religious  formula?, 
have  lost  their  power  of  conviction,  and  the  greater  ideas  of  a 
world  state  and  of  an  economic  commonweal  have  been  win- 
ning their  way  only  very  slowly  to  recognition.  So  far  they 
have  swayed  only  a  minority  of  exceptional  people.  But  out 
of  the  trouble  and  tragedy  of  this  present  time  there  may 
emerge  a  moral  and  intellectual  revival,  a  religious  revival,  of  a 
simplicity  and  scope  to  draw  together  men  of  alien  races  and 
now  discrete  traditions  into  one  common  and  sustained  way 
of  living  for  the  world's  service.  We  cannot  foretell  the  scope 
and  power  of  such  a  revival ;  we  cannot  even  produce  evidence 
of  its  onset.  The  beginnings  of  such  things  are  never  con- 
spicuous. Great  movements  of  the  racial  soul  come  at  first  "like 
a  thief  in  the  night,"  and  then  suddenly  are  discovered  to  be 
powerful  and  world-wide.  Religious  emotion — stripped  of  cor- 
ruptions and  freed  from  its  last  priestly  entanglements — may 
presently  blow  through  life  again  like  a  great  wind,  bursting 
the  doors  and  flinging  open  the  shutters  of  the  individual  life, 
and  making  many  things  possible  and  easy  that  in  these  present 
days  of  exhaustion  seem  almost  too  difficult  to  desire. 


1090  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


If  we  suppose  a  sufficient  righteousness  and  intelligence  in 
men  to  produce  presently,  from  the  tremendous  lessons  of  his- 
tory, an  effective  will  for  a  world  peace — that  is  to  say,  an 
effective  will  for  a  world  law  under  a  world  government — for  in 
no  other  fashion  is  a  secure  world  peace  conceivable — in  what 
manner  may  we  expect  things  to  move  towards  this  end  ?  That 
movement  will  certainly  not  go  on  equally  in  every  country, 
nor  is  it  likely  to  take  at  first  one  uniform  mode  of  expression. 
Here  it  will  find  a  congenial  and  stimulating  atmosphere,  here 
it  will  find  itself  antagonistic  to  deep  tradition  or  racial  idio- 
syncrasy or  well-organized  base  oppositions.  In  some-  cases 
those  to  whom  the  call  of  the  new  order  has  come  will  be  living 
in  a  state  almost  ready  to  serve  the  ends  of  the  greater  political 
synthesis,  in  others  they  will  have  to  fight  like  conspirators 
against  the  rule  of  evil  laws.  There  is  little  in  the  political 
constitution  of  such  countries  as  the  United  States  or  Switzer- 
land that  would  impede  their  coalescence  upon  terms  of  frank 
give  and  take  with  other  equally  civilized  confederations; 
political  systems  involving  dependent  areas  and  "subject  peo- 
ples" such  as  the  Turkish  Empire  was  before  the  Great  War, 
seem  to  require  something  in  the  nature  of  a  breaking  up  before 
they  can  be  adapted  to  a  federal  world  system.  Any  state 
obsessed  by  traditions  of  an  aggressive  foreign  policy  will  be 
difficult  to  assimilate  into  a  world  combination.  But  though 
here  the  government  may  be  helpful,  and  here  dark  and  hos- 
tile, the  essential  task  of  men  of  goodwill  in  all  states  and 
countries  remains  the  same,  it  is  an  educational  task,  and  its 
very  essence  is  to  bring  to  the  minds  of  all  men  everywhere, 
as  a  necessary  basis  for  world  co-operation,  a  new  telling  and 
interpretation,  a  common  interpretation,  of  history. 

Does  this  League  of  Nations  which  has  been  created  by  the 
covenant  of  1919  contain  within  it  the  germ  of  any  permanent 
federation  of  human  effort  ?  Will  it  grow  into  something  for 
which,  as  Stallybrass  says,  men  will  be  ready  to  "work  whole- 
heartedly and,  if  necessary,  fight" — as  hitherto  they  have  been 
willing  to  fight  for  their  country  and  their  own  people  ?  There 
are  few  intimations  of  any  such  enthusiasm  for  the  League  at 
the  present  time.  The  League  does  not  even  seem  to  know  how 
to  talk  to  common  men.  It  has  gone  into  official  buildings,  and 


THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  1091 

comparatively  few  people  in  the  world  understand  or  care  what 
it  is  doing  there,  it  may  be  that  the  League  is  no  more  than 
a  first  project  of  union,  exemplary  only  in  its  insufficiencies 
and  dangers,  destined  to  be  superseded  by  something  closer 
and  completer  as  were  the  United  States  Articles  of  Confedera- 
tion by  the  Federal  Constitution.  The  League  is  at  present 
a  mere  partial  league  of  governments  and  states.  It  empha- 
sizes nationality;  it  defers  to  sovereignty.  What  the  world 
needs  is  no  such  league  of  nations  as  this  nor  even  a  mere 
league  of  peoples,  but  a  world  league  of  men.  The  world  per- 
ishes unless  sovereignty  is  merged  and  nationality  subordinated. 
And  for  that  the  minds  of  men  must  first  be  prepared  by  ex- 
perience and  knowledge  and  thought.  The  supreme  task  before 
men  at  the  present  time  is  political  education. 

It  may  be  that  several  partial  leagues  may  precede  any  world 
league.  The  common  misfortunes  and  urgent  common  needs 
of  Europe  and  Asia  may  be  more  efficacious  in  bringing  the 
European  and  Asiatic  states  to  reason  and  a  sort  of  unity,  than 
the  mere  intellectual  and  sentimental  ties  of  the  United  States 
and  Great  Britain  and  France.  A  United  States  of  the  Old 
World  is  a  possibility  to  set  against  the  possibility  of  an  At- 
lantic union.  Moreover,  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  an  Ameri- 
can experiment,  a  Pan-American  league,  in  which  the  New 
World  European  colonies  would  play  an  in-and-out  part  as 
Luxembourg  did  for  a  time  in  the  German  confederation. 

We  will  not  attempt  to  weigh  here  what  share  may  be  taken 
in  the  recasting  and  consolidation,  of  human  affairs  by  the 
teachings  and  propaganda  of  labour  internationalism,  by  the 
studies  and  needs  of  international  finance,  or  by  such  boundary- 
destroying  powers  as  science  and  art  and  historical  teaching. 
All  these  things  may  exert  a  combined  pressure,  in  which  it  may 
never  be  possible  to  apportion  the  exact  shares.  Opposition 
may  dissolve,  antagonistic  cults  flatten  out  to  a  common  culture, 
almost  imperceptibly.  The  bold  idealism  of  to-day  may  seem 
mere  common  sense  to-morrow.  And  the  problem  of  a  fore- 
cast is  complicated  by  the  possibilities  of  interludes  and  back- 
waters. History  has  never  gone  simply  forward.  More 
particularly  are  the  years  after  a  great  war  apt  to  be  years 
of  apparent  retrocession;  men  are  too  weary  to  see  what  has 
been  done,  what  has  been  cleared  away,  and  what  has  been 
made  possible. 


1092  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

Among  the  things  that  seem  to  move  command! ngly  towards 
an  adequate  world  control  at  the  present  time  are  these : — 

(1)  The  increasing  destructiveness   and  intolerableness  of 
war  waged  with  the  new  powers  of  science. 

(2)  The  inevitable  fusion  of  the  world's  economic  affairs  into 
one  system,  leading  necessarily,  it  would  seem,  to  some  common 
control  of  currency,   and,  demanding  safe  and  uninterrupted 
communications,  and  a  free  movement  of  goods  and  people  by 
sea  and  land  throughout  the  whole  world.     The  satisfaction  of 
these  needs  w7ill  require  a  world  control  of  very  considerable 
authority  and  powers  of  enforcement. 

(3)  The  need,  because  of  the  increasing  mobility  of  peoples, 
of  effectual  controls  of  health  everywhere. 

(4)  The  urgent  need  of  some  equalization  of  labour  condi- 
tions,  and  of  the  minimum  standard  of  life  throughout  the 
world.     This  seems  to  carry  with  it,  as  a  necessary  corollary, 
the  establishment  of  some  minimum  standard  of  education  for 
everyone. 

(5)  The  impossibility  of  developing  the  enormous  benefits 
of  flying  without  a  world  control  of  the  air-ways. 

The  necessity  and  logic  of  such  diverse  considerations  as 
these  push  the  mind  irresistibly,  in  spite  of  the  clashes  of  race 
and  tradition  and  the  huge  difficulties  created  by  differences  in 
language,  towards  the  belief  that  a  conscious  struggle  to  estab- 
lish or  prevent  a  political  world  community  will  be  the  next 
stage  in  human  history.  The  things  that  require  that  world 
community  are  permanent  needs,  one  or  other  of  these  needs 
appeals  to  nearly  everyone,  and  against  their  continuing  per- 
sistence are  only  mortal  difficulties,  great  no  doubt,  but  mortal ; 
prejudices,  passions,  animosities,  delusions  about  race  and  coun- 
try, egotisms,  and  such-like  fluctuating  and  evanescent  things, 
set  up  in  men's  minds  by  education  and  suggestion;  none  of 
them  things  that  make  now  for  the  welfare  and  survival  of  the 
individuals  who  are  under  their  sway  nor  of  the  states  and 
towns  and  associations  in  which  they  prevail. 

§0 
3 

The  attainment  of  the  world  state  may  be  impeded  and  may 
be  opposed  to-day  by  many  apparently  vast  forces ;  but  it  has, 
urging  it  on,  a  much  more  powerful  force,  that  of  the  free  and 


THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  1093 

growing  common  intelligence  of  mankind.  To-day  there  is 
in  the  world  a  small  but  increasing  number  of  men,  historians, 
archaeologists,  ethnologists,  economists,  sociologists,  psycholo- 
gists, educationists,  and  the  like,  who  are  doing  for  human  in- 
stitutions that  same  task  of  creative  analysis  which  the  scientific 
men  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  century  did  for  the 
materials  and  mechanism  of  human  life;  and  just  as  these  lat- 
ter, almost  unaware  of  what  they  were  doing,  made  telegraphy, 
swift  transit  on  sea  and  land,  flying  and  a  thousand  hitherto 
impossible  things  possible,  so  the  former  may  be  doing  more 
than  the  world  suspects,  or  than  they  themselves  suspect,  to 
clear  up  and  make  plain  the  thing  to  do  and  the  way  to  do  it, 
in  the  greater  and  more  urgent  human  affairs. 

Let  us  ape  Roger  Bacon  in  his  prophetic  mood,  and  set  down 
what  we  believe  will  be  the  broad  fundamentals  of  the  coming 
world  state. 

(i)  It  will  be  based  upon  a  common  world  religion,  very 
much  simplified  and  universalized  and  better  understood.  This 
will  not  be  Christianity  nor  Islam  nor  Buddhism  nor  any  such 
specialized  form  of  religion,  but  religion  itself  pure  and  unde- 
filed ;  the  Eightfold  Way,  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  brotherhood, 
creative  service,  and  self-forgetfulness.  Throughout  the  world 
men's  thoughts  and  motives  will  be  turned  by  education,  exam- 
ple, and  the  circle  of  ideas  about  them,  from  the  obsession  of 
self  to  the  cheerful  service  of  human  knowledge,  human  power, 
and  human  unity. 

(ii)  And  this  world  state  will  be  sustained  by  a  universal 
education,  organized  upon  a  scale  and  of  a  penetration  and 
quality  beyond  all  present  experience.  The  whole  race,  and 
not  simply  classes  and  peoples,  will  be  educated.  Most  parents 
will  have  a  technical  knowledge  of  teaching.  Quite  apart 
from  the  duties  of  parentage,  perhaps  ten  per  cent,  or  more  of 
the  adult  population  will,  at  some  time  or  other  in  their  lives, 
bo  workers  in  the  world's  educational  organization.  And 
education,  as  the  new  age  will  conceive  it,  will  go  on  through- 
out life;  it  will  not  cease  at  any  particular  age.  Men  and 
women  will  simply  become  self-educators  and  individual  stu- 
dents and  student  teachers  as  they  grow  older. 

(iii)  There  will  be  no  armies,  no  navies,  and  no  classes  of 
unemployed  people  either  wealthy  or  poor. 

(iv)    The   world   state's  .organization   of   scientific   research 


1094  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

and  record  compared  with  that  of  to-day  will  be  like  an  ocean 
liner  beside  the  dug-out  canoe  of  some  early  heliolithic 
wanderer. 

(v)  There  will  be  a  vast  free  literature  of  criticism  and 
discussion. 

(vi)  The  world's  political  organization  will  be  democratic, 
that  is  to  say,  the  government  and  direction  of  affairs  will  be 
in  immediate  touch  with  and  responsive  to  the  general  thought 
of  the  educated  whole  population. 

(vii)  Its  economic  organization  will  be  an  exploitation  of 
all  natural  wealth  and  every  fresh  possibility  science  reveals, 
by  the  agents  and  servants  of  the  common  government  for  the 
common  good.  Private  enterprise  will  be  the  servant — a  useful, 
valued,  and  well-rewarded  servant — and  no  longer  the  robber 
master  of  the  commonweal. 

(viii)  And  this  implies  two  achievements  that  seem  very 
difficult  to  us  to-day.  They  are  matters  of  mechanism,  but 
they  are  as  essential  to  the  world's  well-being  as  it  is  to  a  sol- 
dier's, no  matter  how  brave  he  may  be,  that  his  machine  gun 
should  not  jam,  and  to  an  aeronaut's  that  his  steering-gear  should 
not  fail  him  in  mid-air.  Political  well-being  demands  that 
electoral  methods  shall  be  used,  and  economic  well-being  re- 
quires that  a  currency  shall  be  used,  safeguarded  or  proof 
against  the  contrivances  and  manipulations  of  clever,  dishon- 
est men.1 


r. 


There  can  be  little  question  that  the  attainment  of  a  federa- 
tion of  all  humanity,  together  with  a  sufficient  measure  of 
social  justice,  to  ensure  health,  education,  and  a  rough  equality 
of  opportunity  to  most  of  the  children  born  into  the  world, 
j  would  mean  such  a  release  and  increase  of  human  energy  as  to 
open  a  new  phase  in  human  history.  The  enormous  waste 
caused  by  military  preparation  and  the  mutual  annoyance  of 
competing  great  powers,  and  the  still  more  enormous  waste  due 
to  the  under-productiveness  of  great  masses  of  people,  either 
because  they  are  too  wealthy  for  stimulus  or  too  poor  for  effi- 
ciency, would  cease.  There  would  be  a  vast  increase  in  the 
supply  of  human  necessities,  a  rise  in  the  standard  of  life 
1  See  Wells,  The  Salvaging  of  Civilization. 


THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  1095 

and  in  what  is  considered  a  necessity,  a  development  of  transport 
and  every  kind  of  convenience ;  and  a  multitude  of  people  would 
be  transferred  from  low-grade  production  to  such  higher  work 
as  art  of  all  kinds,  teaching,  scientific  research,  and  the  like. 
All  over  the  world  there  would  he  a  setting  free  of  human 
capacity,  such  as  has  occurred  hitherto  only  in  small  places  and 
through  precious  limited  phases  of  prosperity  and  security. 
Unless  we  are  to  suppose  that  spontaneous  outbreaks  of  super- 
men have  occurred  in  the  past,  it  is  reasonable  to  conclude 
that  the  Athens  of  Pericles,  the  Florence  of  the  Medici,  Eliza- 
bethan England,  the  great  deeds  of  Asoka,  the  Tang  and  Ming 
periods  in  art,  are  but  samples  of  what  a  whole  world  of  sus- 
tained security  would  yield  continuously  and  cumulatively. 
Without  supposing  any  change  in  human  quality,  but  merely 
its  release  from  the  present  system  of  inordinate  waste,  history 
justifies  this  expectation. 

We  have  seen  how,  since  the  liberation  of  human  thought  in 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  a  comparatively  few 
curious  and  intelligent  men,  chiefly  in  western  Europe,  have 
produced  a  vision  of  the  world  and  a  body  of  science  that  is  now, 
on  the  material  side,  revolutionizing  life.  Mostly  these  men 
have  worked  against  great  discouragement,  with  insufficient 
funds  and  small  help  or  support  from  the  mass  of  mankind. 
It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  these  men  were  the  maximum 
intellectual  harvest  of  their  generation.  England  alone  in  the 
last  three  centuries  must  have  produced  scores  of  Newtons 
who  never  learnt  to  read,  hundreds  of  Daltons,  Darwins,  Ba- 
cons, and  Huxleys  who  died  stunted  in  hovels,  or  never  got  a 
chance  of  proving  their  quality.  All  the  world  over,  there  must 
have  been  myriads  of  potential  first-class  investigators,  splendid 
artists,  creative  minds,  who  never  caught  a  gleam  of  inspiration 
or  opportunity,  for  every  one  of  that  kind  who  has  left  his 
mark  upon  the  world.  In  the  trenches  of  the  Western  front 
alone  during  the  late  war  thousands  of  potential  great  men  died 
unfulfilled.  But  a  world  with  something  like  a  secure  interna- 
tional peace  and  something  like  social  justice,  will  fish  for 
capacity  with  the  fine  net  of  universal  education,  and  may  ex- 
pect a  yield  beyond  comparison  greater  than  any  yield  of  able 
and  brilliant  men  that  the  world  has  known  hitherto. 

It  is  such  considerations  as  this  indeed  which  justify  the  con- 
centration of  effort  in  the  near  future  upon  the  making  of  a 


1096  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

new  world  state  of  righteousness  out  of  our  present  confusions. 
War  is  a  horrible  thing,  and  constantly  more  horrible  and 
dreadful,  so  that  unless  it  is  ended  it  will  certainly  end  human 
society ;  social  injustice,  and  the  sight  of  the  limited  and  cramped 
human  beings  it  produces,  torment  the  soul ;  but  the  strongest 
incentive  to  constructive  political  and  social  work  for  an  im- 
aginative spirit  lies  not  so  much  in  the  mere  hope  of  escaping 
evils  as  in  the  opportunity  for  great  adventures  that  their  sup- 
pression will  open  to  our  race.  We  want  to  get  rid  of  the  mili- 
tarist not  simply  because  he  hurts  and  kills,  but  because  he  is 
an  intolerable  thick-voiced  blockhead  who  stands  hectoring  and 
blustering  in  our  way  to  achievement.  We  want  to  abolish 
many  extravagances  of  private  ownership  just  as  wo  should 
want  to  abolish  some  idiot  guardian  who  refused  us  admission 
to  a  studio  in  which  there  were  fine  things  to  do. 

There  are  people  who  seem  to  imagine  that  a  world  order  and 
one  universal  law  of  justice  would  end  human  adventure.  It 
would  but  begin  it.  Bui  instead  of  the  adventure  of  the  past, 
the  "romance"  of  the  cinematograph  world,  the  perpetual  reiter- 
ated harping  upon  the  trite  reactions  of  sex  and  combat  and  the 
hunt  for  gold,  it  would  be  an  unending  exploration  upon  the 
edge  of  experience.  Hitherto  man  has  been  living  in  a  slum, 
amidst  quarrels,  revenges,  vanities,  shames  and  taints,  hot  de- 
sires and  urgent  appetites.  He  has  scarcely  tasted  sweet  air 
yet  and  the  great  freedoms  of  the  world  that  science  has  enlarged 
for  him. 

To  picture  to  ourselves  something  of  the  wider  life  that 
world  unity  would  open  to  men  is  a  very  attractive  speculation. 
Life  will  certainly  go  with  a  stronger  pulse,  it  will  breathe  a 
deeper  breath,  because  it  will  have  dispelled  and  conquered  a 
hundred  infections  of  body  and  mind  that  now  reduce  it  to 
invalidism  and  squalor.  We  have  already  laid  stress  on  the 
vast  elimination  of  drudgery  from  human  life  through  the  crea- 
tion of  a  new  race  of  slaves,  the  machines.  This — and  the  dis- 
appearance of  war  and  the  smoothing  out  of  endless  restraints 
and  contentions  by  juster  social  and  economic  arrangements — 
will  lift  the  burthen  of  toilsome  work  and  routine  work,  that 
has  been  the  price  of  human  security  since  the  dawn  of  the  first 
civilizations,  from  the  shoulders  of  our  children.  Which  does 
not  mean  that  they  will  cease  to  work,  but  that  they  will  cease  to 
do  irksome  work  under  pressure,  and  will  work  freely,  plan- 


THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  109? 

ning,  making,  creating,  according  to  their  gifts  and  instincts. 
They  will  tight  nature  no  longer  as  dull  conscripts  of  the  pick 
and  plough,  but  for  a  splendid  conquest.  Only  the  spiritless- 
ness  of  our  present  depression  blinds  us  to  the  clear  intima- 
tions of  our  reason  that  in  the  course  of  a  few  generations  every 
little  country  town  could  become  an  Athens,  every  human  being 
could  be  gentle  in  breeding  and  healthy  in  body  and  mind,  the 
whole  solid  earth  man's  mine  and  its  uttermost  regions  his 
playground. 

In  this  Outline  we  have  sought  to  show  two  great  systems 
of  development  interacting  in  the  story  of  human  society.  We 
have  seen,  growing  out  of  that  later  special  neolithic  culture,  the 
heliolithic  culture  in  the  warmer  alluvial  parts  of  the  world, 
the  great  primordial  civilizations,  fecund  systems  of  subjuga- 
tion and  obedience,  vast  multiplications  of  industrious  and  sub- 
servient men.  We  have  shown  the  necessary  relationship  of 
these  early  civilizations  to  the  early  temples  and  to  king-gods 
and  god-kings.  At  the  same  time  we  have  traced  the  develop- 
ment from  a  simpler  neolithic  level  of  the  wanderer  peoples, 
who  became  the  nomadic  peoples,  in  those  great  groups  the 
Aryans  and  the  Hun-Mongol  peoples  of  the  north-west  and  the 
north-east  and  (from  a  heliolithic  phase)  the  Semites  of  the 
Arabian  deserts.  Our  history  has  told  of  a  repeated  overrun- 
ning and  refreshment  of  the  originally  brunet  civilizations  by 
these  hardier,  bolder,  free-spirited  peoples  of  the  steppes  and 
desert.  We  have  pointed  out  how  these  constantly  recurring 
nomadic  injections  have  steadily  altered  the  primordial  civiliza- 
tions both  in  blood  and  in  spirit ;  and  how  the  world  religions 
of  to-day,  and  what  we  now  call  democracy,  the  boldness  of 
modern  scientific  inquiry  and  a  universal  restlessness,  are  due 
to  this  "nomadization"  of  civilization.  The  old  civilizations 
created  tradition,  and  lived  by  tradition.  To-day  the  power  of 
tradition  is  destroyed.  The  body  of  our  state  is  civilization 
still,  but  its  spirit  is  the  .spirit  of  the  nomadic  world.  It  is  the 
spirit  of  the  great  plains  and  the  high  seas. 

So  that  it  is  difficult  to  resist  the  persuasion  that  so  soon 
as  one  law  runs  in  the  earth  and  the  fierceness  of  frontiers 
ceases  to  distress  us,  that  urgency  in  our  nature  that  stirs 
us  in  spring  and  autumn  to  be  up  and  travelling,  will  have 
its  way  with  us.  We  shall  obey  the  call  of  the  summer  pastures 
and  the  winter  pastures  in  our  blood,  the  call  of  the  mountains, 


1098  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

the  desert,  and  the  sea.  For  some  of  us  also,  who  may  be  of  a 
different  lineage,  there  is  the  call  of  the  forest,  and  there  are 
those  who  would  hunt  in  the  summer  and  return  to  the  fields  for 
the  harvest  and  the  plough.  But  this  does  not  mean  that  men 
will  have  hecome  homeless  and  all  adrift.  The  normal  nomadic 
life  is  not  a  homeless  one,  hut  a  movement  between  homes. 
The  Kalmucks  to-day,  like  the  swallows,  go  yearly  a  thousand 
miles  from  one  home  to  another.  The  beautiful  and  convenient 
cities  of  the  coming  age,  we  conclude,  will  have  their  seasons 
when  they  will  be  full  of  life,  and  seasons  when  they  will  seem 
asleep.  Life  will  ebb  and  flow  to  and  from  every  region  sea- 
sonally as  the  interest  of  that  region  rises  or  declines. 

There  will  be  little  drudgery  in  this  better-ordered  world. 
Natural  power  harnessed  in  machines  will  be  the  general 
drudge.  What  drudgery  is  inevitable  will  be  done  as  a  service 
and  duty  for  a  few  years  or  months  out  of  each  life ;  it  will  not 
consume  nor  degrade  the  whole  life  of  anyone.  And  not  only 
drudges,  but  many  other  sorts  of  men  and  ways  of  living  which 
loom  large  in  the  current  social  scheme  will  necessarily  have 
dwindled  in  importance  or  passed  away  altogether.  There  will 
be  few  professional  fighting  men  or  none  at  all,  no  custom- 
house officers;  the  increased  multitude  of  teachers  will  have 
abolished  large  police  forces  and  large  jail  staffs,  mad-houses 
will  be  rare  or  non-existent;  a  world-wide  sanitation  will  have 
diminished  the  proportion  of  hospitals,  nurses,  sick-room  at- 
tendants, and  the  like ;  a  world-wide  economic  justice,  the  float- 
ing population  of  cheats,  sharpers,  gamblers,  forestallers,  para- 
sites, and  speculators  generally.  But  there  will  be  no  diminu- 
tion of  adventure  or  romance  in  this  world  of  the  days  to  come. 
Sea  fisheries  and  the  incessant  insurrection  of  the  sea,  for 
example,  will  call  for  their  own  stalwart  types  of  men;  the 
high  air  will  clamour  for  manhood,  the  deep  and  dangerous 
secret  places  of  nature.  Men  will  turn  again  with  renewed 
interest  to  the  animal  world.  In  these  disordered  days  a  stupid, 
uncontrollable  massacre  of  animal  species  goes  on — from  cer- 
tain angles  of  vision  it  is  a  thing  almost  more  tragic  than  human 
miseries;  in  the  nineteenth  century  dozens  of  animal  species, 
and  some  of  them  very  interesting  species,  were  exterminated ; 
but  one  of  the  first  fruits  of  an  effective  world  state  would  be 
the  better  protection  of  what  are  now  wild  beasts.  It  is  a 
strange  thing  in  human  history  to  note  how  little  has  been  done 


THE  NEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  1099 

since  the  Bronze  Age  in  taming,  using,  befriending,  and  ap- 
preciating the  animal  life  about  us.  But  that  mere  witless 
killing  which  is  called  sport  to-day  would  inevitably  give 
place  in  a  better  educated  world  community  to  a  modification 
of  the  primitive  instincts  that  find  expression  in  this  way, 
changing  them  into  an  interest  not  in  the  deaths,  but  in  the 
lives  of  beasts,  and  leading  to  fresh  and  perhaps  very  strange 
and  beautiful  attempts  to  befriend  these  pathetic,  kindred 
lower  creatures  we  no  longer  fear  as  enemies,  hate  as  rivals,  or 
need  as  slaves.  And  a  world  state  and  universal  justice  does 
not  mean  the  imprisonment  of  our  race  in  any  bleak  institu- 
tional orderliness.  There  will  still  be  mountains  and  the  sea, 
there  will  be  jungles  and  great  forests,  cared  for  indeed  and 
treasured  and  protected;  the  great  plains  will  still  spread  be- 
fore us  and  the  wild  winds  blow.  But  men  will  not  hate  so 
much,  fear  so  much,  nor  cheat  so  desperately — and  they  will 
keep  their  minds  and  bodies  cleaner. 

There  are  unhopeful  prophets  who  see  in  the  gathering  to- 
gether of  men  into  one  community  the  possibility  of  violent 
race  conflicts,  conflicts  for  "ascendancy,"  but  that  is  to  suppose 
that  civilization  is  incapable  of  adjustments  by  which  men  of 
different  qualities  and  temperaments  and  appearances  will  live 
side  by  side,  following  different  roles  and  contributing  diverse 
gifts.  The  weaving  of  mankind  into  one  community  does  not 
imply  the  creation  of  a  homogeneous  community,  but  rather  the 
reverse ;  the  welcome  and  the  adequate  utilization  of  distinctive 
quality  in  an  atmosphere  of  understanding.  It  is  the  almost 
universal  bad  manners  of  the  present  age  which  make  race  in- 
tolerable to  race.  The  community  to  which  we  may  be  mov- 
ing will  be  more  mixed — which  does  not  necessarily  mean 
more  interbred — more  various  and  more  interesting  than  any 
existing  community.  Communities  all  to  one  pattern,  like  boxes 
of  toy  soldiers,  are  things  of  the  past  rather  than  .the  future. 

But  one  of  the  hardest,  most  impossible  tasks  a  writer  can 
set  himself,  is  to  picture  the  life  of  people  better  educated, 
happier  in  their  circumstances,  more  free  and  more  healthy 
than  he  is  himself.  We  know  enough  to-day  to  know  that  there 
is  infinite  room  for  betterment  in  every  human  concern.  Noth- 
ing is  needed  but  collective  effort.  Our  poverty,  our  restraints, 
our  infections  and  indigestions,  our  quarrels  and  misunder- 
standings, are  all  things  controllable  and  removable  by  con- 


1100  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

certed  human  action,  but  we  know  as  little  how  life  would  feel 
without  them  as  some  poor  dirty  ill-treated,  fierce-souled  crea- 
ture born  and  bred  amidst  the  cruel  and  dingy  surroundings 
of  a  European  back  street  can  know  what  it  is  to  bathe  every 
day,  always  to  be  clad  beautifully,  to  climb  mountains  for 
pleasure,  to  fly,  to  meet  none  but  agreeable,  well-mannered 
people,  to  conduct  researches  or  make  delightful  things.  Yet 
a  time  when  all  such  good  things  will  be  for  all  men  may  be 
coming  more  nearly  than  we  think.  Each  one  who  believes 
that  brings  the  good  time  nearer ;  each  heart  that  fails  delays  it. 

One  cannot  foretell  the  surprises  or  disappointments  the 
future  has  in  store.  Before  this  chapter  of  the  World  State 
can  begin  fairly  in  our  histories,  other  chapters  as  yet  unsus- 
pected may  still  need  to  be  written,  as  long  and  as  full  of  con- 
flict as  our  account  of  the  growth  and  rivalries  of  the  Great 
Powers.  There  may  be  tragic  economic  struggles,  grim  grap- 
plings  of  race  with  race  and  class  with  class.  It  may  be  that 
"private  enterprise"  will  refuse  to  learn  the  lesson  of  service 
without  some  quite  catastrophic  revolution,  and  that  a  phase  of 
confiscation  and  amateurish  socialistic  government  lies  before 
us.  We  do  not  know;  we  cannot  tell.  These  are  unnecessary 
disasters,  but  they  may  be  unavoidable  disasters.  Human  his- 
tory becomes  more  and  more  a  race  between  education  and 
catastrophe.  Against  the  unifying  effort  of  Christendom  and 
against  the  unifying  influence  of  the  mechanical  revolution, 
catastrophe  won — at  least  to  the  extent  of  achieving  the  Great 
War.  We  cannot  tell  yet  how  much  of  the  winnings  of  catas- 
trophe still  remain  to  be  gathered  in.  New  falsities  may  arise 
and  hold  men  in  some  unrighteous  and  fated  scheme  of  order 
for  a  time,  before  they  collapse  amidst  the  misery  and  slaugh- 
ter of  generations. 

Yet,  clumsily  or  smoothly,  the  world,  it  seems,  progresses 
and  will  progress.  In  this  Outline,  in  our  account  of  palae- 
olithic men,  we  have  borrowed  a  description  from  Mr.  Worth- 
ington  Smith  of  the  very  highest  life  in  the  world  some  fifty 
thousand  years  ago.  It  was  a  bestial  life.  We  have  sketched, 
too,  the  gathering  for  a  human  sacrifice,  some  fifteen  thousand 
years  ago.  That  scene  again  is  almost  incredibly  cruel  to  a 
modern  civilized  reader. 

Yet  it  is  not  more  than  five  hundred  years  since  the  great 
empire  of  the  Aztecs  still  believed  that  it  could  live  only  by  the 


THE   tfEXT  STAGE  OF  HISTORY  1101 

shedding  of  blood.  Every  year  in  Mexico  hundreds  of  human 
victims  died  in  this  fashion :  the  body  was  bent  like  a  bow  over 
the  curved  stone  of  sacrifice,  the  breast  was  slashed  open  with 
a  knife  of  obsidian,  and  the  priest  tore  out  the  beating  heart 
of  the  still  living  victim.  The  day  may  be  close  at  hand  when 
we  shall  no  longer  tear  out  the  hearts  of  men,  even  for  the 
sake  of  our  national  gods.  Let  the  reader  but  refer  to  the 
earlier  time  charts  we  have  given  in  this  history,  and  he  will 
see  the  true  measure  and  transitoriness  of  all  the  conflicts, 
deprivations,  and  miseries  of  this  present  period  of  painful 
and  yet  hopeful  change. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 

TO  conclude  this  Outline,  we  give  here  a  Table  of  Leading 
Events  from  the  year  800  B.C.  to  1920  A.D.  Following 
that  we  give  five  time  diagrams  covering  the  period 
from  1000  B.C.  onward,  which  present  the  trend  of  events  in 
a  graphic  form. 

It  is  well  that  the  reader  should  keep  in  mind  an  idea  of 
the  true  proportions  of  historical  to  geological  time.  The  scale 
of  the  five  diagrams  at  the  end  is  such  that  by  it  the  time  dia- 
gram on  page  142  would  be  about  8^/2  times  as  long,  that  is  to 
say  about  4  feet;  that  on  page  47  showing  the  interval  since 
the  Eoliths,  555  feet,  and  that  on  page  11  representing  the 
whole  of  geological  time  would  be  somewhere  between  12  and, 
at  the  longest  and  most  probable  estimate,  260  miles!  Let  the 
reader  therefore  take  one  of  these  chronological  tables  we  give, 
and  imagine  it  extended  upon  a  long  strip  of  paper  to  a  distance 
of  55  feet.  He  would  have  to  get  up  and  walk  about  that 
distance  to  note  the  date  of  the  painting  of  the  Altamira  caves, 
and  he  would  have  to  go  ten  times  that  distance  by  the  side 
of  the  same  narrow  strip  to  reach  the  earlier  Neanderthalers. 
A  mile  or  so  from  home,  but  probably  much  further  away,  the 
strip  might  be  recording  the  last  of  the  dinosaurs.  And  this 
on  a  scale  which  represents  the  time  from  Columbus  to  ourselves 
by  three  inches  of  space ! 

Chronology  only  begins  to  be  precise  enough  to  specify  the 
exact  year  of  any  event  after  the  establishment  of  the  eras  of 
the  First  Olympiad  and  the  building  of  Rome. 

About  the  year  1000  B.C.  the  Aryan  peoples  were  establishing 
themselves  in  the  peninsulas  of  Spain,  Italy,  and  the  Balkans, 
and  they  were  established  in  North  India.  Cnossos  was  already 
destroyed,  and  the  spacious  times  of  Egypt,  of  Thotmes  III, 
Amenophis  III,  and  Rameses  II  were  three  or  four  centuries 
away.  Weak  monarchs  of  the  XXIst  Dynasty  were  ruling 
in  the  Nile  Valley.  Israel  was  united  under  her  early  kings; 

1102 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1103 

Saul  or  David  or  possibly  even  Solomon  may  have  been  reign- 
ing. Sargon  I  (2750  B.C.  of  the  Akkadian  Sumerian  Empire 
was  a  remote  memory  in  Babylonian  history,  more  remote  than 
is  Constantine  the  Great  from  the  world  of  the  present  day. 
Hammurabi  had  been  dead  a  thousand  years.  The  Assyrians 
were  already  dominating  the  less  military  Babylonians.  In 
1100  B.C.  Tiglath  Pileser  I  had  taken  Babylon.  But  there 
was  no  permanent  conquest;  Assyria  and  Babylonia  were  still 
separate  empires.  In  China  the  new  Chow  dynasty  was  nour- 
ishing. Stonehenge  in  England  was  already  a  thousand  years 
old. 

The  next  two  centuries  saw  a  renascence  of  Egypt  under  the 
XXII  Dynasty,  the  splitting  up  of  the  brief  little  Hebrew 
kindgom  of  Solomon,  the  spreading  of  the  Greeks  in  the  Bal- 
kans, South  Italy  and  Asia  Minor,  and  the  days  of  Etruscan 
predominance  in  Central  Italy.  We  may  begin  our  list  of 
ascertainable  dates  with 

B.C. 

800.     The  building  of  Carthage. 

790.  The  Ethiopian  conquest  of  Egypt  (founding  the  XXVth 
Dynasty) . 

776.     First  Olympiad. 

753.     Eome  built. 

745.  Tiglath  Pileser  III  conquered  Babylonia  and  founded 
the  New  Assyrian  Empire. 

738.     Menahem,  king  of  Israel,  bought  off  Tiglath  Pileser  III. 

735.     Greeks  settling  in  Sicily. 

722.     Sargon  II  armed  the  Assyrians  with  iron  weapons. 

721.     He  deported  the  Israelites. 

704.     Sennacherib. 

701.     His  army  destroyed  by  a  pestilence  on  its  way  to  Egypt. 

680.  Esarhaddon  took  Thebes  in  Egypt  (overthrowing  the 
Ethiopian  XXVth  Dynasty). 

667.     Sardanapalus. 

664.  Psammetichus  I  restored  the  freedom  of  Egypt  and 
founded  the  XXVIth  Dynasty  (to  610).  He  was  as- 
sisted against  Assyria  by  Lydian  troops  sent  by  Gyges. 

608.  Necho  of  Egypt  defeated  Josiah,  king  of  Judah,  at  the 
Battle  of  Megiddo. 

606.  Capture  of  Nineveh  by  the  Chaldeans  and  Medes.  Foun- 
dation of  the  Chaldean  Empire, 


1104  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

B.C. 

604.     Necho  pushed  to  the  Euphrates  and  was  overthrown  by 
Nebuchadnezzar  II.     Josiah  fell  with  him. 

586.     Nebuchadnezzar  carried  off  the  Jews  to  Babylon.    Many 
fled  to  Egypt  and  settled  there. 

550.     Cyrus  the  Persian  succeeded  Cyaxares  the  Mede. 
Cyrus  conquered   Croesus. 

Buddha  lived  about  this  time.     So  also  did  Confucius 
and  Lao  Tse. 

539.     Cyrus  took  Babylon  and  founded  the  Persian  Empire. 

527.     Peisistratus  died. 

525.     Cambyses  conquered  Egypt. 

521.     Darius  I,  the  son  of  Hystaspes,  ruled  from  the  Helles- 
pont to  the  Indus. 
His  expedition  to  Scythia. 

490.     Battle  of  Marathon. 

484.     Herodotus    born.      ^Eschylus    won    his    first    prize    for 
tragedy. 

480.     Battles  of  ThermopylaB  and  Salamis. 

479.     The  Battles  of  Plataea  and  Mycale  completed   the  re- 
pulse of  Persia. 

474.     Etruscan  fleet  destroyed  by  the  Sicilian  Greeks. 

470.     Voyage  of  Hanno. 

466.     Pericles. 

465.     Xerxes  murdered. 

438.     Herodotus  recited  his  History  in  Athens. 

431.     Peloponnesian  War  began  (to  404). 

428.     Pericles  died.     Herodotus  died. 

427.     Aristophanes  began  his  career.     Plato  born.     He  lived 
to  347. 

401.     Ketreat  of  the  Ten  Thousand. 

390.     Brennus  sacked  Rome. 

366.     Camillus  built  the  Temple  of  Concord. 

359.     Philip  became  king  of  Macedonia. 

338.     Battle  of  Chaeronia. 

336.     Macedonian  troops  crossed  into  Asia,  Philip  murdered. 

334.     Battle  of  the  Granicus. 

333.     Battle  of  Issus. 

332.     Alexander  in  Egypt. 

331.     Battle  of  Arbela.' 

330.     Darius  III  killed. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1105 

B.C. 

323.     Death  of  Alexander  the  Great. 

321.  Rise  of  Chandragupta  in  the  Punjab.  The  Romans 
completely  beaten  by  the  Samnites  at  the  battle  of  the 
Caudine  Forks. 

303.     Chandragupta  repulsed   Seleucus. 

285.     Ptolemy  Soter  died. 

281.     Pyrrhus  invaded  Italy. 

280.     Battle  of  Heraclea. 

279.     Battle  of  Ausculum. 

278.     Gauls'  raid  into  Asia  Minor  and  settlement  in  Galatia. 

275.     Pyrrhus  left  Italy. 

264.  First  Punic  War.  (Asoka  began  to  reign  in  Behar — 
to  227.)  First  gladiatorial  games  in  Rome. 

260.     Battle  of  Myla3. 

256.     Battle  of  Ecnomus. 

246.     Shi  Hwang-ti  became  king  of  Ch'in. 

242.     Battle  of  ^Egatian  Isles. 

241.     End  of  First  Punic  War. 

225.     Battle  of  Telamon.     Roman  armies  in  Illyria. 

220.     Shi  Hwang-ti  became  emperor  of  China. 

[Note  that  the  date  given  to  Shi  Hwang-ti  in  the  dia- 
gram on  p.  142  is  incorrect.] 

219.     Second  Punic  War. 

216.     Battle  of  Canna3. 

214.     Great  Wall  of  China  begun. 

210.     Death  of  Shi  Hwang-ti. 

202.     Battle  of  Zama. 

201.     End  of  Second  Punic  War. 

200-197.     Rome  at  war  with  Macedonia. 

192.     War  with  the  Seleucids. 

190.     Battle  of  Magnesia. 

149.  Third  Punic  War.  (The  Yueh-Chi  came  into  Western 
Turkestan.) 

146.     Carthage  destroyed.      Corinth   destroyed. 

133.  Attains  bequeathed  Pergamum  to  Rome.  Tiberius  Grac- 
chus killed. 

121.     Caius  Gracchus  killed. 

118.     War  with  Jugurtha. 

106.     War  with  Jugurtha  ended. 

102.     Marius  drove  back  Germans. 


1106  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

B.C. 

100.     Triumph    of  Marius.      (Wu-ti    conquering   the   Tarim 

valley. ) 

91.     Social  war. 

89.     All  Italians  became  Roman  citizens. 
86.     Death  of  Marius. 
78.     Death  of  Sulla. 

73.     The  revolt  of  the  slaves  under  Spartacus. 
71.     Defeat  and  end  of  Spartacus. 
66.     Pompey  led  Roman  troops  to  the  Caspian  and  Euphrates. 

He  encountered  the  Alani. 
64.     Mithridates  of  Pontus  died. 
53.     Crassus  killed   at    Carrha3.      Mongolian   elements   with 

Parthians. 

48.     Julius  Caesar  defeated  Pompey  at  Pharsalos. 
44.     Julius  Caesar  assassinated. 
31.     Battle  of  Actium. 

27.     Augustus  Caesar  princeps  (until  14  A.D.). 
4.     True  date  of  birth  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 
A.D.     Christian  Era  began. 
6.     Province  of  Moesia  established. 
9.     Province  of  Pannonia  established.     Imperial  boundary 

carried  to  the  Danube. 
14.     Augustus  died.     Tiberius  emperor. 
30.     Jesus  of  Nazareth  crucified. 
37.     Caligula  succeeded  Tiberius. 

41.  Claudius  (the  first  emperor  of  the  legions)  made  em- 
peror by  pretorian  guard  after  murder  of  Calig- 
ula. 

54.     Nero  succeeded  Claudius. 
61.     Boadicea  massacred  Roman  garrison  in  Britain. 

68.  Suicide  of  Nero.     (Galba,  Otho,  Vitellus,  emperors  in 

succession.) 

69.  Vespasian  began  the  so-called  Flavian  dynasty. 
79.     Titus  succeeded  Vespasian. 

81.     Domitian. 
84.     North  Britain  annexed. 

96.     Nerva  began  the  so-called  dynasty  of  the  Antonines. 
98.     Trajan  succeeded  Nerva. 

102.  Pan  Chau  on  the  Caspian  Sea.  (Indo-Scythians  in- 
vading North  India.) 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1107 

A.D. 

117.     Hadrian   succeeded    Trajan.      Roman   Empire   at   its 

greatest  extent. 
138.     Antoninus  Pius  succeeded  Hadrian.      (The  Indo-Scy- 

thians  at  this  time  were  destroying  the  last  traces  of 

Hellenic  rule  in  India.) 
150.      [About  this  time  Kanishka  reigned  in  India,  Kashgar, 

Yarkand,  and  Kotan.] 

161.     Marcus  Aurelius  succeeded  Antoninus  Pius. 
164.     Great  plague  began,   and  lasted  to  the  death  of  M. 

Aurelius  (180).     This  also  devastated  all  Asia. 
180.     Death  of  Marcus  Aurelius. 

(Nearly  a  century  of  war  and  disorder  began  in  the 

Roman  Empire.) 
220.     End  of  the  Han  dynasty.     Beginning  of  four  hundred 

years  of  division  in  China. 
227.     Ardashir  I  (first  Sassanid  shah)  put  an  end  to  Arsacid 

line  in  Persia. 

242.     Mani  began  his  teaching. 
247.     Goths  crossed  Danube  in  a  great  raid. 
251.     Great  victory  of  Goths.     Emperor  Decius  killed. 
260.     Sapor  I,  the  second  Sassanid  shah,  took  Antioch,  cap- 
tured the  Emperor  Valerian,  and  was  cut  up  on  his 

return  from  Asia  Minor  by  Odenathus  of  Palmyra. 

269.  The  Emperor  Claudius  defeated  the  Goths  at  Nish. 

270.  Aurelian  became  emperor. 

272.     Zenobia  carried  captive  to  Rome.     End  of  the  brief 
glories  of  Palmyra. 

275.  Probus  succeeded  Aurelian. 

276.  Goths  in  Pontus.     The  Emperor  Probus  forced  back 

Franks  and  Alemanni. 

277.  Mani  crucified  in  Persia. 
284.     Diocletian  became  emperor. 

303.  Diocletian  persecuted  the  Christians. 

311.  Galerius  abandoned  the  persecution  of  the  Christians. 

312.  Constantino  the  Great  became  emperor. 

313.  Constantine  presided  over  a  Christian  Council  at  Aries. 
321.  Fresh  Gothic  raids  driven  back. 

323.     Constantine  presided  over  the  Council  of  Nicaea. 
337.     Vandals  driven  by  Goths  obtained  leave  to  settle  in 
Pannonia. 


1108  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A.D. 

337.     Constantine  baptized  on  his  death-bed. 

354.     St.  Augustine  born. 

361-3.     Julian  the  Apostate  attempted  to  substitute  Mithraisin 

for  Christianity. 

379.     Theodosius  the  Great  (a  Spaniard)  emperor. 
390.     The  statute  of  Serapis  at  Alexandria  broken  up. 
392.     Theodosius  the  Great  emperor  of  east  and  west. 
395.     Theodosius  the  Great  died.     Honorius  and  Arcadius 

redivided   the  empire   with    Stilicho    and   Alaric   as 

their  masters  and  protectors. 

410.     The  Visigoths  under  Alaric  captured  Rome. 
425.     Vandals  settling  in  south  of  Spain.    Huns  in  Pannonia, 

Goths  in  Dalmatia.     Visigoths  and  Suevi  in  Portugal 

and  North  Spain.     English  invading  Britain. 
429.     Vandals  under  Genseric  invaded  Africa. 
439.     Vandals  took  Carthage. 
448.     Priscus  visited  Attila. 
451.     Attila  raided  Gaul  and  was  defeated  by  Franks,  Ale- 

manni,  and  Romans  at  Troves. 
453.     Death  of  Attila. 
455.     Vandals  sacked  Rome. 
470.     Ephthalites'  raid  into  India. 
476.     Odoacer,  king  of  a  medley  of  Teutonic  tribes,  informed 

Constantinople  that  there  was  no  emperor  in  the  West. 

End  of  the  Western  Empire. 

480.  St.  Benedict  born. 

481.  Clovis  in  France.     The  Merovingians. 

483.  Nestorian  church  broke  away  from  the  Orthodox  Chris- 
tian church. 

493.  Theodoric,  the  Ostrogoth,  conquered  Italy  and  became 
King  of  Italy,  but  was  nominally  subject  to  Constan- 
tinople. 

(Gothic  kings  in  Italy.     Goths  settled  on  special  con- 
fiscated lands  as  a  garrison.) 

527.  Justinian  emperor. 

528.  Mihiragula,   the    (Ephthalite)    Attila  of  India,   over- 

thrown. 

529.  Justinian  closed  the  schools  at.  Athens,  which  had  flour- 

ished nearly  a  thousand  years.    Belisarius  (Justinian's 
general)  took  Naples. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1109 

A.D. 

531.     Chosroes  I  began  to  reign. 

543.  Great  plague  in  Constantinople. 

544.  St.  Benedict  died. 

553.     Goths  expelled  from  Italy  by  Justinian.     Cassiodorus 

founded  his  monastery. 
565.     Justinian   died.      The   Lombards   conquered    most   of 

North  Italy  (leaving  Ravenna  and  Rome  Byzantine). 

The  Turks  broke  up  the  Ephthalites  in  Western  Turke- 
stan. 

570.     Muhammad  born. 
579.     Chosroes  I  died. 

(The  Lombards  dominant  in  Italy.) 
590.     Plague  raged  in  Rome.     (Gregory  the  Great — Gregory 

I — and  the  vision  of  St.  Angelo.)     Chosroes  II  began 

to  reign. 

610.     Heraclius  began  to  reign. 
619.     Chosroes  II  held  Egypt,  Jerusalem,  Damascus,  and  had 

armies  on  Hellespont.     Tang  dynasty  began  in  China. 

622.  The  Hegira. 

623.  Battle  of  Badr. 

627.  Great  Persian  defeat  at  Nineveh  by  Heraclius.     The 

Meccan  Allies  besieged  Medina.     Tai  Tsung  became 
Emperor  of  China. 

628.  Kavadh  II  murdered  and  succeeded  his  father,  Chos- 

roes II. 
Muhammad  wrote  letters  to  all  the  rulers  of  the  earth. 

629.  Yuan  Chwang  started  for  India.     Muhammad  entered 

Mecca. 
632.     Muhammad  died.     Abu  Bekr  Caliph. 

634.  Battle  of  the  Yarmuk.     Moslems  took  Syria.     Omar 

second  Caliph. 

635.  Tai  Tsung  received  Nestorian  missionaries. 

637.  Battle  of  Kadessia. 

638.  Jerusalem  surrendered  to  Omar. 

642.  Heraclius  died. 

643.  Othman  third  Caliph. 

645.  Yuan  Chwang  returned  to  Singan. 

655.  Defeat  of  the  Byzantine  fleet  by  the  Moslems. 

656.  Othman  murdered  at  Medina. 
661.  Ali  murdered. 


1110  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A.D. 

662.     Moawiya  Caliph..     (First  of  the  Omayyad  caliphs.) 
668.     The  Caliph  Moawiya  attacked  Constantinople  by  sea — 

Theodore  of  Tarsus  became  Archbishop  of  Canterbury. 
675.  Last  of  the  sea  attacks  by  Moawiya  on  Constantinople. 
687.  Pepin  of  Hersthal,  mayor  of  the  palace,  reunited  Aus- 

trasia  and  Neustria. 
711.     Moslem  army  invaded  Spain  from  Africa. 

714.  Charles  Martel,  mayor  of  the  palace. 

715.  The  domains  of  the  Caliph  Walid  I  extended  from  the 

Pyrenees  to  China. 

717-18.  Suleiman,  son  and  successor  of  Walid,  failed  to  take 
Constantinople.  The  Omayyad  line  passed  its  climax. 

732.     Charles  Martel  defeated  the  Mos^ms  near  Poitiers. 

735.     Death  of  the  Venerable  Bede. 

743.     Walid  II  Caliph— the  unbelieving  Caliph. 

749.  Overthrow  of  the  Omayyads.  Abdul  Abbas,  the  first 
Abbasid  Caliph.  Spain  remained  Omayyad.  Begin- 
ning of  the  break-up  of  the  Arab  Empire. 

751.     Pepin  crowned  King  of  the  French. 

755.     Martyrdom  of  St.  Boniface. 

768.     Pepin  died. 

771.     Charlemagne  sole  king. 

774.     Charlemagne  conquered  Lombardy. 

776.     Charlemagne  in  Dalmatia. 

786.     Haroun-al-Kaschid  Abbasid  Caliph  in  Bagdad  (to  809). 

795.     Leo  III  became  Pope  (to  816). 

800.     Leo  crowned  Charlemagne  Emperor  of  the  West. 

802.  Egbert,  formerly  an  English  refugee  at  the  court  of 
Charlemagne,  established  himself  as  King  of  Wessex. 

810.  Krum  of  Bulgaria  defeated  and  killed  the  Emperor 
Nicephorus. 

814.     Charlemagne  died,  Louis  the  Pious  succeeds  him. 

828.     Egbert  became  first  King  of  England. 

843.  Louis  the  Pious  died,  and  the  Carlovingian  Empire 
went  to  pieces.  Until  962  there  was  no  regular  suc- 
cession of  Holy  Roman  Emperors,  though  the  title 
appeared  intermittently. 

850.  About  this  time  Eurik  (a  Northman)  became  ruler  of 
Novgorod  and  Kieff. 

852.     Boris  first  Christian  King  of  Bulgaria  (to  884).- 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1111 

A.D. 

865.  The  fleet  of  the  Russians  (Northmen)  threatened  Con- 
stantinople. 

886.  The  Treaty  of  Alfred  of  England  and  Guthrum  the 
Dane,  establishing  the  Danes  in  the  Danelaw. 

904.     Russian  (Northmen)  fleet  off  Constantinople. 

912.     Rolf  the  Ganger  established  himself  in  Normandy. 

919.     Henry  the  Fowler  elected  King  of  Germany. 

928.     Marozia  imprisoned  Pope  John  X. 

931.     John  XI  Pope  (to  936). 

936.  Otto  I  became  King  of  Germany  in  succession  to  his 
father,  Henry  the  Fowler. 

941.     Russian  fleet  again  threatened  Constantinople. 

955.     John  XII  Pope. 

960.     Northern  Sung  Dynasty  began  in  China. 

962.  Otto  I,    King  of   Germany,   crowned  Emperor    (first 

Saxon  Emperor)  by  John  XII. 

963.  Otto  deposed  John  XII. 

969.     Separate  Fatimite  Caliphate  set  up  in  Egypt. 

973.     Otto  II. 

983.     Otto  III. 

987.     Hugh   Capet  became   King  of  France.      End   of  the 

Carlovingian  line  of  French  kings. 
1016.     Canute    became    King    of    England,    Denmark,    and 

Norway. 

1037.     Avicenna  of  Bokhara,  the  Prince  of  Physicians,  died. 
1043.     Russian  fleet  threatened  Constantinople. 
1066.     Conquest  of  England  by  William,  Duke  of  Normandy. 
1071.     Revival  of  Islam  under  the  Seljuk  Turks.     Battle  of 

Melasgird. 

1073.     Hildebrand  became  Pope   (Gregory  VII)   to  1085. 
1082.     Robert  Guiscard  captured  Durazzo. 
1084.     Robert  Guiscard  sacked  Rome. 
1087-99.     Urban  II  Pope. 

1094.  Pestilence. 

1095.  Urban  II  at  Clermont  summoned  the  First  Crusade. 

1096.  Massacre  of  the  People's  Crusade. 

1099.     Godfrey  of  Bouillon  captured  Jerusalem.     Paschal  II 

Pope  (to  1118). 
1138.     Kin  Empire  flourished.    The  Sung  capital  shifted  from 

Nanking  to  Hang  Chau. 


1112  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A.D. 

1147.  The  Second  Crusade.  Foundation  of  the  Christian 
Kingdom  of  Portugal. 

1169.     Saladin  Sultan  of  Egypt 

1176.  Frederick  Barbarossa  acknowledged  supremacy  of  the 
Pope  (Alexander  III)  at  Venice. 

1187.     Saladin  captured  Jerusalem. 

1189.     The  Third  Crusade. 

1198.  Averroes  of  Cordoba,  the  Arab  philosopher,  died.  Inno- 
cent III  Pope  (to  1216).  Frederick  II  (aged  four), 
King  of  Sicily,  became  his  ward. 

1202.     The  Fourth  Crusade  attacked  the  Eastern  Empire. 

1204.     Capture  of  Constantinople  by  the  Latins. 

1206.     Kutub  founded  Moslem  state  at  Delhi. 

1212.     The  Children's  Crusade. 

1214.  Jengis  Khan  took  Peking. 

1215.  Magna  Carta  signed. 

1216.  Honorius  III  Pope. 

1218.     Jengis  Khan  invaded  Kharismia. 

1221.  Failure  and  return  of  the  Fifth  Crusade.  St.  Dominic 
died  (the  Dominicans). 

1226.  St.  Francis  of  Assisi  died.      (The  Franciscans.) 

1227.  Jengis  Khan  died,  Khan  from  the  Caspian  to  the  Pacific, 

and  was  succeeded  by  Ogdai  Khan. 
Gregory  IX  Pope. 

1228.  Frederick  II  embarked  upon  the  Sixth  Crusade,  and 

acquired  Jerusalem. 

1234.  Mongols  completed  conquest  of  the  Kin  Empire  with 
the  help  of  the  Sung  Empire. 

1239.  Frederick  II  excommunicated  for  the  second  time. 

1240.  Mongols    destroyed    Kieff.      Russia    tributary    to   the 

Mongols. 

1241.  Mongol  victory  at  Liegnitz  in  Silesia. 

1244.  The  Egyptian  Sultan  recaptured  Jerusalem.     This  led 

to  the  Seventh  Crusade. 

1245.  Frederick  II  re-excommunicated.     The  men  of  Schwyz 

burnt  the  castle  of  !New  Hafosburg. 

1250.  St.  Louis  of  France  ransomed.  Frederick  II,  the  last 
Hohenstaufen  Emperor,  died.  German  interregnum 
until  1273. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1113 

A.D. 

1251.     Mangu  Khan  became  Great  Khan.     Kublai  Khan  gov- 
ernor of  China. 
1258.     Hulagu  Khan  took  and  destroyed  Bagdad. 

1260.  Kublai  Khan  became  Great  Khan.     Ketboga  defeated 

in  Palestine. 

1261.  The  Greeks  recaptured  Constantinople  from  the  Latins. 
1269.     Kublai  Khan  sent  a  message  of  inquiry  to  the  Pope  by 

the  older  Polos. 

1271.     Marco  Polo  started  upon  his  travels. 
1273.     Rudolf    of   Habsburg    elected    Emperor.      The   Swiss 

formed  their  Everlasting  League. 
1280.     Kublai  Khan  founded  the  Yuan  Dynasty  in  China. 

1292.  Death  of  Kublai  Khan. 

1293.  Roger  Bacon,  the  prophet  of  experimental  science,  died. 

1294.  Boniface  VIII  Pope  (to  1303). 

1295.  Marco  Polo  returned  to  Venice. 

1303.  Death  of  Pope  Boniface  VIII   after  the  outrage   of 

Anagni  by  Guillaume  de  Nogaret. 

1305.  Clement  V  Pope.     The  papal  court  set  up  at  Avignon. 

1308.  Duns  Scotus  died. 

1318.  Four  Franciscans  burnt  for  heresy  at  Marseilles. 

1347.  Occam  died. 

1348.  The  Great  Plague,  the  Black  Death. 
1358.  The  Jacquerie  in  France. 

1360.     In  China  the  Mongol   (Yuan)  Dynasty  fell,  and  was 

succeeded  by  the  Ming  Dynasty  (to  1644). 
1367.     Timurlane  assumed  the  title  of  Great  Khan. 

1377.  Pope  Gregory  XI  returned  to  Rome. 

1378.  The  Great  Schism.    Urban  VI  in  Rome,  Clement  VII 

at  Avignon. 
1381.     Peasant  revolt  in  England.     Wat  Tyler  murdered  in 

the  presence  of  King  Richard  II. 
1384.     Wycliffe  died. 

1398.     Huss  preached  Wycliffism  at  Prague. 
1405.     Death  of  Timurlane. 

1414-18.     The  Council  of  Constance.     Huss  burnt  (1415). 
1417.     The  Great  Schism  ended,  Martin  V  Pope. 
1420.     The  Hussites  revolted.     Martin  V  preached  a  crusade 

against  them. 


1114  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A.D. 

1-131.  The  Catholic  Crusaders  dissolved  before  the  Hussites  at 

Domazlice.     The  Council  of  Basle  met. 

1436.  The  Hussites  came  to  terms  with  the  church. 

1439.  Council  of  Basle  created  a  fresh  schism  in  the  church. 

1445.  Discovery  of  Cape  Verde  by  the  Portuguese. 

1446.  First  printed  books  (Coster  in  Haarlem). 
1449.  End  of  the  Council  of  Basle. 

1453.     Ottoman  Turks  under  Muhammad  II  took  Constanti- 
nople. 

1480.  Ivan  III,  Grand-duke  of  Moscow,  threw  off  the  Mongol 

allegiance. 

1481.  Death  of  the  Sultan  Muhammad  II  while  preparing 

for  the  conquest  of  Italy.    Bayazid  II  Turkish  Sultan 
(to  1512). 
1486.     Diaz  rounded  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope. 

1492.  Columbus  crossed  the  Atlantic  to  America.     Rodrigo 

Borgia,  Alexander  VI,  Pope  (to  1503). 

1493.  Maximilian  I  became  Emperor. 

1498.  Vasco  da  Gama  sailed  round  the  Cape  to  India. 

1499.  Switzerland  became  an  independent  republic. 

1500.  Charles  V  born. 

1509.     Henry  VIII  King  of  England. 

1512.  Selim  Sultan  (to  1520).    He  bought  the  title  of  Caliph. 

Fall  of  Soderini   (and  Machiavelli)    in  Florence. 

1513.  Leo  X  Pope. 

1515.     Francis  I  King  of  France. 

1517.     Selim  annexed  Egypt.     Luther  propounded  his  theses 
at  Wittenberg. 

1519.  Leonardo  da  Vinci  died.    Magellan's  expedition  started 

to  sail  round  the  world.     Cortez  entered  Mexico  city. 

1520.  Suleiman  the  Magnificent,  Sultan  (to  1566),  who  ruled 

from  Bagdad  to  Hungary.     Charles  V  Emperor. 

1521.  Luther   at  the  Diet  of  Worms.     Loyola  wounded  at 

Pampeluna. 
1525.     Baber  won  the  battle  of  Panipat,  captured  Delhi,  and 

founded  the  Mogul  Empire. 
1527.     The  German  troops  in  Italy,  under  the  Constable  of 

Bourbon,  took  and  pillaged  Rome. 
1529.     Suleiman  besieged  Vienna. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1115 

A.D. 

1530.  Pizarro  invaded  Peru.  Charles  V  crowned  by  the 
Pope.  Henry  VIII  began  his  quarrel  with  the 
Papacy. 

1532.     The  Anabaptists  seized  Minister. 

1535.     Fall  of  the  Anabaptist  rule  in  Minister. 

1539.     The  Company  of  Jesus  founded. 

1543.     Copernicus  died. 

1545.  The  Council  of  Trent  (to  1563)  assembled  to  put  the 

church  in  order. 

1546.  Martin  Luther  died. 

1547.  Ivan  IV  (the  Terrible)  took  the  title  of  Tsar  of  Eus- 

sia.     Francis  I  died. 

1549.     First  Jesuit  missions  arrived  in  South  America. 

1552.  Treaty  of  Passau.  Temporary  pacification  of  Ger- 
many. 

1556.  Charles  V  abdicated.  Akbar  Great  Mogul  (to  1605). 
Ignatius  of  Loyola  died. 

1558.     Death  of  Charles  V. 

1563.  End  of  the  Council  of  Trent  and  the  reform  of  thfc 

Catholic  Church. 

1564.  Galileo  born. 

1566.  Suleiman  the  Magnificent  died. 

1567.  Eevolt  of  the  Netherlands. 

1568.  Execution  of  Counts  Egmont  and  Horn. 
1571.  Kepler  born. 

1573.  Siege  of  Alkmaar. 

1578.  Harvey  born. 

1583.  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  expedition  to  Virginia. 

1601.  Tycho  Brahe  died. 

1603.  James  I  King  of  England  and  Scotland.  Dr.  Gilbert 
died. 

1605.  Jehangir  Great  Mogul. 

1606.  Virginia  Company  founded. 
1609.  Holland  independent. 
1618.  Thirty  Years'  War  began. 

1620.  Mayflower  expedition  founded  New  Plymouth.  First 
negro  slaves  landed  at  Jamestown  (Va.). 

1625.  Charles  I  of  England. 

1626.  Sir  Francis  Bacon   (Lord  Verulam)   died. 


1116  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A.D. 

1628.  Shah  Jehan  Great  Mogul.     The  English  Petition  of 

Right. 

1629.  Charles  I  of  England  began  his  eleven  years  of  rule 

without  a  parliament. 

1630.  Kepler  died. 

1632.  Leeuwenhoek  born.     Gustavus  Adolphus  killed  at  the 

Battle  of  -Liitzen. 

1634.  Wallenstein  murdered. 

1638.  Japan  closed  to  Europeans  (until  1865). 

1640.  Charles  I  of  England  summoned  the  Long  Parliament. 

1641.  Massacre  of  the  English  in  Ireland. 

1642.  Galileo  died.     Newton  born. 

1643.  Louis  XIV  began  his  reign  of  seventy-two  years. 

1644.  The  Manchus  ended  the  Ming  dynasty. 

1645.  Swine  pens  in  the  inner  town  of  Leipzig  pulled  down. 

1648.  Treaty  of  Westphalia.     Thereby  Holland  and  Switzer- 

land were  recognized  as  free  republics  and  Prussia 
became  important.  The  treaiy  gave  a  complete  vic- 
tory neither  to  the  Imperial  Crown  nor  to  the  Princes. 
War  of  the  Fronde;  it  ended  in  the  complete  vic- 
tory of  the  French  crown. 

1649.  Execution  of  Charles  I  of  England. 
1658.     Aurungzeb  Great  Mogul.     Cromwell  died. 
1660.     Charles  II  of  England. 

1674.     Nieuw  Amsterdam  finally  became  British  by  treaty  and 

was  renamed  New  York. 
1683.     The  last  Turkish  attack  on  Vienna  defeated  by  John 

III  of  Poland. 

1688.  The  British  Revolution.    Flight  of  James  II.    William 

and  Mary  began  to  reign. 

1689.  Peter  the  Great  of  Russia.     (To  1725.) 

1690.  Battle  of  the  Boyne  in  Ireland. 
1694.     Voltaire  born. 

1701.     Frederick  I  first  King  of  Prussia. 

1704.     John  Locke,  the  father  of  modern  democratic  theory, 

died. 
1707.     Death  of  Aurungzeb.     The  empire  of  the  Great  Mogul 

disintegrated. 

1713.  Frederick  the  Great  of  Prussia  born. 

1714.  George  I  of  Britain. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  111? 

A.D. 

1715.  Louis  XV  of  France. 

1727.  Newton  died.     George  II  of  Britain. 

1732.  Oglethorpe  founded  Georgia. 

1736.  Nadir  Shah  raided  India.  (The  beginning  of  twenty 
years  of  raiding  and  disorder  in  India.) 

1740.  Maria-Theresa  began  to  reign.     (Being  a  woman,  she 

could  not  be  empress.     Her  husband,  Francis  I,  was 
emperor  until  his  death  in  1765,  when  her  son,  Joseph 
II,  succeeded  him.) 
Accession  of  Frederick  the  Great,  King  of  Prussia. 

1741.  The  Empress  Elizabeth  of  Russia  began  to  reign. 
1755-63.     Britain  and  France  struggled  for  America  and  India. 

France  in  alliance  with  Austria  and  Russia  against 
Prussia  and  Britain   (1756-63);  the  Seven  Years' 
War. 
1757.     Battle  of  Plassey. 

1759.  The  British  general,  Wolfe,  took  Quebec. 

1760.  George  III  of  Britain. 

1762.  The  Empress  Elizabeth  of  Russia  died.    Murder  of  the 

Tsar  Paul,  and  accession  of  Catherine  the  Great  of 
Russia  (to  1796). 

1763.  Peace   of  Paris;    Canada   ceded  to  Britain.      British 

dominant  in  India. 

1764.  Battle  of  Buxar. 

1769.     Napoleon  Bonaparte  born. 

1774.  Louis  XVI  began  his  reign.     Suicide  of  Clive.     The 

American  revolutionary  drama  began. 

1775.  Battle  of  Lexington. 

1776.  Declaration  of  Independence  by  the  United  States  of 

America. 

1778.  J.  J.  Rousseau,  the  creator  of  modern  democratic  senti- 
ment, died. 

1780.  End  of  the  reign  of  Maria-Theresa.  The  Emperor 
Joseph  (1765  to  1790)  succeeded  her  in  the  hereditary 
Habsburg  dominions. 

1783.  Treaty  of  Peace  between  Britain  and  the  new  United 
States  of  America.  Quaco  set  free  in  Massachu- 
setts. 

1787.  The  Constitutional  Convention  of  Philadelphia  set  up 
the  Federal  Government  of  the  United  States.  France 


1118  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A.D. 

discovered  to  be  bankrupt.  The  Assembly  of  the 
Notables. 

1788.  First  Federal  Congress  of  the  United  States  at  N"ew 

York. 

1789.  The  French   States-General  assembled.      Storming  of 

the  Bastille. 

1791.  The  Jacobin  Revolution.     Flight  to  Varennes. 

1792.  France  declared  war  on  Austria.     Prussia  declared  war 

on  France.  Battle  of  Valmy.  France  became  a 
republic. 

1793.  Louis  XVI  beheaded. 

1794.  Execution  of  Robespierre  and  end  of  the  Jacobin  re- 

public.    Rule  of  the  Convention. 

1795.  The  Directory.    Bonaparte  suppressed  a  revolt  and  went 

to  Italy  as  commander-in-chief. 

1797.  By  the  Peace  of  Campo  Formio  Bonaparte  destroyed 

the  Republic  of  Venice. 

1798.  Bonaparte  went  to  Egypt.    Battle  of  the  Nile. 

1799.  Bonaparte   returned.     He  became  First   Consul  with 

enormous  powers. 

1800.  Legislative  union  of  Ireland  and  England  enacted  Jan- 

uary 1st,  1801. 

Napoleon's  campaign  against  Austria.  Battles  of 
Marengo  (in  Italy)  and  Hohenlinden  (Moreau's 
victory). 

1801.  Preliminaries  of  peace  between  France,  England,  and 

Austria  signed. 

1803.  Bonaparte  occupied  Switzerland,  and  so  precipitated 

war. 

1804.  Bonaparte  became  Emperor.     Francis  II  took  the  title 

of  Emperor  of  Austria  in  1805,  and  in  1806  he 
dropped  the  title  of  Holy  Roman  Emperor.  So  the 
"Holy  Roman  Empire''  came  to  an  end. 

1805.  Battle  of  Trafalgar.     Battles  of  Ulm  and  Austerlitz. 

1806.  Prussia  overthrown  at  Jena. 

1807.  Battles  of  Eylau  and  Friedland  and  Treaty  of  Tilsit, 

1808.  N"apoleon  made  his  brother  Joseph  King  of  Spain. 

1810.  Spanish  America  became  republican. 

1811.  Alexander    withdrew    from    the    "Continental     Sys- 

tem." 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1119 

A.D. 

1812.  Moscow. 

1814.  Abdication  .of  Napoleon.     Louis  XVIII. 

1815.  The  Waterloo  campaign.     The  Treaty  of  Vienna. 
1819.  The  First  Factory  Act  passed  through  the  efforts  of 

Robert  Owen. 
1821.     The  Greek  revolt. 

1824.  Charles  X  of  France. 

1825.  Nicholas  I  of  Russia.    First  railway,  Stockton  to  Dar- 

lington. 
1827.     Battle  of  Navarino. 

1829.  Greece  independent. 

1830.  A  year  of  disturbance.     Louis  Philippe  ousted  Charles 

X.  Belgium  broke  away  from  Holland.  Leopold  of 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha  became  king  of  this  new  country, 
Belgium.  Russian  Poland  revolted  ineffectually.  - 

1832.  The  First  Reform  Bill  in  Britain  restored  the  demo- 
cratic character  of  the  British  Parliament. 

1835.     The  word  socialism  first  used. 

1837.     Queen  Victoria. 

1840.  Queen  Victoria  married  Prince  Albert  of  Saxe-Coburg- 
Gotha. 

1848.  Another  year  of  disturbance.  Republics  in  France  and 
Rome.  The  Pan-slavic  conference  at  Prague.  All 
Germany  united  in  a  parliament  at  Frankfort.  Ger- 
man unity  destroyed  by  the  King  of  Prussia. 

1851.  The  Great  Exhibition  of  London. 

1852.  Napoleon  III  Emperor  of  the  French. 

1854.     Perry  (second  expedition)  landed  in  Japan.     Nicholas 
I  occupied  the  Danubian  provinces  of  Turkey.          x 
1854-56.     Crimean  War. 

1856.  Alexander  II  of  Russia. 

1857.  The  Indian  Mutiny. 
185&     Robert  Owen  died. 

1859.  Franco- Austrian  war.  Battles  of  Magenta  and  Sol- 
ferino. 

1861.  Victor  Emmanuel  First  King  of  Italy.  Abraham  Lin- 
coln became  President,  U.S.A.  The  American  Civil 
War  began. 

1863.  British  bombarded  a  Japanese  town. 

1864.  Maximilian  became  Emperor  of  Mexico. 


1120  THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 

A.D. 

1865.  Surrender  of  Appomattox  Court  House.    Japan  opened 

to  the  world. 

1866.  Prussia  and  Italy  attacked  Austria  (and  the  south  Ger- 

man states  in  alliance  with  her).     Battle  of  Sadowa. 

1867.  The  Emperor  Maximilian.shot. 

1870.  Napoleon  III  declared  war  against  Prussia. 

1871.  Paris  surrendered   (January).     The  King  of  Prussia 

became  William  I,  "German  Emperor."    The  Hohcn- 
zollern  Peace  of  Frankfort. 
1875.     The  "Bulgarian  atrocities." 

1877.  Eusso-Turkish  War.     Treaty  of  San  Stefano.     Queen 

Victoria  became  Empress  of  India. 

1878.  The  Treaty  of  Berlin.     The  Armed  Peace  of  forty-six 

years  began  in  western  Europe. 

1881.     The  Battle  of  Majuba  Hill.     The  Transvaal  free. 
1883.     Britain  occupied  Egypt. 
1886.     Gladstone's  first  Irish  Home  Rule  Bill. 
1888.     Frederick  II   (March),  William  II   (June),  German 

Emperors. 
1890.     Bismarck  dismissed.    Heligoland  ceded  to  Germany  by 

Lord  Salisbury. 
1894-5.     Japanese  war  with  China. 

1895.  "Unionist"  (Imperialist)  government  in  Britain. 

1896.  Battle  of  Adowa. 

1898.  The  Fashoda  quarrel  between  France  and  Britain.   Ger- 

many acquired  Kiau-Chau. 

1899.  The  war  in  South  Africa  began  (Boer  war). 

1900.  The  Boxer  risings  in  China."  Siege  of  the  Legations  at 

Peking. 

1904.     The  British  invaded  Tibet. 
1904-5.     Russo-Japanese  war. 

1906.  The  "Unionist"   (Imperialist)  party  in  Great  Britain 

defeated  by  the  Liberals  upon  the  question  of  tariffs. 

1907.  The  Confederation  of  South  Africa  established. 

1908.  Austria  annexed  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina. 

1909.  M.  Bleriot  flew  in  an  aeroplane  from  France  to  Eng- 

land. 

1911.  Italy  made  war  on  Turkey  and  seized  Tripoli. 

1912,  China  became  a  republic. 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE  1121 

1913.  The  Balkan  league  made  war  on  Turkey.     Bloodshed  at 

Londonderry  in  Ireland  caused  by  " Unionist"  gun 
running. 

1914.  The  Great  War  in  Europe  began  (for  which  see  special 

time  chart,  pp.  1052-53). 

1917.  The  two  Russian  revolutions.  Establishment  of  the 
Bolshevik  regime  in  Russia. 

1919-20.     The  Clemenceau  Peace  of  Versailles. 

1920.  First  meeting  of  the  League  of  Nations,  from  which 
Germany,  Austria,  Russia,  and  Turkey  were  excluded, 
and  at  which  the  United  States  was  not  represented. 

And  here  our  List  of  Events  breaks  off  with  a  note  of  interro- 
gation. 


1122 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


1123 


1124 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


CHRONOLOGICAL  TABLE 


1125 


1126 


THE  OUTLINE  OF  HISTORY 


INDEX 


KEY  TO  PRONUNCIATION 

VOWELS 

a     aa  in  far  (far),  father  (fa'  <Wr),  mikado  (mi  ka'  do). 
&       ,,   „  fat  (fat),  ample  (&mpl),  abstinence  (ab'  stin  Sn»). 
a       ,,   ,,  fate  (fat),  wait  (wat),  deign  (dan),  jade  (jad). 
aw    „   „  f all*  (f awl),  appal  (a  pawl'),  broad  (brawd). 
a       „   „  fair  (far),  bear  (bar),  where  (hwar). 

e       „   „  bell  (bel),  bury  (ber'i). 

e       „   „  her  (her),  search  (sgrch),  word  (werd),  bird  (be"rd). 

6       „   „  beef  (bef),  thief  (thef),  idea  (I  de'  d),  beer  (ber),  casino  (kd  §5'  n5).. 

i       „   „  bit  (bit),  lily  (lil'i),  nymph  (nimf),  build  (bild). 
i       „   „  bite  (bit),  analyse  (an'  d  Hz),  light  (lit). 

o  ,,  ,,  not  (not),  watch  (woch),  cough  (kof),  sorry  (sor'i). 

6  „  „  no  (no),  blow  (bio),  brooch  (broch). 

8  „  ,,  north  (north),  absorb  (db  sorb'). 

00  „  ,,  food  (food),  do  (doo),  prove  (proov),  blue  (bloo),  strew  (stroo). 

u      ,,   ,,  bull  (bul),  good  (gud),  would  (wud). 

1  ,,    ,,  sun  (sun),  love  (luv),  enough  (£nuf). 
u      ,,   ,,  muse  (mdz),  stew  (stu),  cure  (ktlr). 

ou    ,,   „  bout  (bout),  bough  (bou),  crowd  (kroud). 
oi     ,,   ,,  join  (join),  joy  (joi),  buoy  (boi). 

A  short  mark  placed  over  a,  e,  o,  or  u  (d,  f,  d,  •&)  signifies  that  the 
vowel  has  an  obscure,  indeterminate,  or  slurred  sound,  as  in:  — 

advice  (dd  vis'),  current  (kur'  £nt),  notion  (no'  shtfn), 

breakable  (bra' kdbl),     sailor  (sa' l<5r),  pleasure  (plezh'  tfr). 


CONSONANTS 

"s"  is  used  only  for  the  sibilant  "s"  (as  in  "toast,"  tost,  "place," 
plas);  the  sonant  "s"  (as  in  "toes,"  "plays")  is  printed  "z"  (toz,  plaz). 

"c"  (except  in  the  combinations  "ch"  and  "eft"),  "q"  and  "x"  are 
not  used. 

b,  d,  f,  h  (but  see  the  combinations  below),  k,  1,  m,  n  (see  n  below),  p,  r, 
t,  v,  z,  and  w  and  y  when  used  as  consonants  have  their  usual  values. 

ch   as  in  church  (chgrch),  batch  (bach),  capriccio  (ka  pre'  cho). 
ch     ,,   ,,  loch  (loch),  coronach  (kor'o  nacft),  clachan  (klacft'  an). 

g       ,,   ,,  get  (get),  finger  (fing'g£r). 

j       „   ,,  join  (join),  judge  (juj),  germ  (j&rm),  ginger  (jin'  j£r). 

gh  (in  List  of  Proper  Names  only)  as  in  Ludwig  (luf  vigh). 
hi    (       „  „  „       „     )  „     „  Llandilo  (hl&n  dl' 16), 

hw  as  in  white  (hwlt),  nowhere  (no'  hwar). 

n     .„   ,,  cabochon  (ka  bo  shon'),  conge  (kon'  zha). 

sh     „   „  shawl  (shawl),  mention  (men'shtfn). 
zh    „   ,,  measure  (mezh'  tir),  vision  (vizh'  <Jn). 

th    „   ,,  thin  (thin),  breath  (breth). 
th     „  „  thine  (thin),  breathe 


The  accent  (')  follows  the  syllable  to  be  stressed. 


INDEX 


AAR  (ar)  VALLEY,  754 
Aaronson,  Aaron,  131 
Abbasids  (d  bas'  Idz),  595,  601,  625,  628, 

636,  667,  686,  1110 
Abd  Manif  (abd  man  ef),  571 
Abdal  Malik  (abd  al  ma'  lik),  594 
Abelard,  P.,  728 
Aboukir  (a  boo  ker'),  895,  896 
Aboukir,  cruiser,  1042 
Abraham  the  Patriarch,   142,  218,  221, 

231,  232,  500,  572 
Absolutism,  768 
Abu  Bekr  (a'  boo  bek'  &),  572-73,  579- 

88,  599,  1109 
Abul  Abbas,  596,  1110 
Abul  Fazl  (a'  bool  fa'  zl),  695 
Abydos  (d  bl'  dos),  283-88 
Abyssinia,  121,  126,  986 
Abyssinian    Christians,    524,    539,    568, 

572;  language,  120 
Academie  des  Sciences,  791 
Academy,  G-reek,  299-301 
Academy  of  Inscriptions,  857 
Acre,  157,  896 

Acropolis  (d  krop'  6  lis),  257,  285 
Act  of  Union,  1017 

Actium  (ak'tiwm),  battle  of,  444,  1106 
Acts  of  the  Apostles,  510,  511 
Adam  and  Eve,  953 
Adams,  Prof.  G.  B.,  611 
Adams,  John,  849 
Adams,  Samuel,  837,  849 
Adams,  William,  991 
Addington,  903 
Aden,  126,  144,  597,  997 
Adowa  (a'dowa),  battle  of,  561,  625, 

996,  1025,  1120 
Adrianople,  481,  683,   1025;  Treaty  of, 

920 
Adriatic,  216,  331,  386,  395,  404,  468, 

489,  527,  537,  617,  644,  907,  1032 
Adriatic  river,  89,  90 
^igatian  Isles,  403,  1105 
^Egean  (e  je' dn)  cities,  177;  civilization, 

159-62,  221,  252;  Dark  Whites,  382; 

hunters,  267 


(e  ji'n<X),  285 

^Eneid  (e'  ne  id),  the,  382 

^Eolic  dialect,  252 

Aeroplanes,  3,  930,  1041,  1044 

Aeschylus  (es' kilns),  166,  1104 

Afghanistan,  120,  147,  369,  371,  547- 
49,  562,  693,  806 

Africa,  43,  81,  91,  114,  120,  121,  129,  221, 
421,  439,  674,  699;  peoples  of,  65,  81, 
108,  111,  113,  125-26,  143,  152,  158, 
177,  712;  languages  of,  124-25;  early 
trade  with,  162,  215;  Moslems  in, 
587,  590,  596,  606,  616,  628,  632,  1110; 
voyages  and  travels  in,  163,  439, 
741-43,  803;  Phoenicians  in,  381,  493, 
560;  Roman,  402,  409,  427,  467,  488, 
526;  Vandals  in,  482,  527,  536,  1108; 
slavery  in,  748,  780;  modern  exploita- 
tion of,  886-87,  979,  985,  1009 

Africa,  Central,  125,  485;  East,  29,  248; 
South  (see  South  Africa) ;  West,  165, 
768 

African  lung  fish,  21 

Agincourt,  735 

Agriculture,  early,  77,  84-87,  100,  107, 
125,  136,  196,  242;  slaves  in,  201; 
Arab  knowledge  of,  603;  in  Great 
Britain,  820-22 

Agriculturists,  206,  208,  211 

Agrimentum  (ag  ri  men'  turn),  402 

Agrippina  (ag  ri  pi'  nd),  454 

Ahriman  (a'  ri  man),  545-47 

Ainu  (I'  noo),  108,  811,  991 

Air,  the,  3,  19 

Air  Force,  595 

Aisne  (an),  1037;  battle  of  the,  612 

Aix-la-Chapelle,  627 

Akbar  (ak'  ber),  693,  805,  1115 

Akhnaton  (ak  na'  ton),  193-94.  (See 
Amenoph-is  IV) 

Akkadia  (and  Akkadians),  137,  188 

Akkadian-Sumerian  Empire,  142,  1103 

Alabama,  the,  970 

Alamanni,  480,  613,  1108 

Alans,  476,  481,  548,  1106 

Alaric  (al'drik),  481,  489,  1109 

Alaska,  1028 

Alban,  St.,  614 


1129 


1130 


INDEX 


Alban  Mount,  383 

Albania,  1044 

Albert,  Prince  Consort,  963,  1011,  1114 

Albertus  Magnus,  400 

Albigenses  (al  bi  jen'  sea),  655-58 

Alcarez  (alcar'ez),  763 

Alchemists,  731 

Alcibiades  (al  si  bi'  d  dez),  299 

Alcmseonidffi  (alk  me  on'  i  de),  264 

Alcohol,  discovery  of,  602 

Alcuin  (al'kwin),  624 

Alemanni.     (See  Alamanni) 

Aleppo.  640 

Alexander  the  Great,  141,  144,  147,  151, 
162,  194,  195,  217,  293,  302-3,  309, 
341,  342,  350,  367,  380,  387,  400, 
436,  439,  452,  470,  474,  489,  519, 
562,  616,  642,  675,  705,  755,  850,  1105; 
empire  of  (maps),  335,  339;  mother 
of,  387 

Alexander,  son  of  Alexander  the  Great, 
336 

Alexander  II,  king  of  Egypt,  430 

Alexander  I,  tsar  of  Russia,  905-8, 
913-16,  919,  941,  947,  1000-2,  1119 

Alexander  II,  tsar  of  Russia,  1119 

Alexander  III  (pope),  659-61,  1119 

Alexander  VI  (pope),  751,  1113 

Alexandretta,  322,  325 

Alexandria,  10,  325,  331,  337-38,  367, 
396,  428,  455,  461,  466,  491,  510,  532, 
535,  600,  655,  895,  899,  1108;  mu- 
seum at,  303,  343,  350,  408,  422, 
557;  culture  and  religion  of,  303,  352, 
513,  523,  602;  library  at,  344,  350; 
Serapeum,  352,  353 

Alexandrian  cities,  215 

Alexius  Comnenus  (a  lek'  si  -Us  kom  ne'- 
niis),  639-43 

Alfred,  king,  618,  707,  1111 

Algae,  7 

Algebra  (al'jebrd),  164,  602,  652 

Algeria,  75,  163,  1025 

Algiers,  687,  780,  996 

Ali  (a'le),  nephew  of  Muhammad,  572, 
573,  579,  591,  595,  628,  1109 

Alkmaar  (alk  mar'),  siege  of,  771,  773 

Allah,  571,  586,  591-92 

Allegheny  mountains,  828 

Allen,  Grant,  102 

Alp  Arslan  (alp  ars  Ian'),  636 

Alphabets,  173,  254,  361,  548,  558-60 

Alps,  the,  38,  55,  404,  407,  437,  527,  623, 
627,  646,  749 

Alsace,  480,  755,  786,  795,  972-74 

Alstadt,  736 

Altai  (al'  tl),  the,  474,  554 


Altamira  (al  id  mer'  d),  cave  of,  72; 
1102 

Aluminium,  927 

Alva,  General,  770-3 

Alyattes  (aliat'ez),  266 

Amadis  (am'  d  dis)  de  Gaul,  723 

Ambar,  696 

Amber,  72,  461 

Amenophis  (am  e  no'  fis)  II,  227 

Amenophis  III,  146,  165,  188,  192 

Amenophis  IV,  142,  165,  188,  192-94, 
197,  220,  351,  381 

America,  43,  46,  75,  165,  805,  937;  pre- 
historic, 75,  76,  82,  115,  153;  races  of, 
108,  111,  125,  154;  languages  of,  117, 
124;  discovery  of,  555-56,  560,  618, 
648  SOT.,  678,  742,  749,  801,  818,  1114; 
European  settlements  in,  801-4,  821- 
23,  826-40,  850,  1116.  (See  also 
United  States) 

America,  Central,  drawings,  153 

America,  South,  153,  724,  743,  746-48, 
916,  983,  1115-18 

American  Indians,  85,  94,  107,  113,  124- 
26,  153,  171,  724,  746,  804,  991 

American  king-crab,  8;  picture  writing, 
153 

Amiens,  1050;    Peace  of,  490,  492 

Amir,  684 

Amman  (Philadelphia),  541-43 

Ammon,  192,  193,  325,  341,  351,  523 

Ammonites,  33 

Ammonites,  a  people,  232 

Amceba  (dme'bd),  13 

Amorites,  138,  218 

Amos  the  prophet,  233 

Amphibia,  22,  24,  26,  38-39,  42 

Amphictyonies  (am  fik'  ti  6n  iz),  263, 
569,  573 

Amphion,  cruiser,  1036 

Amphipolis  (am  fip'  6  lis),  314 

Amritzar  (am  rit'  srfr),  982 

Amur  (a  moor'),  809 

Anabaptists,  715-20,  1115 

Anabasis  (d  nab'  d  sis),  the,  290 

Anagni  (a  nan'  ye),  663,  1113 

Anatolia,  636,  682 

Anatolian  peninsula,  544 

Anatomy,  343,  344,  733 

Anaxagoras  (an  dk  sag'  d  ras),  296, 
302-7 

Andaman  (an'  dd  man)  Islands,  109 

Andes,  38 

Angelo,  St.,  1109 

Angles,  482,  526,  614,  619,  630 

Anglia,  East,  605 

Anglo-Norman  feudalism,  608 


INDEX 


1131 


"Anglo-Saxon,"  1012 

Anglo-Saxons,  492,  526,  532,  611,   690, 

709 
Animals,  8,   14,    17-18,    20-22,    40,    42, 

48,  50,  77,  81,  83,  87,  96,  196.     (See 

also  Mammals) 
Anio,  the,  392,  531 
Anna  Comnena  (kom  ne'  nd),  644 
Annam,  554,  561,  811,  994,  996 
Anne,  queen,  781 
Anselm,  St.,  728 
Antarctic  birds,  32 
Antigonus  (an  tig'  6  ntXs),  337 
Antimony,  80 
Antioch,  457,  511,  525,  538,  542,   585, 

642,  1107 
Antiochus   (anti'tfktfs)  III,  406,   413, 

415 

Antiochus  IV,  496 
Antonines,  455,  460,  466,  470,  1106 
Antoninus  (an  to  ni'  nws),  Marcus  Aure- 

lius,  455,  457,  469,  712,  1107 
Antoninus  Pius,  455,  463,  1107 
Antony,  442,  444 
Antwerp,  736,  741 
Anu,  188 

Anubis  (d  nu'  bis),  Egyptian  god,  179 
Anytus  (an'ittfs),  299 
Apamea  (ap  d  me'  d) ,  542 
Apes,  49,  51,  54,  175;  anthropoid,  44,  47, 

48 

Apion,  430 

Apis  (a'  pis),  324,  451,  512 
Apollinaris  Sidonius,  527 
Apollo,  263,  273,  532 
Apollonius  (a  po  16'  ni  t/s),  343 
Appian  Way,  394,  436 
Apples,  85 

Appomattox  Court  House,  971,  1119 
Aquileia  (akwela'yd),  395,  487 
Aquinas  (d  kwl'  nds),  728 
Arabia,  81,  91,  120,   121,  126,  133,  142, 

163,  173,  214,  220,  233,  342,  461,  539, 

544,  554,  567,  569,  571,  577,  582,  584, 

591,  616,  640,  660.     (See  also  Arabs) 
Arabian  Nights,  the,  597 
Arabic  language  and  literature,  121,  122, 

459,  594,  596,  599,  718 
Arabs,  275,  494,  554,  567,  574,  582,  585, 

593,  596,  603,  606,  625,  675,  708,  718; 

culture  of,  600,  726 
Aral  sea,  120,  126,  329,  731 
Aral-C?spian  region,  267 
Arameans,  139,  201,  206,  494,  551,  567 
Arbela   (arbe'ld),   battle  of,   327,   411, 

1104 
Arcadius,  482,  1108 


Archaeopteryx  (ar  ke  op'  t£r  iks),  32 
Archseozoic    (ar  ke  6  zo'  ik)    period,    7. 

(See  also  Azoic) 
Archers,  182,  314 
Archimedes  (ar  ki  me'  dez),  345,  408, 

463 

Architecture,  625,  736 
Arctic  birds,  32;  circle,  553;  Ocean,  120; 

seas,  702 

Ardashir  (ar  dasher'),  I,  538,  546,  1107 
Ardennes,  1037 
Argentine  republic,  127,  983 
Argon,  680 
Argonne,  875 
Argos,  388 

Ariadne  (ariad'ni),  161 
Arians  (ar'  i  dnz),  515,  522 
Aridaeus  (ar  i  de'  #s),  318,  336 
Aristagoras  (ar  is  tag'  6  ras),  289 
Aristarchus,  326 

Aristides  (ar  is  tl'  dez),  263,  285,  294 
Aristocracy,  135,  208,  258 
Aristodemus  (dr  is  id  de'  m#s),  284 
Aristophanes  (ar  is  tof  d  nez),  166,  1104 
Aristotle,    165,    256,    264,    301-9,    321, 

325,  334,  340,  343,  350,  372,  424,  459, 

491,  600,  601,  653,  705,  726,  730,  795; 

Politics  of,  258-62,  396,  398 
Arithmetic,  164-65 
Arius  (drl'tfs),  515,  522 
Arizona,  1028 
Ark  of  bulrushes,  155 
Ark  of  the  Covenant,  188,  222-26 
Aries  (arl),  522,  530,  1107 
Armadillo,  giant,  76,  153 
Armenia    (and    the    Armenians),    240, 

268,    337,    436,    452,    455,    475,    476, 

524,    537,    541,    628,    636,    675,    679, 

682,  712 

Armenian  language,  118,  240 
Arno,  385,  394,  395 
Arras,  869,  1039 
Arrow,  437 

Arrow  heads,  77,  78,  85,  100 
Arrow  straighteners,  69-74 
Arsacids  (arsas'idz),  452-537,  1107 
Arses,  290 
Art,    Buddhist,    367;    Cretan,    159-60; 

Neolithic,  98;  Paleolithic,  71,  74,  93, 

99 

Artabanus  (ar  id  ba'  nws),  283 
Artaxerxes  II,  290,  306 
Artaxerxes  III,  290 
Artillery,  314,  684 
Artisans,  206-12 
Artois  (ar  twa'),  Count  of.    (See  Charles 

X) 


1132 


INDEX 


Aryan,  languages  and  literature,  104, 
118,  121,  127,  129,  236,  238,  239,  243, 

329,  381,    797;  peoples   and    civiliza- 
tions, 99,  118,  125,  134,  142,  186,  190, 
221,  236,  239,  243,  255,  265-66,  268, 

330,  354,    381,    382,    472,    476,    480, 
485,  703,  726,  740,  746 

Aryan  Way,  the,  355,  361,  371,  379,  384 

As,  Roman  coin,  400 

Ascalon,  221 

Asceticism,  359 

Ashdod,  189,  221 

Ashtaroth  (ash'  td  roth),  222,  225,  227 

Asia,  general  and  early  period,  43,  49, 
55,  56,  65,  75,  81,  87,  119,  121-26, 
143,  214,  239,  265,  267,  464,  474,  478, 
484,  545,  548,  636,  662,  666-69,  675, 
712,  726,  742,  797,  936,  990,  1107; 
Greeks  in,  274,  318,  331,  337;  Romans 
in,  338,  412,  430,  461,  468;  tribes 
and  people  of,  437,  472,  480,  674, 
687,  694,  696,  809,  815;  Christianity 
in,  447,  519,  524,  538,  634,  675, 
678;  Turks  in,  539-40,  589,  593,  616, 
628,  630,  681,  683;  voyages  and  trav- 
els in,  548,  561,  743,  749,  988 

Asia,   Central,   75,    108,    125,    126,   239, 

267,  469,  597,  699,  749,  809;  tribes, 
people,  and  civilization  of,  133,  329, 
435,  525,  688 

Asia,  Eastern,  108,  111 

Asia,  Southeastern,  languages  of,  123 

Asia,  Western,  68,  114,  667,  725;  tribes, 

people,  and  civilization  of,  111,  112, 

164,  177,  725 
Asia    Minor,    80,    119,    165,    208,    239, 

268,  275,  337,  443-45,  449,  538,  543, 
594,  673,  697;  tribes  and  people  of, 
135,     158,     239,     265-66,  330,     382; 
Greeks  in,   252,   254,   259,   265,   289, 
1107;  Gauls  in,  337,  384,  1105;  Turks 
in,  596,  598,  636,  667,  674,  681 

Asiatics,  intellectual  .status  of,  988 

Asoka  (aso'ka),  King,  142,  350,  368, 
369,  421,  549,  564,  693,  1105 

Aspasia  (as  pa'  shi  d),  293,  298 

Asquith,  Rt.  Hon.  H.  H.,  1020,  1040 

Ass,  wild,  163 

Assam,  980 

Assisi  (a  se'  zi),  658 

Assur,  139,  351 

Assurbanipal.    (See  Sardanapalus) 

Assyria  (and  Assyrians),  139-40,  146, 
151,  161,  168,  183-92,  197,  202,  218, 
229-33,  266-67,  269,  275,  290,  325, 
326,  381,  455,  494,  794,  1103 

Assyrian  language  and  writing,  120,  172 


Asteroids,  2 

Astrologers,  731 

Astronomy,  2,  184,  307,  602,  675,  731 

Athanasius,  515,  522 

Atheism,  879 

Athene  (d  the'ne),  296 

Athens,  204,  252-65,  280-301,  315,  319, 
321,  327,  391,  394,  400,  464,  511,  543, 
1007,  1025,  1045;  social  and  political, 
166,  258-60,  296,  298-301,  310-12, 
393,  395,  706 ;  literature  and  learning, 
291,  309,  342,  343,  348,  534,  557,  1108 

Atkinson,  C.  F.,  872 

Atkinson,  J.  J.,  59,  95,  885 

Atlantic  Ocean,  55,  88,  90,  108,  119,  461, 
560,  588,  648,  749,  817;  navigation  of, 
163,  741,  743,  746,  924,  1114 

Atlantosaurus  (at  Ian  to  saw'  ri/s),  29 

Atmosphere,  3,  6 

Aton  (a'  ton),  Egyptian  god,  193 

Atonement,  499,  511 

Attalus  (at'dhzs),  317 

Attalus  I,  338 

Attalus  III,  338,  430,  1105 

Attica  (at'i  kd),  280-81,  391 

Attila  (at'ild),  485,  529,  550,  607,  1108 

Aughrim,  battle  of,  1015 

Augsburg,  761-65 

Augurs,  Roman,  397 

Augustine,  St.,  Bishop  of  Hippo,  514, 
525,  526,  637,  1108 

Augustus  Caesar,  Roman  Emperor,  448, 
452,  463,  470,  520,  640,  1106 

Aurangzeb.     (See  Aurungzeb) 

Aurelian,  emperor,  455,  481,  523,  538, 
1107 

Aurignacian  (aw  rig  na'  shun)  age,  73, 
243 

Aurungzeb  (aw  rung  zab'),  693,  805,  979, 
1116 

Ausculum,  battle  of,  387,  1105 

Austerlitz,  905,  1118 

Australia,  62,  152,  556,  979,  983,  997; 
aborigines  of,  109-11 

Australian  language,  129;  lung-fish,  22; 
throwing-stick,  69 

Australoids,  111,  125,  152 

Austrasia,  610,  612 

Austria,  755,  759,  783,  792-95,  801,  826, 
859,  865,  872,  974;  wars  with  France, 
872,  876,  894,  899,  905,  911,  1119; 
war  with  Prussia,  970-72,  1120;  in 
Great  War,  1033,  1050,  1080,  1120 

Autocracy,  290,  774 

Automobiles,  930 

Avars,  487,  491,  537,  541,  589,  612,  632, 
673 


INDEX 


1133 


Avebury,  83,  142,  383 

Avebury,  Lord,  78,  80,  83 

Averroes  (a  ver'  6  ez),  601,  658,  726,  728, 

1112 

Avicenna  (av  i  sen'  d),llll 
Avignon  (a  ve  nyon'),  649,  663,  687,  708, 

1113 

Axes,  ancient,  77,  80,  85,  101 
Axis  of  earth,  44 
Ayesha  (I'^shd),  577,  591 
Azilian  age,  69,  73,  74,  89,  103,  119 
Azoic  (a  zo'  ik)  period,  7,  11,  14 
Azores,  741 
Aztecs,  746 

B 

BAAL,  180,  222,  230 

Baalbek  (bal  bek'),  542,  568 

Babel,  Tower  of,  136 

Baber,  693,  755,  805,  1114 

Baboons,  49,  50,  175  V     ^    t^ 

Babylon  (and  Babylonia),  138,  147,  164, 

168,  172,  188,  200,  205,  209,  217,  218, 

229,  232,  266,  270,  274,  289,  290,  307, 
^325,  327,  331,  336,  350,  355,  363,  376, 

384,  428,  437,  439,  461,  494,  506,  541- 

45,  551,  552,  567,  636,  691,  824,  886, 

1102-5;     religion   of,    181,    183     188, 

189,  217,  234,  341,  369 
Bacchus,  445 
Bacharaeh,  737 
Back  Bay,  837 
Bacon,  Francis,  Lord  Verulam,  302,  733, 

1115 

Bacon,  Roger,  230,  233,  923,  1115 
Bactria     (and    Bactrians),     337,     475, 

537 

Baden,  971 
Badr    (bad'er),    battle    of,    573,    592, 

1109 

Baedeker,  793 
Baganda,  152 
Bagaudse,  716 
Bagdad,  596,  602,  625,  628,  636,  640,  645, 

667,  674,  687,  691,  1032,  1044,  1110, 

1113 

Bagoas  (bagS'as),  290 
Bahamas,  §04,  998 
Baikal  (bikal'),  670 
Baldwin  of  Flanders,  646,  770 
Balearic  Isles,  482 
Balfour,  Rt.  Hon.  A.  J.,  1068 
Balkan  peninsula,  75,  120,  142,  239,  252, 

267,  337,  485,  623,  682,  699,  740,  973, 

1024,  1032,  1102,  1120 
Balkash,  lake,  669 


Balkh,  679 

Ball,  John,  716 

Balliol  College,  660 

Balloons,  3 

Baltic  Sea,  45,  75,  120,  126,  440,  461,  468, 
476,  480,  617,  618,  630,  635,  689,  739, 
786,  816,  1048 

Baltimore,  Lord,  829 

Baluchistan.     (See  Beluchistan) 

Bambyce  (bam  bl'  se),  542 

Bannockburn,  735 

Bantu,  124,  129,  135 

Barbados,  803 

Barbarians,  817-18 

Barbarossa,  Frederick.  (See  Frederick 
I,  emperor) 

Barca  family,  405 

Barcelona,  616,  736 

Bards,  175,  243-44 

Barley,  84,  242,  485 

Baroda  (baro'dcX),  806 

Barons,  Revolt  of  the,  774 

Barras  (bara'),  883,  894 

Barrows,  82,  236,  241,  245 

Barry,  Comtesse  du.     (See  Du  Barry) 
Basle,  Council  of,  664,  712,  1114 
Basque  language,   127,    129,    135,    236; 

race,  127,  129,  238,  1014 
Basra,  601,  1044 
Bassompierre,  863 
Bastille,  858,  1118 
Basu,  Bhupendranath,  248,  251 
Basutoland,  998 
Batavian  Republic,  891 
Bats,  29 

Bauernstand,  209 
Bavaria  (and  Bavarians),  613,  621,  735, 

971,  1009 
Bayezid    (bl  e  zed')    II,    Sultan,    685, 

1114 
Baylen,  907 
Bazaine,  General,  971 
Beaconsfield,  Earl  of,  782,  973,  981 
Bears,  52,  57,  71,  73 
Beauharnais,  Josephine  de,  894,  908 
Beauty,  artistic,  160 
Beaver,  European,  52 
Beazley,  Raymond,  631 
Bede,  the  Venerable,  529,  614,  1110 
Bedouins,  206,  218,  544,  568,  574,  576, 

582,  589 
Beech,  fossil,  37 
Bees,  37 
Behar,  1105 

Behring  Straits,  76,  125,  126 
Bektashi,  order  of  dervishes,  683 
Bel,  189,  222,  274 


INDEX 


Belgium,  610,  642,  754,  771,  872,  876, 

883,  891,  914,  919,  1032,  1034,  1037, 

1113 

Belisarius,  532 

B:llerophon  (be  ler' <5fon),  frigate,  915 
Bel-Marduk    (bel  mar'  dook),  189,   193, 

327,  351,  523 
Belshazzar,  190,  274 
Beluchistan  (bel  oo  chi  stan') ,  997;  lan- 
guages of,  135 
Benaiah,  226 
Benares  (bena'rez),  356,  360,  365,  384, 

475,  549 
Benedict,    St.,     531,     635,     600,     660, 

1109 

Benedictines,  533,  723 
Beneventum,  388 
Bengal,   250,  331,   355,  357,  693,   806, 

808 

Bengal,  Bay  of,  126 
Benin,  420 

Benjamin,  tribe  of,  223 
Beowulf  (ba'  6  wulf),  245,  251 
Berar,  693 

Berber  language,  121-25,  238 
Berbers,  152 
Bergen,  736,  739,  741 
Berkeley,  George,  1016 
Berliere,  532 
Berlin,    Treaty    of,    974,    1000,    1071, 

1120 

Bermuda,  998 
Bernard,  brother,  658 
Bes,  Egyptian  god,  179 
Bessemer  process,  926 
Bessus,  satrap,  328 
Bethlehem,  498 
Beth-shan,  225 
Bhurtpur  (bhgrt  poorO,  805 
Bible,  the,  139,  222,  228,  342,  350,  494, 

496,  625,  656,  660,  709,  710,  718,  720, 

725,  766,  794 
Birch  tree,  37 
Birds,  3,  29,  32,  40 

Birkenhead,  Lord.  (See  Smith,  Sir  F.  E.) 
Birth-rate  in  ancient  Athens,  264 
Biscay,  Bay  of,  905 
Bismarck,  Prince,  968,  971,  1004,  1007, 

1120 

Bison  (bl'stfn),  52,  57,  70,  71,  75,  153 
Bithynia,  337,  415,  430,  436,  441,  488, 

521 

Black  Death,  712,  1113 
Black  Friars,  658 
Black  Hundred,  958 
Black  lead,  7 
Black  Prince,  735 


Black  Sea,  89,  120,  126,  142,  202,  239, 

253,  266,  289,  294,  337,  437,  440,  476, 

480,  521,  527,  542,  631,  635,  640,  672 
Blake,  Admiral,  780,  806 
Bleriot,  M.,  1120 
Blind  bards,  244 
Blood  sacrifice,  511,  513,  708 
Blue  Mountains,  828 
Blucher,  Marshal,  914 
Blues,  faction  of  the,  797 
Blunt,  W.  S.,  Ill 
B6  Tree,  360,  371 
Boadicea  (b5  &  de  se'  <X),  454,  1106 
Boars,  52 

Boats,  153-59.     (See  also  Ships) 
Body,  painting  of,  71 
Bceotia  (beo'shid),  285 
Boer  Republics,  987,  1008,  1013 
Boer  War,  417,  958,  1008 
Boethius  (bo  e'  thi  tzs),  602 
Bohemia    (and    Bohemians),    482,    616, 

640,  711,  712,  720,  785 
Bohemond,  644 

Bokhara  (bo  kha'ra),  474,  601,  670,  678 
Boleyn,  Anne,  761 
Bolivar  (bol'  i  var),  General,  916 
Bologna  (b5lon'ya),  724,  726,  736,  760 
Bolshevists,  947,  1048,  1057,  1060 
Bombay,  807 

Bonaparte,  Joseph,  904,  907,  916,  1119 
Bonaparte,  Louis,  904 
Bonaparte,  Lucien,  897 
Bonaparte,  Napoleon.    (See  Napoleon  I) 
Boncelles  (bon  sel'),  51 
Bone  carvings,  73-4;  implements,  69,  74, 

85,  613,  616 
Boniface,  St.,  1110 
Boniface  VIII,  Pope,  662,  1112 
Boniface,  Roman  Governor,  484 
Book-keeping,  Aramean,  200 
Books,   195,  344,  348,  718.      (See  also 

Printing) 
Bordeaux,  736 
Borgia,  Alexander.     (See  Alexander  VI, 

Pope) 

Borgia,  Ccesar  and  Lucrezia,  751 
Boris,  king  of  Bulgaria,  635,  1110 
Borneo,  115,  560 
Bosnia,  1009,  1120 
Bosphorus,  89,  119,  252,  253,  265,  275, 

279,  282,  288,  322,  489,  521,  540,  542, 

594,  596,  642,  682 
Bosses,  American,  258 
Boston,  Mass.,  836,  840 
Bostra,  544 
Botany  Bay,  979 
Botticelli  (bot  i  chel'  i),  740 


INDEX 


1135 


Boulogne,  736,  904 

Bourbon,  Constable  of,  759,  1114 

Bourbon,  Duke  of,  859 

Bourbons,  900,  913 

Bourgeois  (boorzhwa'),  Leon,  1073-76 

Bournville,  942 

Bow  and  arrow,  74,  85,  437 

Bowmen,  Mongol,  679 

Boxer  rising,  989,  990 

Boyle,  Robert,  927,  1016 

Boyne,  battle  of  the,  1015,  1116 

Brachiopods  (brak'  i  6  podz),  8,  18 

Brachy cephalic    (brak  i  se  fal'  ik)    skull, 

113 

Brahe  (bra'M),  Tycho,  732,  1115 
Brahma,  374,  694 
Brahminism    (and    Brahmins),    211-13, 

564-5-6,   355-6,   365,   308,   378,   549, 

669,  697,  805,  980 
Brain,  43,  58,  67 
Brandenburg,  elector  of,  786 
Brass,  80 

Brazil,  747,  748,  755,  971 
Bread  in  Neolithic  Age,  84 
Bread-fruit  tree,  37 
Breasted,  J.  H.,  198 
Breathing,  19,  24 
Bremen,  634,  736-39 
Brennus,  385,  1104 
Breslau,  736 

Brest-Litovsk  (brest  le  tov'  sk),  1049 
Breton  language,  238 
Briareus  (bri'  a  roos),  216 
Brienne,  892 

Brindisi  (bren'  de  ze),  632 
Bristol,  713 
Britain,  45,  83,  97,  214,  422,  463,  534, 

606,  616,  630;  invasions  of,  481,  526, 

1108;  Roman,  165,  166,  435,  439,  451- 

55,  492,  605,  614,   1106;  Keltic,  482. 

(See  also  England  and  Great  Britain) 
British  Association,  955 
British  Civil  Air  Transport  Commission, 

930 
British    Empire     (1815),    977,     (1914), 

997-99 

British  Empire,  political  life  of,  424 
British  Museum,  935 
"British"  nationality,  1012 
"British  schools,"  934 
Britons,  ancient.     (See  Britain) 
Brittany,  115,  482,  616,  755 
Broglie,  Marshal  de,  858 
Brontosaurus  (bron  td  saw'  rws) ,  27 
Bronze,  79,  88,  153,  242;  Chinese  vessels 

of,  150;  ornaments,  85;  weapons,  80 
Bronze  Age,  80,  101,  103,  142,  144,  157 


Brown,  Campbell,  602 

Bruce,  Robert  the,  735 

Bruges  (broozh),  736,  739,  770 

Brunellesco  (broo  ne  les'  ko),  740 

Brunswick,  Duke  of,  872,  875 

Brussels,  876,  1037 

Brutus,  421,  443 

Bubonic  plague,  529 

Buda-Pesth  (boo'  dd  pest),  760 

Buddha  (bud'  d),  142,  212,  358,  360,  371, 
376,  462,  497,  505,  513,  530,  545,  547, 
564-65,  657,  842,  1105;  life  of,  354 
sgg.;  teaching  of,  311,  360,  375,  939 

Buddhism,  212,  350,  355,  505,  530,  548- 
49,  553,  559,  564-65,  572,  667,  669, 
675,  679,  687,  810.  (See  also  Buddha) 

Buddhist  art,  366 

Budge,  Wallis,  144,  192 

Buffon,  Comte  de,  954 

Building,  144 

Bulgaria  (and  Bulgarians),  451,  481, 
527,  589,  623,  634,  637,  661,  682,  690, 
973,  1024,  1025,  1043,  1051,  1110 

Bulgarian  atrocities,  1120 

Bulgarian  language,  238 

Bull  fights,  Cretan,  215 

Bunbury,  162 

Burgerstand,  239 

Burgoyne,  General,  837 

Burgundy  (and  Burgundians) ,  432,  527, 
612,  735,  755,  770,  795,  865 

Burial,  early,  63,  71,  81,  93,  100,  143, 
236,  241,  245 

Burke,  Edmund,  1016 

Burmah  (and  Burmese),  85,  148,  678, 
811,  997 

Burmese  language,  123 

Burnet,  297 

Burning  the  dead,  241 

Bushman  language,  129 

Bushmen,  72,  111,  168 

Butter  in  Neolithic  Age,  84 

Butterflies,  14,  37 

Buxar,  808,  1117 

Byzantine  architecture,  625 

Byzantine  church.    (See  Greek  Church) 

Byzantine  Empire,  451,  489,  540,  557, 
582-85,  589,  592,  603,  606,  618,  623, 
624,  628-33,  636,  638,  644,  1109-11 

Byzantium  (bi  zan'  tyum),  323,  556, 
583,  590,  601,  622,  626,  638,  666,  698, 
797.  (See  also  Constantinople) 


CABUL  (ka' bul) ,  328,  693 
Cadbury,  Messrs.,  942 


1136 


INDEX 


Cadiz  (ka'  diz),  895 

Caen  (kan),  870 

Caesar,  title,  etc.,  455,  492,  512,  516,  619, 

624 
Csesar,   Julius,   84,   103,   142,   341,   398, 

419,  424,  436,  440,  447,  458,  463,  470, 

618,  895,  897 
Csesars,  the,  454,  467,  488 
Cahors,  757 

Caiaphas  (kl'dids),  508 
Caillaux,  M.,  1033 
Cainozoic   (kl  nd  zo'  ik)   period,   10,   12, 

33,  35,  40,  43,  49 
Cairo,  601,  602 
Calabria,  409,  632,  633 
Calcutta,  807 
Calder,  Admiral,  905 
Calendar,  the,  99 
Calicut,  743,  807 
California,  206 

Caligula  (kalig'uld),  454,  1106 
Caliphs,   581,  584,  589,   600,   607,  625, 

628,  636,  685,  704,  1110,  1114 
Callicratidas  (ka  li  kra'  ti  das),  321 
Callimachus  (kd  lim'  d  kus),  345 
Callisthenes  (kd  Us'  the  nez),  334 
Calmette,  1033 
Calonne,  857-868 
Cambodia,  561 
Cambridge,    University    of,    459,    964, 

1011 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  838 
"Cambulac,"  679 

Cambyses  (kambl'sez),  274,  324,  1104 
Camels,  43,  163,  272 
Camillus  (cd  mil'  us),  393,  430,  433,  1104 
Campanella,  766 
Campo  Formio,  peace  of,  895 
Camptosaurus  (kamp  id  saw'  rus),  27 
Canaan  (and  the  Canaanites),  218,  567 
Canada,  7,   127,   805,  826-33,  839,  978, 

983,  997,  999,  1117 
Canary  Isles,  741 
Candahar,  331 
Candles,  ceremonial,  353 
Cannae   (kan'e),    battle    of,    408,    411, 

1105 

Cannes,  914 

Cannibalism,  236,  743,  746 
Cannon,  785-817 
Canoes,  156 
Canterbury,   613;   archbishops  of,   614, 

1110 

Canton,  554,  561 
Canusium  (cd  nuz'  i  &m),  464 
Canute,  630,  1111 
Cape  Colony,  987 


Capernaum,  507 

Capet  (kapa'),  Hugh,  626,  735,  1111 

Capitalism,  726,  824,  935,  943,  1056 

Caporetto,  battle  of,  1049 

Cappadocia,  337,  541,  544 

Capua  (kap'  u  d),  408,  435 

Cardinals,  663,  687 

Caria  (ka'  ri  d),  317-18,  542 

Caribou  (kar  i  boo'),  58,  94,  107 

Carlo vingians,  621,  1110,  1111 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  792,  861  sqq.,  881 

Carnac,  82,  242 

Carnivores,  early  type  of,  43 

Carnivorous  animals,  31 

Carnot  (kar  no'),  L.  N.  M.,  883,  894 

Carolina,  803,  829,  831,  836 

Carpathians,  634 

Carrhse,  437,  468,  537,  1106 

Carson,  Sir  Edward,  262,  958,  1019,  1022 

Carthage  (and  the  Carthaginians),  142, 
158,  162-63,  184,  215,  232,  253,  324, 
342,  380,  383,  388,  428,  440,  444,  461, 
478,  488,  493,  495,  606,  653,  704,  740, 
1103-8;  war  with  Rome,  388,  401,  417 

Carvings,  Palaeolithic.     (See  Art) 

Casement,  Sir  Roger,  1023 

Cash,  Chinese,  551 

Caspian  Sea,  -9,  97,  119,  126,  239,  267, 
275,  329,  430,  436,  439,  476,  480, 
548,  554,  631,  670,  713,  1104,  1105, 
1106,  1112 

Caspian-Pamir  region,  496 

Cassander,  337 

Cassiodorus  (kas  i  6  dor'  us),  533,  535, 
600,  605,  1109 

Cassiterides  (kas  i  ter'  i  dez),  163 

Cassius,  Spurius,  392 

Caste,  210,  211 

Castile,  744,  755 

Castlemaine,  Lady,  781 

Cat,  43,  175 

Catalonians,  741 

Catapult,  314 

Caterpillars,  62 

Cathars,  655 

"Cathay,"  679 

Catnerine  the  Great,  792,  813,  816,  849, 
1117 

Catherine  II,  800,  905 

Catholicism,  702,  709,  719,  728,  750, 
765,  783,  789,  798,  829,  1014,  1015, 
1018 

Catiline,  441 

Cato,  Marcus  Porcius,  405,  409,  412, 
417,  421,  428,  457 

Cattle,  52,  75,  163.     (See  also  Animals) 

Caucasian  languages,  118,  135 


INDEX 


1137 


Caucasians,  110-16,  118-26,  702 
Caucasus    (kaw'  kd  sus),    80,    128,    275, 

541 

Caudine  Forks,  1105 
Cavaliers,  777,  778 
Cavalry,  314 
Cave    drawings,    73-4;    dwellings,    236; 

men,  50,  54,  57,  67 
Cavour,  968 
Cawnpore,  981 
Caxton,  William,  717 
Celebes  (sel'  e  bez),  pile  dwellings,  82 
Celibacy,  352,  638,  709 
Celt-Iberian  script,  173 
Celtic.     (See  Keltic) 
Celts,  bronze,  101 
Cenotaph  (Whitehall),  1081 
Ceremonies,  early  use  of,  97 
Cervantes  (ser  van'  tea) ,  700 
Ceylon,  360,  371,  462,  562,  806,  998 
Chseronea  (ker  6  ne"  d),  battle    of,    312, 

315,  1104 

Chalcedon  (kal  se'  don),  523,  539 
Chaldea  (and  the  Chaldeans),  140,  146, 

147,  190,  207,  230,  260,  292,  327,  437, 

567,  1103 

Chaldean  writing,  172 
Chalons,  867 

Champagne,  depart.,  1040,  1048 
Chancellor,  Lord,  of  England,  721 
Chandernagore,  807 
Chandragupta  (chan  dra  goop' ta),  368, 

380,  1105 

Chang  Daoling,  371 
Chang-tu,  373 
Channa,  the  charioteer,  356 
Channing,  840,  882 
Chapman,  G.,  245 
Charcoal,  824 

Chariots,  138,  247,  314,  326 
Charlemagne,  emperor,  371,  481,  553-54, 

612-16-18-19,  634,  660-62,  675,  693, 

707,  755,  763,  767,  788,  904,  1110 
Charles  V,  emperor,  700,  722,  739  sqq., 

755,  770,  783,  793,  1114-15 
Charles  I,  king  of  England,  768-75-78- 

81,  787,  791,  803,  829,  862 
Charles  II,  king  of  England,  733,  780, 

788,  794,  803,  829 
Charles  VII,  king  of  France,  735 
Charles  IX,  king  of  France,  829 
Charles  X,  king  of  France,  917 
Charles  III,  king  of  Spain,  816 
Charlotte  Dundas,  steamboat,  924 
Charmides  (kar'  mi  dez),  299 
Charon,  421 
Charter  House,  London,  713 


Chateau- Thierry,  1050 

Chateauroux,  Duchess  of,  791 

Chatham,  Earl  of.    (See  Pitt,  William) 

Cheese,  84 

Chellean  age,  46,  52,  58-60,  66 

Chelles,  58 

Chemistry,  602 

Chemosh  (ke'mosh),  227 

Chen,  L.  Y.,  154,  171 

Chen,  Tuan,  372 

Cheops  (ke'ops),  144 

Chephren  (kef'ren),  144,  190-91 

Cherry-tree,  436 

Chieftains,  103,  247 

Child  labour,  941 

Chimpanzee,  47,  51,  163 

Chin,  absence  of,  54 

China,  62,  78,  85,  126,  371,  461,  547, 
549,  582,  677,  694,  735,  749,  810; 
history  (early  history  and  great  age  of) , 
142,  148-51,  195,  213,  329,  331,  457, 
469-76,  537,  540,  550-55,  1103,  1107, 
1109;  (10th  to  18th  century),  666,  667- 
79,  694,  698,  712,  810,  815,  1112,  1113; 
(20th  century),  988-96,  1120;  Chris- 
tianity in,  672,  725;  civilization  and 
culture,  112,  115,  142,  148,  213,  251, 
257,  525,  547,  550,  554  sqq.,  603,  666, 
707,  719;  other  religions  of,  195,  366, 
369,  373,  375,  810;  social,  428,  550, 
991.  (See  also  Chow,  Han,  Kin,  Ming, 
Shang,  Sung,  Suy,  Tang,  Tsing,  Wei, 
and  Yuan  dynasties) 

China,  Great  Wall  of,  152,  213,  455,  562, 
1105 

Chinese,  the,  47,  125;  classics,  170,  558; 
coinage,  551;  emperor,  183,  195,  485; 
language,  123,  126,  129,  168,  170,  559; 
script,  169,  172,  214,  558,  811 

Chios  (kl'os),  643 

Chnemu,  Egyptian  god,  182 

Chosroes  (koz' ro  ez)  I,  539,  588,  765, 
1109 

Chosroes  II,  452,  539,  544,  568,  646,  1110 

Chow  dynasty,  142,  150,  151,  195,  372, 
1103 

Christ.     (See  Jesus  of  Nazareth) 

Christian  IX,  968 

Christian  era,  1106 

Christian  science,  726 

Christianity,  235,  449,  493,  538,  690,  720, 
794,  814,  954,  956;  history  (early),  423, 
511  sqq.,  522,  524,  616,  618,  1107; 
(middle  ages),  615,  628,  637-40,  650, 
659,  711;  and  Buddhism,  368,  379;  and 
Islam,  579,  581,  593  sqq.,  598,  645, 
675,  710;  and  Judaism,  708;  and  learn- 


1138 


INDEX 


ing,  531  sqq. ;  missions  and  propaganda, 
420,  554,  613,  675,  687,  707,  900,  933- 
34,  991-92;  official,  523  sqq.,  619,  814, 
953;  ritual  of,  353,  378,  467,  513,  523, 
653,  708,  716;  sects,  516,  667,  677; 
spirit  of,  352,  467,  499,  716,  938.  (See 
also  Jesus  of  Nazareth) 

Chronicles,  book  of  the,  222 

Chronology,  615 

Ch'u,  state  of,  151 

Church,  the,  521,  525,  602,  650,  652,  655, 
661,  708,  722,  732,  734,  821,  1113-14 

Churches,  orientation  of,  183 

Churchill,  Rt.  Hon.  Winston,  1044 

Cicero,  M.  Tullius,  419,  423,  443,  446 

Cilicia,  419,  541,  636,  643,  679 

Cilician  Gates,  597,  642 

Cimmerians,  239,  266,  268,  330,  472,  682 

Cincinnatus,  Order  of,  901 

Circumcision,  112 

Cistercian  order,  709 

Citizenship,  259,  261 

City  States,  Chinese,  151;  Greek,  256, 
264,  306,  307,  312,  388;  Sumerian,  137 

Civilization,  556,  698,  704,  716,  767; 
Aegean,  159-63;  Hellenic,  254  sqq.; 
prehistoric,  111,  240  sqq. ,  246-48 ;  prim- 
itive, 153,  251,  702.  (See  also  Culture) 

Clans,  242 

Class  consciousness,  935,  944;  distinc- 
tion, 134,  209;  war,  210 

Classes,  social,  204,  213 

Classics,  study  of  the,  928 

Classification,  726 

Claudius,  emperor  (A.D.  41-54),  454, 
1106 

Claudius,  emperor  (A.D.  268-270),  481, 
1106 

Claudius,  Appius,  decemvir,  392 

Claudius,  Appius,  the  Censor,  394-98 

Claudius,  Consul,  401 

Clay  documents,  136,  144,  189;  model- 
ling, Palaeolithic,  73 

Clemenceau,  G.  B.,  1068-71,  1120 

Clement  V  (pope),  663,  1113 

Clement  VII  (anti-pope),  633,  1113 

Cleon,  297 

Cleopatra,  440,  445 

Cleopatra  (wife  of  Philip  II),  317,  319 

Clergy,  taxation  of,  650 

Clermont,  639,  1111 

Clermont,  steamer,  924 

Cleveland,  President,  1029 

Climate,  change  of,  15,  17,  33,  37,  44,  81, 
241,  247,  269,  473,  478;  effect  of,  176, 
266 

Clitus  (kll'ttis),  334,  705 


Clive,  Robert,  Lord,  807,  979,  1011,  1117 

Clodius,  441 

Clothing,  82,  85 

Clovis,  610,  612,  1108 

Clyde,  Firth  of,  924 

Cnossos  (nos'os),  142,  161-62,  168,  177, 
199,  206,  231.  252,  254,  265,  268,  381, 
382,  556,  1102 

Coal,  24,  25,  824,  923,  929 

Cockroaches,  24 

Code  Napoleon,  901,  902 

Coinage,  earliest,  165;  Athenian,  166; 
Bactrian,  337;  Carthaginian,  400; 
Lydian,  266;  Roman,  388,  399 

Coinage  of  stamped  leather,  653 

Coke,  824 

Cole,  Langton,  158 

Collectivism,  947 

Cologne,  625,  736,  739 

Colonies,  British,  826,  828,  997;  scram- 
ble for,  977-87 

Colorado,  26 

Colosseum,  550,  606 

Columba,  St.,  614 

Columbus,  Bartholomew,  742 

Columbus,  Christopher,  741  sqq.,  755, 
1102,  1114 

Comedy,  Greek,  307 

Comet,  2,  529 

Commagenc  (kom  d  je'  ne),  542 

Commodus  (kom'  d  diis),  456,  457 

Commons,  House  of,  774-82,  787,  833, 
844,  858,  937 

Commune,  French  Revolution,  872,  880 

Communism,  712,  716,  819,  820,  885, 
945,  947 

Communities,  242,  702,  706 

Community  of  obedience,  842;  of  will, 
842 

Comnena,  Anna.     (See  Anna) 

Comnenus,  Alexius.  (See  Alexius  "  Com- 
panions," equestrian  order,  312,  314 

Compass,  555-56,  749 

Concert  of  Europe,  915,  916,  922 

Concord,  Mass.,  837,  840 

Concord,  Temple  of,  430,  1104 

Condor,  the,  3 

Condorcet  (kon  dor  sa'),  901 

Confucianism,  371,  376 

Confucius,  142,  213,  371,  376,  384,  505, 
539,  545,  556 

Congo,  125,  985 

Congress,  American,  846 

Congress,  1st  Colonial,  836 

Conifers,  26 

Connecticut,  828,  831,  836,  846 

Conrad  II,  627 


INDEX 


1139 


Conrad  III,  627 

Constance,  710 

Constance,  Council  of,  660,  664,  710, 
1113 

Constantino  I  the  Great,  371,  420,  447, 
457,  481,  488,  516,  519,  523,  536, 
538-39,  546,  566,  693,  817,  1107 

Constantino,  King  of  Greece,  1045 

Constantinople,  482,  485,  492,  521,  529, 
535-6-7-8-9,  568,  584-5,  589,  594, 
622,  631,  634,  637,  640,  646,  661,  672, 
678,  683,  689,  691,  739,  770,  797,  967, 
1025,  1032,  1107-14.  (See  also  Byzan- 
tium) 

Consuls,  Roman,  389 

Convicts  sent  to  New  England,  832 

Cooking,  77,  78 

Co-operative  Societies,  942 

Copernicus  (k<5  peV  ni  k#s),  732,  1115 

Copper,  2,  78,  153,  746,  927 

Copper  axes,  101 

Coptic  language,  121 

Corday,  Charlotte,  870 

Cordoba  (kor'  do  ba),  601-2 

Corfu  (korfoo'),  736 

Corinth  (and  Corinthians),  254,  284, 
318,  324,  417,  423,  428,  439,  441,  464, 
488,  511,  1105 

Corinth,  isthmus  of,  284 

Cornish  people,  119 

Cornwall,  79,  163,  526,  605,  616,  780 

Cornwallis,  General,  839 

Corrosive  sublimate,  602 

Corsets,  160 

Corsica,  404,  482,  893 

Cortez,  747,  1114 

Corvus,  the,  402 

Cossacks,  795,  809,  810 

Coster,  printer,  717,  1114 

Cotton  industry,  824 

Cotylosaur  (kof  i  1<5  sawr),  23 

Councils,  Church,  638,  659,  665,  710, 
712,  724,  1107,  1113 

Counting,  118 

"Counts  of  Asia  Minor,"  698 

Court  system,  205 

Couvade  (kuvad'),  113 

Cow,  sacred  to  Brahmins,  981 

Cow  deities,  180 

Crab-apples,  85 

Crabs,  8 

Cranach,  757 

Cranium,  of  apes,  54;  Piltdown.  (See 
Piltdown) 

Crassus,  410,  436,  441,  475,  537,  585, 
1106 

Crawley,  A.  E.,  102 


Creation,  story  of,  218,  231,  953 

Crecy,  735 

Credition,  61^ 

Creeds,  Christian,  515,  525,  637,  1107 

Cremation,  242 

Cressy,  cruiser,  1042 

Cretan  Labyrinth,  160;  language,  129, 
227;  script,  172 

Crete  (and  Cretans),  142,  158-62,  177, 
215,  221,  265,  266 

Crimea,  678,  712 

Crimean  War,  967,  1114 

Criminals,  Roman,  422;  used  for  vivi- 
section, c,13 

Crispus,  son  of  Constantino,  526 

Critias,  299 

Croatia,  537 

Crocodiles,  28,  32 

Crcesus  (kre'sws),  165,  264,  270,  274, 
355,  1104 

Cro-Magnon  race,  66,  72,  103 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  777,  780,  834,  1015 

Cromwell,  Thomas,  753 

Cross,  in  Buddhist  ritual,  368;  true,  539, 
646 

Crown,  the  power  of  the,  782 

Crucifixion,  513 

Crusades,  599,  644,  647,  657,  661,  685, 
711,  735,  770,  934,  1111-14 

Crustaceans,  21 

Crystal  Palace,  964 

Crystals,  14 

Ctesiphon  (tea'  i  fon),  539,  543,  545-47, 
555,  588,  596,  646,  691,  1044 

Cuba,  748,  979,  1029 

Cubit,  length  of,  228 

Culture,  Aryan,  242-51;  Heliolithic, 
112,  127,  132,  135,  142,  148,  153, 
157,  169,  242,  354;  Neolithic,  76,  81, 
88  sqq.,  98,  111,  112, 119,  132, 143,  148, 
151-54;  prehistoric  and  primitive,  57 
sqq.,  92  sqq.  (See  also  Civilization) 

Cuneiform  (ku' ne  i  form),  137,  172,  215 

Cup,  pebble,  69 

Currency,  887-90,  923,  942,  950,  1056 

Cusffians,  336 

Custozza,  971 

Cuvier  (ku-vya),  954 

Cyaxares  (si  ak'  sd  rez),  269,  1104 

Cycacls  (sl'kddz),  25,  37 

Cynics,  304 

Cyprus,  80,  158,  270,  289,  324,  337,  974 

Cyrenaica  (sir  e  na'  i  kdf) ,  430 

Gyrene  (sire'ne),  458 

Cyrus,  the  Great,  140-42,  165,  190,  202, 
217,  230,  264,  269,  273,  314,  331,  355, 
380,  451,  470,  543,  545,  1104 


1140 


INDEX 


Cyrus,  the  Younger,  290 
Czecho-Slovaks,  918 
Czechs  (cheks),  482,  712 

D 

DACIA,  455,  481,  491,  636 

Dsedalus  (de'  dd  Ms),  160 

Dagon,  189,  351 

Dalai  Lama  (da  ll'  la'  ma),  376 

Dalmatia,  482,  527,  537,  616,  622,  1079, 

1107,  1109 
Damascus,  130,  164,  214,  452,  539,  544, 

567,  584,  585,  593,  596,  602,  713,  1109 
Damask,  214 
Damietta,  646 

Damon,  friend  of  Pericles,  296 
Dancing,  243 
Danelaw,  618,  1111 
Danes,  617,  618,  630,  770,  1111 
Dante,  338 
Danton,  869,  872-81 
Danzig,  736,  800,  1080 
Danube,  119,  240,  275-78,  314,  320,  329, 

436,  437,  452,  455,  461,  468,  473,  475, 

479,  480,  481,  485,  491,  527,  537,  548, 

616,  634,  641,  700,  815,  1043,  1106 
Danubian  provinces,  920,  967 
Dardanelles,  252,  681,  1043 
Darius  (dd  r!'  tfs)  I,  191,  274,  277,  282, 

287,  328,  1104 
Darius  II,  289 
Darius  III,  322,  325,  326,  332,  337,  437, 

470,  682,  909 
Dark  ages,  the,  528 
Dartmouth,  Lord,  851 
Darwin,  Charles,  50,  954 
Darwinism,  954-58 
David,  King,  225-30,  493,  498,  503,  715, 

1103 

Davids,  Rhys,  359,  360,  367 
Dawes,  837 
Day,  length  of,  4,  37 
Dead,  eating  the,  143 
Dead  Sea,  89 

Debtor,  slavery  as  fate  of,  199 
Decimal  notation,  602 
Decius,  Emperor,  457,  481,  516,  1107 
Declaration  of  Independence,  839,  842 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire 

•  (Gibbon),  813-19 
Deer,  53 

Detoe,  Daniel,  786,  821,  851 
Deiormities,  113 
Delaware,  831,  836 

Delhi,  669,  691,  805,  806,  981,  1112,  1114 
Delian  League,  2G4,  294 


Delos,  Island  of,  261,  263 
Delphi,  263,  271,  313,  337,  464 
Delphi,  oracle  of,  256,  270,  271 
Delphic  amphictyony,  314 
Demeter  (de  me'  ter),  316,  466 
Democracy,  259,  262,  390,  822,  844 
Demos,  259 
Demosthenes  (d£mos  the  nez),  306,  310, 

319,  329,  406,  443 
Deniker,  76 
Denmark,  81,  83,  468,  630,  720,  761,  780, 

793,  802,  816,  919,  969,  979,  1111 
Deportation,  138 
Dervishes,  683 
Descartes  (da  kart'),  953 
Deshima,  992 

Deuteronomy,  Book  of,  221 
Devon,  780 
Dewlish,  58 
Dialects,  252 

Diaspora  (dl  as'  p<5  rrf),  350,  493,  495 
Diaz  (de'  as),  741,  1114 
Dickens,  Charles,  736 
Dicrorcrus  (dl  kn5  re'  rws),  41 
Dictator,  Roman,  393 
Diderot  (ded  rcV),  855 
Diet  (assembly),  784,  800 
Dillon,  Dr.,  1066-68 
Dinosaurs  (dl'  no  sawrz),  28,  32 
Dinothere  (dl'  nrf  thcr),  41 
Diocletian,  457,  488,  516,  520,  523,  1107 
Uionysius,  god,  316 
Dionysius  of  Syracuse,  372.  401 
Diplodocus  (dip  lod'  6  kus),  27 
Disease,  infectious,  96 
Dispensations,  papal,  649,  657 
Dirraeli,  Benjamin.     (6'ee  Beaconsfield, 

Earl  of) 
Divans,  597 
Divination,  398 
Divus  Csesar,  455 
Dixon  line,  829,  832 
Dnieper  (ne'  per),  119,  439,  476,  480,672, 

809 

Doctors,  178 

Dog,  the,  43,  77,  81,  83,  87,  175 
Dolmens,  82 
Domazlice,  711,  1114 
Dominic,  St.,  658-59,  1112 
Dominican  Order,  658-59,  677,  748,  991, 

1112 

Domitian,  455,  1106 
Don,  river,  119,  476,  809 
Don  Cossacks,  809 
Donatello,  740 
Doric  dialect,  252 
Dorset,  58 


INDEX 


1141 


Dortmund,  740 

Dostoievski  (dos  id  ef '  ski) ,  1026 

Dover,  736 

Dover,  Straits  of,  436 

Dragon  flies,  24 

Dragonnades,  789,  803 

Dravidian    civilization,    142,    147,    354, 

702;   language,  124,  135 
Dravidians,  114,  124,  128,  211,  251,  265, 

694 

Drepanum  (drep'  a  num),  403 
Dresden,  cruiser,  1042 
Dresden,  battle  of,  911 
Drogheda,  779 
Druids,  105 
Drums,  Neolithic,  86 
Drusus,  Livius,  433 
Dryopithecus  (dri  6  pi  the'  k#s),  53 
Dubarry,  Comtesse,  791 
Dublin,  1016,  1022 
Duma,  the,  1047 

Dumouriez  (dumoorya'),  General,  875 
Dunbar,  battle  of,  780 
Dunce,  derivation  of,  729 
Dunkirk,  781 
Duns  Scotus,  728,  1113 
Dupleix  (dupla'),  807 
Durazzo     (du  rad' z5),    488,    632,    637, 

644 

Durham,  University  of,  964 
Diisseldorf,  54 
Dutch  language,  611,  770;   people,  611; 

Republic,    769-72,    918;     settlements 

and  seamanship,  744,  801,  830,  988, 

993.     (See  also  Holland) 
Dwellings,  Neolithic,  85 
Dyeing,  603 
Dynamics,  732 


EARTH,  the,  1-5,  11,  43,  44 

East,  orientation  to,  182 

East  India  Company,  808,  836,  979 

Easter,  feast  of,  99 

Eastern  lamb,  511 

Eastern  (Greek)  Empire.  (See  Byzan- 
tine Empire) 

Ebenezer,  222 

Ebro,  river,  405,  407 

Ecbatana  (ek  bat'  d  nd),  546 

Eehidna  (ekid'nd),40 

Economists,  French,  865 

Economus  (o  kon'  6  m#s),  battle  of,  403, 
1105 

Eden,  garden  of,  953 

Edessa,  542,  643,  644 

Edom,  794 


Education,  208,  212,  213,  438,  534,  696, 
706,  724,  819,  820,  848,  901,  923,  928, 
933,  934,  948 

Edward  I,  774 

Edward  VI,  773,  775 

Edward  VII,  783,  1013 

Edward,  Prince  of  Wales,  son  of  George 
V,  1022 

Egbert,  616,  618,  1110 

Eggs,  26,  39,  40,  85 

Egibi  (ege'be),  207 

Eginhard,  623,  624 

Egmont,  Count  of,  770,  771 

Egypt,  80,  121,  337,  452,  489,  494-98, 
540,  567,  597,  647,  657,  699,  712, 
1109;  history  (early),  103,  115,  131, 
140-43,  146,  158,  166,  172,  177,  189, 
198,  203,  209,  215,  218,  228,  232,  257, 
265-66,  271,  274,  282,  289,  290,  303, 
451,  567,  747,  1103;  (and  Greece), 
324,  331,  342,  1103;  (and  Rome),  413, 
430,  440-41,  462;  (and  Islam),  589, 
593,  596,  601,  628,  636,  667,  674,  682, 
685,  1112-13;  (modern  period"),  895, 
896,  902,  979,  985,  997,  1025,  1119-20; 
Christianity  in,  525,  531,  639,  708; 
Jews  in,  343,  376,  496,  1114;  Kingship 
in,  191-93,  205,  450;  religious  systems, 
144,  180-87,  191-92,  234,  324,  350, 
352,  367,  466,  513 

Egyptian  language,  121 

Egyptian  script,  153,  172 

Egyptian  shipping,  214 

"Egyptians"  (Gipsies),  697 

Elam  (e'lam),  135,  268 

Elamite  language,  129 

Elamites,  135,  140,  188,  327,  666 

Elba,  914 

Elections,  425,  848 

Electricity,  927,  929 

Electrum,  166 

Elephants,  43,  52,  57,  75,  153,  156,  268, 
328,  389,  403-11,  585 

Eli,  judge,  222,  223 

Elixir  of  life,  731 

Elizabeth,  Queen  of  England,  773,  775, 
808,  828 

Elizabeth,  Empress  of  Russia,  792,  1117 

El-lil,  136 

Emden,  cruiser,  1042 

Emesa  (em'  e  sd),  542 

Emirs,  596 

Emperor,  title  of,  492 

Emperors  of  Germany,  755 

Employers  and  employed,  824,  935 

Enclosure  Acts,  823-5 

"Encyclopaedists,"  the,  855 


1142 


INDEX 


England,  529,  628,  630,  735,  757,  960, 
996;  history  (early),  38,  74,  547,  605, 
614,  618,  630,  1110;  (under  the  Nor- 
mans), 631,  1111;  (in  the  13th  and  14th 
centuries),  731,  736;  (Civil  war),  773, 
777-79,  829;  (war  with  Holland),  777- 
80,  829;  (war  with  Spain),  780;  (reign 
of  Charles  II),  780;  (in  18th  century), 
780-2;  (and  America),  803-5;  (union 
with  Ireland),  1118;  political  and  con- 
stitutional, 396,  399,  740,  767,  768, 
781-82,  785,  787;  religion,  613-19, 
664,  708,  721,  761,  7T5,  776,  780, 
802,  829;  social,  713,  795,  820,  868, 
879,  1113.  (See  also  Britain,  Great 
Britain,  and  the  Great  War) 

English,  the,  614,  630,  1108 

English  language,  118,  558,  614,  718 

English  seamen,  743 

Entelodont  (en  tel'  o  dont),  39 

Eoanthropus  (e  6  dn  thro'  ptis),  46,  53-7. 
(See  also  Man) 

Eocene  (e'  5  sen)  period,  38-44 

Eohippus,  43 

Eolithic  age,  55 

Eoliths,  51,  1102 

Ephesus  (ef  e  sus),  288,  321,  511,  643 

Ephesus,  Council  of,  523 

Ephthalite  (ef  thd  lit)  coins,  551 

Ephthalites,  648,  665,  1108,  1109 

Epics,  243,  245 

Epictetus  (ep  ik  te'  tfls),  423 

Epicureans  (ep  i  ku  re' dns),  304,  306, 
553 

Epirus  (e  p!'  rws),  317,  318,  386,  632         | 

Equality,  581,  842 

Equisetums  (ek  wi  se'  twnz),  22 

Eratosthenes  (er  d  tos'  the  nez),  10,  343, 
344,  348 

Erech,  137 

Eretria,  281 

Erfurt,  907 

Eridu  (a'ridoo),  136,  141,  156,  691 

Esarhaddon  (e  sdr  had'  <5n),  189,  190, 
229,  269,  1103 

Essad  Pasha,  1070 

Essex,  543,  605 

Esthonians,  795 

Ethiopia  (and  Ethiopians),  146,  193, 
325,  1103 

Ethiopian  dynasty,  143,  1102 

Ethiopic  language,  121 

Ethnologists,  110 

Etiquette  in  China,  373 

Etruria,  384 

Etruscans,  382,  383,  393,  397,  705, 
1103-4 


Euclid,  343,  602 

Euphrates,  115,  136,  140,  145,  148,  155, 
181,  193,  230,  267,  437,  452,  468,  489, 
537,  542,  568,  1106 

Euripides  (u  rip'  i  dez),  299,  312,  334 

Europe,  118,  124,  127;  Christianity  in, 
447,  524,  531,  616,  648,  654,  659,  664, 
675,  706,  718-20,  723,  761,  785,  794, 
796,  819;  common  cause  in,  639-41; 
Concert  of,  916,  922;  feudalism  in, 
607  sqq.,  610;  history  (general),  282, 
526-28,  607-8,  619,  668,  698,  737, 
757,  762,  767,  783,  786,  791,  798,  801, 
812,  818,  820,  903,  911,  914,  916-20; 
Huns  in,  486,  548;  Imperialism  in, 
996-98,  1000  sqq.;  industrial  revolu- 
tion in,  824;  intellectual  development 
in,  602,  653,  706,  725,  731;  languages 
of,  127;  literature  of,  718;  "Marriage 
with  Asia,"  332;  mechanical  revolu- 
tion in,  931  sqq.;  monarchy  in,  765, 
771,  786-93,  801;  Mongolians  in,  476, 
673,  726;  Moslems  in,  593,  606,  612, 
628,  682,  740-43,  749,  754;  natural 
political  map  of,  921,  971,  976,  981; 
peoples  and  races  of,  76,  107,  110,  111, 
236,  475,  478,  697,  815;  Powers  of, 
795-97,  801,  826,  999;  prehistoric,  44, 
52,  55,  57,  66,  73,  76,  80,  8s,  104,  109, 
112,  118,  131,  142,  151,  177,  183,  242, 
243,  266,  267,  746;  social  development 
in,  700,  717,  734,  756,  767,  773,  797, 
818-22,  935,  937.  (See  also  Great 
War) 

Europeans  descended  from  Neolithic 
man,  78 

Euryptolemus  (u  rip  tol'  £  mus),  295 

Eusebius  (u  se'  bi  us),  522 

Evans,  Sir  Arthur,  117 

Evans,  Sir  John,  107 

Everlasting  League,  754,  1113 

Evolution  of  the  Earth,  3 

Examinations,  211,  560 

Excommunication,  645 

Executive,  the,  949 

Exodus,  book  of,  220 

Experience,  174 

Exploration,  163-64 

"Expropriated,"  the,  935 

Ex  votos,  177,  353 

Eylau  (1'lou),  battle  of,  905 

Ezekiel,  231,  233 


FABIAN  SOCIETY,  945 
Fabius,  409-10 


INDEX 


1143 


Factories,  growth  of,  824 

Factory  Act,  940-41,  1119 

Factory  system,  931,  940 

Faizi  (fa'izi),  695 

Falkland  Isles,  battle  of,  1042 

Family  groups,  82,  131,  246 

Faraday,  M.,  925 

Farming,  Arab  knowledge  of,  603 

Farrar,  F.  W.,  456 

Fashoda  (fasho'da),  985,   1025,   1120 

Fatepur-sikri     (fut  e  poor'  sik'  ri),     695, 

696 

Fatima  (fat'  i  md),  591,  628 
Fatimite  caliphate,  628,  640,  685,  1111 
Fauna,  early,  74 
Fausta,  520 

Faustina  (faws  tl'  nd),  456 
Fear,  94 

Feasts,  Aryan,  242 
Feathers,  30,  35 

Ferdinand  I,  emperor,  783,  962-63 
Ferdinand,  king  of  Bulgaria,  1025,  1032, 

1045 

Ferdinand,  king  of  Spain,  742,  755 
Fermentation,  242 
Ferns,  20,  22 

Ferrero  (fer  ra'  ro),  389,  424,  432 
Fetishism,  93,  99 
Feudal  system,  the,  607  sqq. 
Fezzan,  88 
Fiefs,  608 

Field  of  the  Cloth  of  Gold,  757 
Fielding,  H.,  821,  931 
Fiji,  998 

Finance,  428-30,  757,  768 
Finland    (and    the    Finns),    476,      909, 

919 

Finland,  Gulf  of,  816 
Finnish  language,  123 
Finno-Ugrian  language,  487 
Fire,  early  use  of,  57,  59 
Fish,  8,  19,  21,  38 
Fisher,  Lord,  1048 
Fisher,  Osmond,  58 
Fishing,  85 
Fiume  (fu'ma),  1080 
Five  Classics,  the,  571 
Flame  projectors,  1038 
Flanders,  631,  642 
Flavian  dynasty,  455,  1106 
Flax,  85 

Fleming,  Bishop,  660 
Flemings,  the,  611,  645,  735 
Flemish  language,  611 
Flint  implements,  46,  51,  54,  57,  67,  69, 

74,  79,  85,  107 
Flood,  story  of  the,  218,  230 


Florence,  736,  740,  750-52,  757,  790,  792, 
1114 

Florentine  Society,  929 

Florida,  830 

Flowers,  Cainozoic,  37 

Flying  machines,  160,  730,  930 

Fontainebleau   (fon  tan  bio'),  904,  911 

Food,  13,  19,  61-2,  84,  132 

Fools,  243 

Foot  of  apes,  men,  and  monkeys,  49 

Ford  businesses,  942 

Forests,  77 

Fort  St.  Augustine,  830 

Fossils,  6,  10,  21,  33,  37,  43,  50,  954 

Foucher,  367 

"Fourteen  Points,"  the,  1065,  1071 

Fowl,  domesticated,  84,  86 

Fox,  the,  as  food,  81 

France,  81;  history  (to  Revolutionary 
period),  71,  163,  482-84,  527,  547,  589, 
606,  611,  613,  616,  626,  644,  651,  655, 
663,  715,  716,  725,  734-35,  749-60, 
768-70;  783-88,  794,  801,  816,  821, 
826,  1107,  1114;  (Revolutionary  pe- 
riod), 716,  793,  896,  1118;  (Napoleonic 
period),  898,  1118;  (to  Great  War), 
914-15,  919,  937,  965-72,  1009-10, 
1032,  1118;  (Great  War),  612,  1036 
sqq. ;  Imperialism,  998,  1025;  over- 
seas dominions,  802,  826-33,  839,  977, 
992.  (See  also  Franks,  Gaul) 

Francis,  St.,  of  Assisi,  657,  720,  812,  1112 

Francis  I,  emperor,  1115 

Francis  II,  emperor,  1118 

Francis  I,  king  of  France,  755-61,  1114 

Francis  Ferdinand,  archduke,  1033 

Franciscan  Order,  657-59,  728,  749, 
1112-13 

Frankfort,  736,  966, 1119;  Peace  of,  972- 
73,  1002,  1120 

Franklin,  Benj.,  849 

Franks,  the,  480,  487,  491,  606,  610-16, 
621,  626,  634,  643,  690,  703,  1107 

Frazer,  Sir  J.  G.,  100,  102 

Frederick  I  (Barbarossa) ,  emperor,  645, 
651,  653,  661,  1112 

Frederick  II,  emperor,  645,  647,  652,  673, 
678,  708,  719,  755,  783,  956,  1112 

Frederick  III,  emperor,  755 

Frederick  I,  king  of  Prussia,  791,  1116 

Frederick  II  (the  Great) ,  king  of  Prussia, 
791,  798,  813,  816,  846,  1117 

Frederick  III,  king  of  Prussia,  1007 

Frederick,  don,  772 

Frederick,  Margrave  of  Brandenburg,  711 

Free  discussion,  717;  trade  in  Athens, 
394 


1144 


INDEX 


Free  intelligence,  204 

Freedom,  201,  826 

Freeman's  Farm,  839 

French  language,  118,  491,  611,  630,  718, 
754.  770 

Freya  (frl'd),  613 

Friars,  the,  722,  729.  (See  also  Francis- 
can Order) 

Friedland  (fred'lant),  battle  of,  905, 
1118 

Frisian  coast,  468;   language,  770 

Frisians,  the,  613 

Frog,  the,  22 

Froissart  (frwasar'),  714 

Fronde,  the,  787 

Fu,  S.  N.,  553 

Fuggers,  the,  757-58,  820 

Fulas,  152 

Fulton,  R.,  924 

Furnace,  blast,  926;  electric,  926 

Future  life,  belief  in,  93,  466 


G 


GAELIC,  238,  1015 

Gage,  General,  837,  839 

Galatia,  384,  1105 

Galatians,  337,  338,  682 

Galba,  455,  1106 

Galerius,  517,  518,  1107 

Galicia,  1040 

Galilee,  507,  510,  513,  542 

Galileo  (gal  i  le'  6),  Galilei,  732,  733,  952, 

1115 

Gallas,  language  of  the,  121 
Galvani,  925 
Gama,  Vasco  da  (vas  ko'  da  ga'  ma),  744, 

806,  1114 
Gamaliel,  511 
Gambia,  163 
Games,  264 

Gametes  (gam  ets'),  20 
Gandhara  (gan  d  ha'  ra) ,  367 
Ganesa  (ga  na'  sha),  377 
Gang  labour,  207,  226 
Ganges,  126,  147,  210,  211,  328,  331,  354, 

369,  S67 
Garibaldi,  768 
Gas,  240,  556 
Gas  in  warfare,  1039,  1083 
Gaspee,  vessel,  835 
Gath,  221 
Gaul  (and  the  Gauls),  142,  330,  337,  384, 

392-95,   404,   407,   433-36,    439,   470, 

481,  487,  489,  527,  534,  606,  611,  020, 

815,  1105-8 
Gaulish  language,  238 


Gautama  (gou'  ta  ma).     (See  Buddha) 

Gaza,  202,  221,  321,  324 

Gazelle,  43 

Gaztelu,  762 

Genesis,  book  of,  98,  218-21 

Geneva,  754,  813,  1074 

Genoa  (jen'  d  d)  and  the  Genoese,  640, 
644,  678,  712,  736,  739,  741,  891 

Genseric  (jen'serik),  482,  1108 

Gentiles,  the,  504 

Geography,  2 

Geology,  953 

Geometry,  602 

George  I,  781,  782,  1116 

George  II,  782,  1117 

George  III,  782,  835,  1117 

George  IV,  783 

George  V,  770,  1013,  10-22 

George,  Lloyd,  1023,  1040,  1053-59, 
1068,  1072 

Georgia,  831,  836,  970,  1117 

Gerasa  (jer'dsd),  542 

Gerash,  544 

Gerbert  (gar'ber),  602 

German  language,  118,  238,  611,  718, 
770;  songs  and  tales,  624 

Germany,  75,  81,  268;  history  (to  Saxon 
kings),  434-36,  440,  451,  463,  468-69, 
480,  484,  524,  610-12,  616,  622,  703; 
(Saxon  kings  to  Napoleonic  period), 
627,  632,  639,  645,  651,  662,  663,  700, 
715-21,  735,  739,  744,  753-64,  767, 
770,  787,  794-97,  803-5,  814-17,  831, 
832,  833,  839,  904-5,  1111-16;  (War 
of  Liberation  to  the  Great  War),  911, 
919,  928,  935-38,  965-74,  994-96, 
1002;  (Great  War),  1023  sqq.;  class 
distinction  in,  209;  Imperialism  of, 
946,  1004-11,  1031 

Gethsemane,  508 

Ghent,  736,  754,  770 

Gibbon,  Edward,  460-64,  485,  486,  515, 
518,  520,  529,  539,  625,  627,  632,  813- 
17,  825,  826,  854,  956 

Gibraltar,  90,  163,  461,  606,  983,  998 

Gideon,  222 

Gigantosaurus  (ji  gan  id  saw'  rtfs),  29 

Gilbert,  Dr.,  733,  1115 

Gilboa,  Mount,  225 

GiUs,  19,  21,  38 

Gin,  165 

Giotto  (jot' 6),  740 

Gipsies,  697,  698 

Gipsy  language,  698 

Giraffe,  43 

Girondins,  872 

Gizeh  (geze),  14-i,  181 


INDEX 


114,5 


Glacial  Age.     (See  Ice  Age) 
Gladiators,  421,  423,  435,  458,  462,  530, 

1105 

Gladstone,  \V.  E.,  293,  974,  1022,  1120 
Glasfurd,  A.  I.  R,,  85,  96 
Glass,  603 

Glastonbury,  83,  242 
Glaucia,  433 

Glyptodon  (glip'  id  don),  76,  153 
Gneisenau  (gnl'zenou),  cruiser,  1042 
Gneiss  (nls),  fundamental,  6 
Gnosticism  (nos'  ti  sism),  514,  524 
Goats  in  lake  dwellings,  83 
Gobi  Desert,  126,  473,  554,  561,  563 
God,  514,  523,  595,  732;  idea  of  one  true, 

234,  341,  363,  376,  466,  493-95,  500, 

571-73,  577,  584,  696;  of  Judaism,  305 

sqq.,  350,  581;  Kingdom  of,  498,  662, 

677,  708,  796 

Godfrey  of  Bouillon,  642,  770,  1111 
Gods,   178,   180,   185,   188,  351;  Aryan, 

256;      Egyptian,      180-83,      191-94; 

Greek,     256,     305;     Japanese,     367; 

tribal,  104,  283 
Goethe,  869 

Gold,  78,  88,  465,  653,  888 
Golden  Horde,  the,  694,  809 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  821,  1017,  1068 
Golgotha,  508 

Good  Hope,  Cape  of,  806,  979,  1114 
Good  Hope,  cruiser,  1042 
Goods,  consumable,  889 
Gorham,  Nathaniel,  846 
Gorilla,  47,  163 
"Gorillas,"  184 
Goshen,  land  of,  220 
Gospels,  the,  497,  499,  507-11,  516,  523, 

709,  954 

Gotha  (go'ta),  aeroplane,  1041 
Gothic  architecture,  736;  language,  238 
Goths,  457,  472,  476,  481,  487-91,  527, 

530,  532,  536,  606,  610,  631,   1107-8 
Gough,  General,  1050 
Government,  185,  397,  706,  922 
Gracchi,  the,  432,  707 
Gracchus,  Caius,  431,  1105 
Gracchus,  Tiberius,  427-31,  1105 
Grain,  as  food,  84,  87,  134 
Granada,  742 
Grand  Remonstrance,  777 
Granicus  (grd  nl'  kus),  battle  of  the,  321, 

1104 

Grape,  242 
Graphite,  7 
Grasses,  37,  43 
Gravelotte  (gravlof),  972 
,  780 


Gravitation,  law  of,  733 

Gray,  G.  B.,  220 

Great  Britain,  history  (general),  795, 
997;  (and  India),  693-96,  805-9;  (and 
America)  802,  805,  823,  827-28,  833- 
34;  (and  French  Revolution),  873,  876; 
(in  Napoleonic  period),  894-96,  902, 
904,  908,  1117;  (war  with  Turkey},  920; 
(Crimean  war),  967;  (suspicion  of 
Russia),  973;  (in  alliance  against  Ger- 
many), 1008-9;  (the  Great  War),  1033 
sqq.,  (effect  of  Great  War  on),  1053 
sqq.;  constitutional,  political,  and 
social,  426,  821-22,  844,  865,  883,  927, 
936,  1011,  1118-19;  expansion  and  Im- 
perialism, 797,  977-87,  991,  996,  997, 
1011-23,  1120.  (See  also  Britain  and 
England) 

Great  Exhibition,  the,  964,  1119 

Great  Mogul,  805,  808 

Great  ox.     (See  Aurochs) 

Great  Schism.     (See  Papal  Schism) 

Great  War,  the,  613,  725,  775,  785, 
1033  sqq.,  1120 

Greatness,  849 

Greece  (and  the  Greeks),  65,  80,  85,  221, 
263-68,  381-82,  703,  718,  746;  history 
(to  war  with  Persia),  158-62,  177,  221, 
252  sqq.,  1103;  (war  with  Persia), 
263,  275,  278-90,  1104;  (to  15th  cen- 
tury), 292,  301,  306,  310-16,  320,  324, 
337,  384,  480,  541,  552,  643,  662, 
682-85,  1113;  (modern),  920,  1025, 
1119;  civilization,  254-65,  307,  389, 
423,  542,  1043,  1045;  constitutional, 
256-65,  304-7,  313,  320,  389;  religion, 
185,  255-56,  316,  350,  612;  thought 
and  learning,  248,  303-6,  340-43,  419, 
557,  600 

Greek  alphabet,  172;  archipelago,  89, 
202;  Church,  525,  538,  622,  624,  637- 
38,  643-45,  661,  920,  1108;  language 
and  literature,  118,  140,  238,  243, 
252-54,  297,  300,  306,  310,  342,  350, 
459,  463,  489,  510,  536,  543,  596, 
599,  614;  warfare,  624,  718 

Greek  (Eastern)  Empire,  see  Eastern 
(Greek)  Empire 

Green,  J.  R.,  713 

Green  flag,  628 

Greenland,  55,  618,  741 

"Greens,"  faction  of  the,  797 

Gregory,  Sir  R.  A.,  733 

Gregory  I,  the  Great,  534,  561,  605,  614, 
660,  712,  725,  1109 

Gregory  VII,  637,  638,  648,  660,  709, 
725,  1111 


1146 


INDEX 


Gregory  IX,  647,  651,  708,  1112 

Gregory  XI,  663,  687,  1113 

Grey,  Sir  Edward,  1033 

Grey  Friars.     (See  Franciscan  Order) 

Grimaldi  race,  67,  72,  89 

Grimm's  Law,  118 

Orisons,  491 

Grote,  299 

Growth,  13 

Guadalquivir  (gaw  dd\  kwiv'  er),  744 

Guianas,  the,  979 

Guilds,  209 

Guillemard,  744 

Guillotine,  878 

Guiscard    (ges  kar'),   Robert,   632,   644, 

1111 

Gulf  Stream,  17 
Gum-tree,  37 

Gunpowder,  556,  670,  735,  817 
Guptas  (goop'  tds),  549 
Gurkhas,  981 

Gustavus  Adolphus,  786,  802 
Gutenberg,  717 
Guthrum,  618,  1111 
Gwalior,  806 
Gyges  (gl' jez),  266,  1103 


HAARLEM  (har'lem),  770,  772,  1114 
Habsburgs,  662,  700,  754-57,  783,  786, 

794,  799,  913,  914 
Hackett,  955 
Hadrian,  455,  464,  1107 
Hadrian,  tomb  of,  606 
Hadrian's  wall,  455 
Hague  Conferences,  1001 
Haig,  Sir  Douglas,  1045 
Hair,  34,  40 
Halicarnassus     (hal  i  kdr  nas' ws),     202, 

204,  289,  321,  324 
Hall,  164 

Ham,  son  of  Noah,  110 
Hamburg,  736,  739 
Hamilcar,  404,  407 
Hamilton,  Alexander,  849 
Hamilton,  Sir  William,  927 
Hamites,  125,  148,  187 
Hamitic  languages,  121,  128,  129;  ships, 

158 

Hammond,  819 
Hammurabi  (ham  moo  ra' be) ,  138,  142, 

145,  147,  188,  200,  218,  327,  1103 
Han  dynasty,   151,   195,  212,  371,  439, 

470,  472,  475,  550,  1107 
Hancock,  837 
Hang  Chau  (hang'chou),  669,  1111 


Hannibal,  405-10,  415 

Hanno,  142,  163-67,  177,  184,  405,  439, 

461,  741,  1104 
Hanover,  882 

Hanover,  elector  of.     (See  George  I) 
Hanoverian  dominions,  795 
Hanoverian  dynasty,  782,  787 
Hansa  towns,  739-44 
Hanse  merchants,  816 
Harcourt,  Sir  William,  946 
Hare,  the,  84 
Hariti,  366 
Haroun-al-Raschid  (ha  roon  al  ra'  shed), 

596,  598,  625,  1110 
Harpagos  (har'  pd  gtfs),  272 
Harpalus  (har'  pd  Iris),  318,  329 
Harpoons,  69 
Harran,  543 

Harris,  H.  Wilson,  1074 
Harvey,  John,  733,  1115 
Hasan,  son  of  Ali,  592,  596 
Hasdrubal,  405-9 
Hastings,  Warren,  808,  979,  1011 
Hatasu  (ha'  ta  soo),  Queen  of  Egypt,  146 
Hathor,  182,  192,  351,  352 
Hatra,  543 
Hatred,  405 
Hauran,  544,  568 
Hawk  gods,  180 
Hearths,  242 
Heaven,  Kingdom  of,  498,  501,  506,  510, 

952.     (See  also  God) 
Hebert,  879 

Hebrew  language,  120,  494,  496;   litera- 
ture,   232;     prophets,    522;     thought, 

305;    moral  teaching,   164.     (See  also 

Jewish) 
Hebrews,    188,   220-23,   568.     (See  also 

Jews) 

Hecatams  (hek  d  te'  MS),  166 
Hector,  245 
Hedgehogs,  43 

Hegira  (hej'ird),  573,  577,  582,  1109 
Heidelberg  man,  52,  54,  63 
Hekt,  182 
Helen  of  Troy,  161 
Helena,  Empress,  539,  646 
Helena,  mother  of  Constantine,  520 
Heligoland,  1008,  1120 
Heliolithic  (he  li  6  lith'  ik)  culture,  112, 

115,  128,  132,  142,  148,  153-59,  168, 

242,  354,  746,  991 
Heliolithic  peoples,  152 
Heliopolis  (he  li  op'  6  Us),  (Baalbek),  542 
Hellenes,  252 
Hellenic  civilization,  254  sqq.,  589,  726; 

tradition,  491 


INDEX 


1147 


Hellenism,  368,  494 

Hellespont,  282,  287-88,  306,  314,  321, 

451,  541,  585,  643,  697,  1104,  1109 
Helmolt,  H.  F.,  404,  584,  588,  696 
Helmont,  van,  240 
Helots,  256 

Hen.     (See  Fowl,  domesticated) 
Henriot,  880 

Henry  II,  German  Emperor,  626 
Henry  V,  German  Emperor,  627 
Henry  VI,  German  Emperor,  651 
Henry  II,  King  of  England,  1014 
Henry  III,  King  of  England,  774 
Henry  V,  King  of  England,  735 
Henry  VII,  King  of  England,  742,  773, 

775 
Henry  VIII,  King  of  England,  753,  755, 

759,  760,  773,  775,  1115 
Henry  of  Prussia,  Prince,  846 
Henry  the  Fowler,  627,  635 
Henry,  Patrick,  834,  849 
Hephtestion  (he  fes'  ti  tfn),  334,  440 
Heraclea  (her  d  kle'  a),  387,  1105 
Heraclius  (her  ak'  li  #s) ,  536,  539,  544, 

555,  567,  583-85,  646,  1109 
Heraldry,  209 
Herat,  328,  525 
Herbivorous  animals,  28,  29 
Hercules,  demi-god,  341,  445 
Hercules,  son  of  Alexander,  336 
Hercules,  temple  of,  177 
Herdsmen,  206,  208 
Hereditary  rule,  703 
Heredity,  175 
Heretics,  658 
Heristhal,  612 
Hermon,  Mount,  85,  131 
Herne  Island,  163 
Hero,  343,  468 
Herodes  Atticus  (her  6'  dez  at'  i  kws), 

464 

Herodians,  503 
Herodotus  (he  rod'  d  t#s),  132,  163,  166, 

184,  202,  209,  234,  264,  268-74,  281, 

287,  290,  294,  298,  300,  341,  345,  427, 

461,  536,  561,  585,  1104 
Herods,  the,  495,  498,  503 
Herophilus  (h^rof  i  Ms),  343 
Herzegovina     (hert  se  gov'  e  nd) ,     1009, 

1120 

Hesperornis  (hes  per  or' nis),  35 
Hesse  (hes' e)  and  Hessians,  616,  760, 

971 

Hezekiah,  King,  229 
Hieratic  script,  173 
Hiero  (hi'  er  6),  401,  403,  408 
Hieroglyphics,  154-57,  173  /" 


Hieronymua    (hi  ^r  on'  i  m#s)    of    Syra- 
cuse, 408 

Hildebrand.     (See  Gregory  VII) 
Himalayas,  38,  126,  474 
Hindu    deities,    374,    376;  priests,   249; 

schools,  696 
Hindu  Kush,  693 
Hindus,   211,   240,   248,  467,   694,   697, 

806 

Hindustan,  669,  693 
Hipparchus,  342 
Hippias,  280 
Hippo,  484,  525 
Hippopotamus,  26,  52,  57 
Hippopotamus  deities,  144,  180 
Hira,  584,  585 

Hiram,  King  of  Sidon,  225-27 
Hirth,  373,  506 
Histiaeus,  278,  289,  489 
Hittites,   138,   142,   146,   165,  218,  221, 

222,  240,  275 
Hi-ung-nu.     (See  Huns) 
Rogue,  cruiser,  1042 
Hohenlinden,  battle  of,  624 
Hohenstaufens     (ho  en  stou'  fen),     627, 

662,  739,  754,  783 
Hohenzollerns,  786,  791,  913,  969,  972, 

1004 
Holland/  469,  527,  616,  717,  739,  744, 

749,  771,  773,  779,  780,  786,  802,  806, 

830,  877,  883,  891,  903-4,  911,  979, 

984,  1119 
Holly,  37 
Holstein,  919 
Holy  Alliance,  915,  916,  920,  937,  1000, 

1002 
Holy  Land.     (See  Crusades  and  Pales 

tine) 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  623,  628,  632,  690, 

739,  754,  757,  764,  767,  805,  1118 
Homage,  609 
Home  Rule  Bill,  262 
Homer,  85,  164,  173,  252,  437 
Homo  antiquus.    (See  Neanderthal  man ; 

Heidelbergensis,  see  Heidelberg  man; 

Neanderthalensis,      see      Neanderthal 

man;    primigenius,    see    Neanderthal 

man;  apiens,  see  Man,  true) 
Horns,  542 

Honduras  (hon  dur'  ds),  British,  803 
Honey,  243 
Honoria,  484 
Honorius,  481 

Honorius  III,  pope,  651,  1112 
Hopf,  Ludwig,  100 
Hophni,  223 
Horn,  Count  of,  770,  771 


1148 


INDEX 


Horn  implements,  69,  79 

Horrabin,  F.,  89 

Horses,  43,  48,  52,  70,  135,  239,  241, 
459 

Horticulture,  196 

Horus,  191,  195,  351,  353,  367,  513 

Hotel  Cecil,  542 

Hottentot  language,  129 

Households,  growth  of,  199 

Houses,  stone,  242 

Howard,  the  philanthropist,  882 

Hrdlicka,  Dr.,  76 

Hsia,  Empire  of,  672 

Hue,  367 

Hudson  Bay  Company,  803 

Hudson  Bay  Territory,  125 

Hudson  River,  839,  924 

Hugo,  Victor,  899 

Huguenots,  795,  803,  830 

Hulagu,  674,  678,  680,  691,  713,  1113 

Human  association,  949 

Human  sacrifice,  87,  100,  747 

Hungary  (and  the  Hungarians),  79,  481, 
487,  521,  616,  635,  642,  663,  673,  683, 
687,  699,  740,  759-60,  784,  809,  918, 
937,  973,  1114.  (See  also  Austria) 

Huns,  150-52,  195,  330,  439,  462,  468, 
472-82,  484,  487,  548,  553,  563,  635, 
667,  669,  673,  702,  815,  1108 

Hunter  Commission,  982 

Hunting,  70,  76,  84,  94,  267 

Husein,  son  of  Ali,  592,  595 

Huss,  John,  664,  710,  758,  812,  821, 
1113 

Hussites,  711,  715,  U13 

Hut  urns,  86 

Hutchinson,  129 

Hutton,  954 

Huxley,  Prof.,  Ill,  955 

Hwang-ho  (hwang'ho),  river,  151,  470, 
679 

Hyaena,  cave,  57 

Hysenodon  (hi  e'  no  don),  39 

Hyde  Park,  964 

Hyksos,  142,  145,  567 

Hyracodon  (hi  rak'  o  don),  39 

Hystaspes  (his  tas' pez),  274,  1104 


IBERIAN  language,  236 

Iberians,  74,  111,  142,  158,  221,  236, 
241,  246,  381.  (See  also  Mediterra- 
nean race) 

Ibex,  71 

Ibn  Batuta  (ibn  ba  too'  ta),  713 

Ibn-rushd.     (See  Averroes) 


Ibrahim,  son  of  Muhammad,  579 

Icarus  (ik'drj/s),  161 

Ice,  effect  of,  44 

Ice  Age,  38,  43,  45,  51,  50,  62,  125,  267 

Iceland,  618,  741,  802 

Icelandic  language,  238 

Ichabod,  223 

Ichthyosaurs  (ik'  thi  6  sawrz),  28,  32 

Iconium,  636 

Ideograms,  169,  170 

Ideographs,  173 

Idumeans,  494 

Ignatius,  St.,  of  Loyola,  722,  724,  812, 
1114,  1115 

Iliad,  the.     (See  Homer) 

Ilkhan,  Empire  of,  680,  687 

Illyria,  314,  317,  320,  404,  412,  682,  1104 

Immortality,  idea  of,  352,  362,  467 

Imperator,  title  of,  492 

Imperial  preference,  1011-3 

Imperialism,  261,  959,  962,  988,  989 
1000  sqq.,  1023-24 

Implements,  bronze,  101;  Chellean,  52; 
copper,  79;  earliest  use  of,  51;  flint, 
54,  57,  61,  67,  69,  85;  horn,  69,  79; 
iron,  80;  Neolithic,  77,  78,  86,  100; 
Paleolithic,  56,  77,  107;  Pliocene,  51- 
3;  stone,  50,  60,  77,  78,  215;  use  of 
by  animals,  51;  wooden,  57 

Inca  of  Peru,  746 

India,  81,  85, 152,  251,  275,  338,  369,  421, 
439,  461,  475,  547,  592,  598,  669,  691, 
698,  703,817,  895;  history  (Alexander 
in),  320,  328,  332,  367,  439;  (Indo- 
Scythians  in),  474;  549,  1107;  (Eph- 
thalites  in),  548,  1107;  (Mongol*  in), 
476,  675,  697;  (17th  and  18th  cen- 
turies) ,  805-7,  811;  ( Brit i*h  in) ,  694, 
806-9,  827,  834,  977-82,  991,  997, 
1011,  1117-19;  civilization,  social  de- 
velopment and  culture  111,  142,  147, 
210-14,  248,  257,  354,  368,  697,  704, 
981;  European  settlements  in,  805-9, 
827,  834,  1117;  languages  of,  124,  239, 
698;  peoples  and  races,  107-9,  111, 
125,  126,  142,  265,  329,  550,  667,  747; 
religions  of,  378,  524,  545,  669,  675, 
697,  724;  trade  of,  342,  462,  806; 
travels  and  voyages  to,  462,  561-62, 
679,  741-44,  990,  1108,  1114 

Indian  corn,  85 

Indian  ocean,  81,  87,  156,  743 

Indians,  American.  (See  American  In- 
dians) 

Indies,  East,  32,  115,  125,  128,  153,  156, 
214,  806,  979,  988 

Indies,  West,  743,  802,  852,  979 


INDEfc 


1149 


Individual,  the  free,  201 
Individuality,  in  reproduction,  13 
Indo-European  languages.     (See  Aryan 

languages) 

Indo-Iranian  language,  238;  people,  466 
Indore,  806 

Indo-Scythians,  475,  538,  549,  1106 
Indulgences,  657,  758 
Indus,  126,  251,  275,  327,  331,  337,  368, 

436,  451,  691,  1104 

Industrial  Revolution,  825,  93>-34,  941 
Industrialism,  823 
Infanticide,  104 
Influenza,  922 
Information,  948 
Inge,  Dean,  507,  951 
Innes,  A.  D.,  773 
Innocent  III,  pope,  646,  647,  651,  661, 

725,  1112 

Innocent  IV,  646,  652,  677 
Inns,  early,  166 
Innsbruck,  762 

Inquisition,  the,  659,  723,  764,  916 
Insects,  3,  21,  23 

Instruments,  Neolithic  musical,  86 
Interglacial  period,  43,  51,  52,  55,  57 
"International,"  the,  945 
International  relationship,  891 
Internationalism,  960 
Intoxicants,  242,  251 
Investitures,  609,  638,  649 
Ion,  poet,  295 
lona,  614 

Ionian  Islands,  894 

lonians,  264,  265,  275,  279,  285,  288,  682 
Ipsus  (ip'  sus),  battle  of,  237 
Irak,  598 

Iran  (eran'),  437,  547 
Iranians,  548 
Ireland,  65,  78,  82,  155,  251,  262,  524, 

605,  614,  631,  661,  735,  779-81,  958, 

960,  997,  1011-23,  1119-20 
Irish  Catholics,  777-79,  795;    language, 

119,  238;   prisoners,  831;   race,  238 
Irish  sea,  55 
Iron,  2,  59;  as  currency,  165;  use  of,  80, 

134,  151,  153,  824,  924-27,  1103 
Iron  Age,  80 
Ironsides,  778 

Iroquois  (ir  6  kwoi')  tribes,  832 
Irrigation,  136 
Irving,  Washington,  803 
Isaac,  patriarch,  218-20 
Isabella  of  Castile,  742,  755 
Isaiah,  502 
Ishmael,  220 
Ishtar,  188 


Isis,  182,  192,  351-52,  367,  466,  467,  499, 
512-13 

Iskender,  331 

Islam,  235,  379,  506,  557,  570  sqq.,  702, 
750;  and  Christianity,  599,  628,  675, 
708;  propaganda  of,  581,  594,  616, 
675,  687,  706,  805,  933-34;  teaching 
of,  579  sqq.,  628,  697,  705,  939.  (See 
also  Moslems,  and  Muhammadanism) 

Isocrates  (I  sok'  rd  tez),  298,  300,  307, 
310,  331,  340 

Ispahan  (ispahan'),  691    • 

Israel,  Kingdom  of  (and  Israelites),  139, 
217sqq.,  266,  704,  795,  1102.  (See  also 
Jews) 

Issik  Kul  (is'ikkool),  562 

Issus,  battle  of,  322,  326,  585,  642,  1104 

Italian  language,  118,  381,  754 

Italy  (and  Italians),  78,  142,  158,  221, 
380,  382,  454,  533,  682,  703,  1105;  his- 
tory (Greeks  in),  253,  294,  382,  385-87, 
1104-5;  (Gauls  in),  330,  385,  404; 
(Roman),  387,  394,  425,  430-35,  451, 
706;  (invasion  by  Hannibal),  408-10-; 
(Goths  in),  480,  527,  610,  631,  1108; 
(Huns  in),  486;  (Lombards  in),  527, 
537,  621,  712,  1110;  (Charlemagne  in), 
621-22;  (Germans  in),  623,  1114;  (Nor- 
mans in),  631,  632,  640;  (Saracens 
in),  632;  (Magyars  in),  632;  (ISth-lSth 
cent.),  647,  651,  653,  662,  685-87,  739, 
750-52,  758,  768,  785-91,  1114;  (Na- 
poleonic  period),  786,  883,  890,  894-95, 
902,  906,  1118;  (to  unification  of), 
618-19,  936-38,  960;  (Kingdom  of), 
968-72,  992,  996,  1025,  1041,  1120; 
imperialism  of,  996,  1025.  (See  also 
Rome  and  Great  War) 

Ivan  III,  689,  1114;  IV  (the  Terrible), 
689,  1115 

Ivory,  trade  in,  214 

Ivy,  fossil,  37 

J 

JACOB,  patriarch,  218  sq. 

Jacobins,    French,    869,    877   sqq.,    887, 

893,  1118 

Jacquerie,  715,  1026,  1113 
Jade,  88 
Jaffa,  896 

Jaipur  (jipoor'),  805 
Jamaica,  803,  979,  998 
James  I,  82,  768,  788,  803,  828 
James  II,  781,  1015 
James,  St.,  503 
James,  Henry,  1065 
Jameson,  Dr.,  958 


1150 


INDEX 


Jamestown,  832,  851 
Janissaries,  683,  691 
Japan,  109,  367,  371,  679,  742-44,  811, 

992-94,  1119-20 
Japanese,  49,  990 

Japanese  language  and  writing,  121,  558 
Japhet,  110 
Jarandilla,  762 
Jarrow,  614 
Java,  51,  743 
Jaw,  chimpanzee,  54;  human,  ib.    Pilt- 

down  (see  Riltdown) 
Jefferson,  Tho.,  840,  849  sqq. 
Jehad  (jehad'),  "holy  war,"  645 
Jehan  (jehan'),  Shah,  693 
Jehangir,  693 

Jehovah,  222,  226,  230,  257,  351 
Jena  (ya'  nd),  battle  of,  905,  907,  1004, 

1118 
Jengis  Khan  (jen' gis  kan),  667,  669  sq., 

675  sq.,  681,  688  sqq.,  809,  1112 
Jerome  of  Prague,  710 
Jerusalem,   191,  217,  226-33,  350,  452, 

495,  502,  503,  507,  511,  525,  539,  544, 

586,  588,  628,  639,  642-47,  661,  679, 

1007,  1109,  1111 
Jesuits,  678,  687,  722,  749,  928,  991,  1113 

sq. 
Jesus,  spirit  and  teaching  of,  234,  423, 

496  sqq.,  522,  539,  547,   572,  578  sqq., 

619,  628,  649,  654  sqq.,  677,  687,  70S, 

sq.,  716,  721,  812,  843,  886,  902,  939, 

952,  1106  sq. 
Jewellery,  iron,  80 
Jewish  religion  and  sacred  books,  218, 

233,    234,    341,    350,    376,    466,    495, 

499,  600,  953 
Jews,   146,   191,  217,  230-35,   254,   342, 

352,  493-95,  530,    568-74,    584,    594, 

597,  600,  606,  635,  652,  682,  706,  793, 

798,1106.     (See  also  Judaism) 
"Jingo,"  973 
Jingo,  queen,  991 
Joab,  226 
Joan  of  Arc,  735 
Job,  Book  of,  85,  232 
Jodhpore  (jod  poor'),  Raja  of,  695 
John,  King  of  England,  645 
John  II,  king  of  Portugal,  742 
John  III,  king  of  Poland.   (See  Sobiesky, 

John) 

John  VI,  pope,  660 
John  X,  pope,  627,  1111 
John  XI,  pope,  627,  1111 
John  XII,  pope,  627,  637,  660,  1111 
John,  Prester,  679 
John,  St.,  503;  Gospel  of,  497,  614 


Johnson,  Samuel,  1017 

Jones,  H.  Stuart,  446,  463 

Joppa,  221 

Jordan,  river,  218,  584 

Joseph,  St.,  498 

Joseph  II,  emperor,  792,  1117 

Josephine,  empress.    (See  Beauharnais) 

Josephus,  430,  494  sq. 

Joshua,  221 

Josiah,  king  of  Judah,  299,  1103 

Judah,  kingdom  of,  227,  794 

Judaism,  378,  493,  581,  702,  708.  (See 
also  Jews) 

Judas,  508 

Judea,  142,  217,  308,  376,  466,  494  sqq., 
507  sqq.,  570,  592 

Judges,  Book  of,  222  sq. 

Judges  of  Israel,  400,  704 

Jugo-Slavs  (u'goslavz).  (See  Yugo- 
slavs) 

Jugurtha  (joo  ge>'  tha),  432  sq.,  1105 

Julian,  the  Apostate,  546,  1 106 

Julius  lit,  763 

Jung,  304 

Jungle  fo    1,  85 

Juno,  163 

Junot,  Mme.,  893 

Jupiter,  351  sq.,  383,  613 

Jupiter,  planet,  2 

Jupiter  Serapis,  351 

Justinian,  527  sq.,  554,  610,  621  sq.,  712, 
922,  1108 

Jutes,  482,  526,  619 

Jutland,  battle  of,  1042 


KAABA  (ka'  d  bd),  569  sqq.,  577,  592 

Kadessia,  battle  of,  585,  1109 

Kadija  (ka  de"  ja),  570  sqq. 

Kaffirs,  164 

Kaisar-i-Hind,  492,  694 

Kaisar-i-Roum,  492 

Kaiser,  Austrian,  492;  German,  492 

Kali  (ka'le),  377 

Kalifa.     (See  Caliph) 

Kalinga,  369 

Kalmucks  (kal'  milks),  107,  113,  473,  688 

Kanishka  (ka  nish'  ka),  549,  564,  1107 

Kao-chang,  563 

Karakorum  (ka  ra  kor'  dm),  672  sqq.,  694 

Karma  (kar'md),  doctrine  of,  363 

Karnak,  146 

Kashgar  (kashgar'),  474,  549,  562,  588, 

670,  679 

Kashmir,  Buddhists  in,  371 
Kavadh,  545,  555,  567,  909,  1109 


INDEX 


1151 


Kazan  (kazan'),  678 

Keane,  A.  H.,  127 

Keith,  Dr.  A.,  53  sq. 

Keltic  languages,  238,  251,  381,  527 

Keltic  race,  142,  238,  330,  337,  482,  605, 
770,  1014 

Kent,  Duke  of,  941 

Kent,  Kingdom  of,  605 

Kepler,  732 

Kerensky,  1047 

Kerne  Island,  163 

Ketboga,  691 

Keynes,  J.  M.,  1076 

Khalid  (kaled'),  584  sq. 

Khans,  563 , 674  sqq. ,  688  sqq. ,  704, 1 1 12  sq. 

Kharismia,  667,  670,  1112 

Khazars  (kazarz'),  635 

Khedive,  the,  of  Egypt,  997 

Khitan  people,  669,  679 

Khiva  (ke'va),  669,  679 

Khokand  (ko  kand'),  474,  670 

Khorasan  (ko'ra  san'),  596,  602 

Khotan  (kotan'),  549,  679,  1107 

Khyber  Pass,  328,  475,  562,  806 

Kiau-Chau  (kyou' chou'),  996  sq.,  1080, 
1120 

Kidnapped  children  sent  to  New  Eng- 
land, 831 

Kieff,  631,689,  694,  1110;  Grand  Duke 
of,  672 

Kin  Empire,  669  sq.,  688,  811,  1111 

Kings,  Book  of,  140,  222,  225,  229 

Kings  (and  kingship),  104,  185,  197  sqq., 
205  sqq.,  223,  247  sqq.,  255  sq.,  368,  703, 
750,  785,  833,  916  sq.;  divine  right  of, 
774,  777 

Kioto  (kyo'to),  993 

Kipchak,  Empire,  674,  688  sq. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  957,  988,  1012 

Kirghis  (kirgez'),  670;  steppe,  554 

Kitchen-middens,  81,  83,  119 

Kiwi,  153 

Knighthood,  398,  757 

Knights,  209,  736;  of  the  Shire,  397,  774 

Knives,  flint,  79 

Knots,  records  by  means  of,  154 

Knowledge,  diffusion  of,  340,  499 

Konia,  636 

Konigsberg,  736,  910 

Koran,  574  sq.,  581,  594  sq.,  806 

Korea,  558  sq.,  811,  991 

Korean  alphabet,  559;   language,  123 

Kosciusko  (kos  i  us'  ko),  801 

Krapina,  54 

Kremlin,  the,  792 

Krishna  (krish' nd£),  377 

Kriidener,  Baroness  von,  915 


Krum,  Prince  of  Bulgaria,  623,  634,  1110 

Krupp,  firm  of,  1037 

Kshatriyas  (ksha  tre'  yaz),  211 

Kuan-yin,  367 

Kublai   Khan    (koo' bl!  kan),    674   sq\, 

687  sq.,  704,  1113  sq. 
Kuen-lun  (kwen  loon')  mountains,  147, 

474,  562 
Kufa,  601 

Kushan  (koo  shan')  dynasty,  549 
Kusinagara,  565 
Kut,  1044 
Kutub,  669,  1112 

L 

LABOUR,  197,  207,  213,  747,  942,  1003 

Labour  Colleges,  419 

Labourers,  Statute  of,  715 

Labrador,  58,  94,  107,  962 

Labyrinth,  Cretan,  159-62 

Lacedemon  (las  e  de'  mon),  254 

Lacedemonians,  258,  271,  281 

Lade,  279 

Ladrones  (ladronz'),  743 

Ladysmith,  417 

Lafayette     (la  fa  yet'),     General,     839, 

860-63,  869,  872 
Lagash  (la 'gash),  141 
Lahore,  670 
Lake  dwellings,  82,  87,   103.     (See  also 

Pile  dwellings) 
Lamas,  Grand,  368 
Lamballe,  princess  de,  875 
Lamps,  Paleolithic,  74 
Lance  head,  bronze,  101 
Land,  tenure  of,  197,  213 
Lang,  Andrew,  59 
Langley,  Prof.,  930 
Languages  of  mankind,  97,  103,  117,  129, 

135,  172,  238,  243,  381 
Laodicea  (la  o  di  se"  d),  643 
Lao  Tse  (la'otze),  371,  375,  505,  553, 

566,  667,  939,  1104 
Lapland,  123 
Larsa,  141 

Las  Casas  (las  ka'  sas),  748,  851 
Lateran,  the,  622,  628,  637,  648,  654-55, 

661 
Latin  emperors,  662,  783 ;  language  and 

literature,  137,  236,  395,  459,  463,  489- 

91, 526,  535,  611,  625,  635-36,  690,  719 
Latins,  the,  381-83,  1106-9 
Latium,  382 
Laud,  Archbishop,  776 
Lav,  260,  536,  610 
Lawrence,  General,  981 
League  of  Nations,  1064-65, 1072-78, 112] 


1152 


INDEX 


Learning,  184,  675 

Leather,  Arabian,  603;  money,  165,  653 

Lebanon,  226,  542,  544 

Lecointre  (le  kwantr'),  863 

Lee,  General,  847,  971 

Leeuwenhoek  (la'  ven  huk),  733 

Legge,  353,  467 

Legion  of  Honour,  900 

Leicestershire,  715 

Leiden,  770 

Leipzig  (lip'  sik),  736;   battle  of,  911 

Leipzig,  cruiser,  1042 

Lemberg,  1040 

Lemming,  44 

Le  Moustier,  58 

Lemurs,  43,  49 

Lena,  river,  816 

Lenin  (len'in),  946-48,  1048 

Leo  I,  487;    III,  622,  624,   660,    1125; 

X,  755-58,  1114 
Leo  the  Isaurian,  594 
Leonidas  (l<Ton'  i  das),  284 
Leopold  I,  of  Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,   920, 

963,  1119 

Leopold,  king  of  Belgium,  965 
Lepanto,  battle  of,  700,  742 
Lepers,  657 

Lepidus  (lep'  i  dus),  444 
Levant,  the,  749 
Levantine  lake,  155 
Leverhulme,  Lord,  942 
Levites,  226 
Leviticus,  Book  of,  221 
Lex  Valeria,  391 
Lexington,  824,  1117 
Lhassa,  326,  373 
Liang-chi-chao,  151 
Liao-tung  (16  ou' toong'),  994 
Liberal  Party,  1013 
Liberia,  163,  986 
Libraries,  231,  344 
Libyan  script,  173 
Licinian  Rogations  and  Laws,  393,  430, 

552 

Licinius,  393 
Liege  (liazh'),  1037 
Liegnitz  (leg' nits),  battle  of,  673,  1112 
Life,  3,  14,  35;  early  forms  of,  3-12,  18- 

24,   25;    intellectual  development  of 

human,  173-76 
Light,  essential  to  plants,  20 
Ligny  (lenye"),  914 
Ligurian  republic^  891 
Lilybseum,  402 
Limerick,  Treaty  of,  1015 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  293,  969,  1119 
Lion,  the,  51,  56,  75,  248,  267 


Lippi,  Filippo,  740 

Lisbon,  458,  644,  736,  743,  762,  806 

Lissa,  battle  of,  972 

Literature,  prehistoric,  243 

Lithuania,  689,  795 

Liu  Yu,  554 

Liverpool,  924,  1119 

Lizards,  32 

Llama,  42,  153 

Lloyd,  294 

Lloyd,  L.,  243 

Lob  Nor,  679 

Lochau  (15  chou'),  761 

Locke,  John,  833,  855.  1116 

Lockyer,  Sir  Norman,  183 

Logic,  study  of,  726 

Loire  (Iwar),  the,  611 

Lombardy   (and   Lombards),   491,   527, 

529,  533,  537,  610,  621,  712,  772,  904, 

968,  1109 
London,  713-14,  736,  739,  777,  799,  808, 

836,  905,  913,  935,   963,    996,    1016, 

1041,  1051,  1119 
London,    Royal    Society.     (See    Royal 

Society  of  London) 
London,  University  of,  964 
Londonderry,  1021-23,  1120 
Longinus  (Ion  jl'  nits),  464 
Long  Island  Sound,  828 
Longwy  (Ion  ve'),  873 
Loos,  1040 
Lopez  de  Recalde,  Inigo.     (See  Ignatius, 

St.,  of  Loyola) 
Lords,  House  of,  398,  420,  775,  779-82, 

787,  844 

Lorraine,  972-73,  1012 
Lost  Ten  Tribes,  138 
Louis  the  Pious,  612,  625-26,  1110 
Louis  VII,  644;  IX,  648,  677,  1112;  XI, 

735;  XIV,  781,  787-K9,  792,  798,  803, 

857,  876,  899;    XV,  791,  794-95,  813, 

900,1117;   XVI,  791-94,  816,  849,  857 

*<M.,    882,  913;    XVII,    913;    XVIII, 

913,  1117-18 
Louis  Philippe,  917,  1118 
Louisiana,  805,  833 
Lou  vain  University,  1068 
Loyalty,  modern  conceptions  of,  958 
Loyola    (loio'ldf),    St.     (See    Ignatius, 

St.,  of  Loyola) 
Lu,  372 
Lubbock,    Sir    John.       (See    Avebury, 

Lord) 

Lubeck,  739 
Lucerne,  Lake  of,  754 
Lu-chu  Islands,  552 
Lucknow,  805,  981 


INDEX 


1153 


Lucretius  (1Q  kre'  shi  tfs),  419,  462,  953 
Lucullus  (Itf  kul'  Ha),  436 
Luke,  St.,  497 
Lunar  month,  99 
Lung-fish,  21 
Lungs,  22,  42 
"Lur,"  bronze,  101 
Lusitania,  liner,  1042 
Luther,  Martin,  719-23,  758,  761,  1114 
Lutterworth,  660 
Liitzen  (hit 'sen),  786 
Lutzow,  Count,  711 
Luxembourg,  972,  1034 
Luxembourg  Palace,  897 
Luxor,  146,  192 
Lvoff,  Prince,  1047 
Lyceum,  Athens,  301,  303 
Lycia,  sea-battle  of,  593 
Lycurgus  (llker'gfis),  166 
Lydia  (and  Lydians),   165,  264-66,  269 
sqq.,  274,  314,  337,  355,  413,  682,  1103 
Lydian  language,  128;  script,  171 
Lyell,  Sir  C.,  952 
Lyons,  488,  878 
Lysimachus  (H  sim'd  Ms),  337 


M 


MACAULAY,  LORD,  384,  819-20 

Macaulay  Island,  162 

Maccabeans,  495,  570 

Macedon,  543 

Macedonia  (and  the  Macedonians),  158, 
253,  259,  279,  288,  306,  311,  328,  332, 
336,  342,  369,  387,  408,  412,  568,  608, 
682,  705,  817,  917,  1104 

Machiavelli  (makeavel'e),  N.,  751, 
758,  765,792,  1004,  1114 

Machinery,  824,  932 

Madagascar,  153 

Madeira,  741 

Madhurattha  Vilasini  (mad'  hoo  rat'- 
t'ha  vila 'sine),  360 

Madison,  849 

Madras,  249,  369,  702,  807 

Mseander  (me  an'  der),  643 

Maelius,  Spurius,  392,  431 

Magdalenian  Age,  clothing,  347;  hun- 
ters, 267 

Magdeburg,  736,  786 

Magellan,  Ferdinand,  743,  1114 

Magenta,  968,  1119 

Magic  and  magicians,  104,  178 

Magna  Carta,  774,  1112 

Magna  Graecia,  253,  266,  385,  386 

Magnesia,  338,  413,  1105 

Magnetism,  733 


Magyar  language,  173,  487,  635 

Magyars  (majarz'),  487,  527,  632,  673 

Mahaffy,  301,  331 

Mahrattas,  805 

Maillard,  862 

Maimonides  (mi  mon'  i  dez),  600 

Maine,  829-31 

Mainz  (mints),  624,  717 

Maize,  85,  153 

Majuba,  986,  1013,  1120 

Malabar,  462 

Malay-Polynesian  languages,  124 

Malays,  148 

Mallet,  855 

Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  244 

Malta,  780,  895,  979,  996 

Mamelukes,  683,  685,  691 

Mammals,  33,  45,  50.  (See  also  Ani- 
mals) 

Mammoth,  44,  48,  52,  57,  59,  70,  72,  75 

Man,  3,  4,  17,  26,  47,  48,  75,  78,  80,  84, 
104;  ancestry  of,  36,  43,  44,  47,  50, 
954;  brotherhood  of,  507;  early,  43, 
65,  67,  70,  75,  80,  87,  92,  105,  215, 
347,  885;  Eoanthropus,  46,  53;  Hei- 
delberg, 46,  52,  54,  63;  life  of  common, 
197;  as  mechanical  power,  933;  Ne- 
anderthal, 46,  54,  66,  69,  71,  81,  93; 
primeval,  59,  62;  and  the  State,  795 

Manchester,  940,  1119 

Manchu  (man  choo')  language,  123 

Manchuria,  474,  561,  811,  991-95,  1009 

Manchus,  688,  811,  991 

Mandarins,  212 

Mangu  Khan,  674,  677,  1113 

Mani  (ma'ne),  546,  572,  578-82,  1107 

Manichaeans  (man  i  ke' dnz),  524,  546, 
594,  655 

Manichaeism,  546 

Manif  (manef),  577 

Mankind,  106,  235,  308;  brotherhood  of, 
797 

Manlius,  Marcus,  392,  406,  431 

Manny,  Sir  Walter,  713 

Manresa  (man  ra'  sd),  Abbey  of,  723 

Mansfield,  Lord,  852 

Mansur,  596 

Mantua  (man'  tyu  &),  876 

Manuscripts,  345,  548,  717 

"Manzi,"  679 

Manzikert  (man'  zi  kgrt),  636 

Mara,  Indian  god,  357 

Marat  (mara'),  869-71 

Marathon,  280-84,  292,  294 

Marchand,  Colonel,  985 

Marcus  Aurelius.     (See  Antoninus) 

Mardonius  (mar  do  ni  us),  287,  288 


1154 


INDEX 


Marduk  (mardook),  a  god,  180 

Marengo,  899,  1118 

Mafia  Theresa,  801,  803,  1117 

Marie  Antoinette,  856 

Marie  Louise,  Archduchess,  908 

Mariner's  compass,  555,  556,  681 

Maritime  power,  162 

Mariufc  (mar'  i  Us),  418,  432-35,441,  1105 

Mark,  St.,  497,  502,  503 

Marly,  862 

Marne,  1038,  1050 

Marozia,  626,  1111 

Marriage  and  intermarriage,   180,    192 

208,  249 
Mars,  god,  613 
Mars,  planet,  2,  3 
Marseillaise,  the,  876 
Marseilles  (mar  salz'),  253,  381,  408,  646, 

658,  736,  759,  878,  1113 
Marston  Moor,  778 
Martel,  Charles,  612,  613,  1110 
Martin  V,  Pope,  660,  664,  710 
Marx,  Karl,  935,  936,  944,  946,  950,  1009 
Marxists,  210 

Mary,  the  Egyptian,  578,  579 
Mary,  the  Virgin,  499,  513 
Mary  I,  Queen  of  England,  773,  774 
Mary  II,  Queen  of  England,  7"81 
Maryland,  829-32,  836 
Mas  d'Azil,  74 
Masai  hunters,  267 
Masked  Tuaregs,  121 
Mason,  Capt.  John,  829 
Mason  and  Dixon  line,  829,  831 
Maspero,  193,  195 
Mass,  the,  708 
Massachusetts,  829,  831,  836,  843,  848, 

852,  882 
Massage,  113 
Massinissa,  King,  411 
Mathematics,  600,  602,  675 
Matthew,  St.,  497,  501,  510 
Maulvi  Muhammad,  Ali,  574 
Mauritius,  806 
Maxentius,  519 
Maximilian,   Emperor  of   Mexico,   970, 

971,  1119,  1120 
Maximilian  I,  755,  1114 
Maximin,  485 

Maya  (ma'  ya)  writing,  154 
Mayence.     (See  Mainz) 
Mayflower,  the,  803,  829,  831 
Mayor,  422 

Mayor  of  the  Palace,  612 
Mazarin,  Cardinal,  787,  788,  796 
Mazdaism,  547,  581 
Mecca,  569,  581,  589,  396 


Meccan  allies,  1109 

Mechanical  Revolution,  the,  922-36, 
951,  963,  977,  980,  987,  1000,  1061 

Medest  140,  146,  190,  229,  239,  265,  268, 
281,  2*89,  292,  330,  384,  472,  1103 

Media  (me'  di  d),  139,  232,  270,  275.  329, 
437,  452 

Medici  (med'  i  che)  family,  740,  751-52 

Medicine,  343,  600,  602 

Medina  (mede'nd),  545,  554,  567,  568, 
573,  574,  580-86,  589-96 

Mediterranean,  120,  126,  132,  137,  155, 
161,  164,  218,  253,  338,  380,  401,  437, 
458,  468,  470,  488,  494,  541,  593,  618, 
630,  699,  739,  741,  746,  749,.  780 

Mediterranean  alphabets,  173,  253,  558; 
civilization,  115,  142;  early,  172,  182, 
489;  navigation  of,  155,  157,  162, 
442;  race  and  peoples,  74,  81,  108,  110, 
111,  121,  126,  152,  221,  238,  240,  263, 
381,  466;  valley,  55,  88,  90,  132 

Medway,  784 

Meerut,  981 

Megabazus  (meg  d  ba'  ztfs),  279 

Megalithic  monuments,  83,  113 

Megara^  (meg'  d  rd),  285 

Megatherium,  76,  153 

Megiddo,  229,  1103 

Melanesia,  115 

Melasgird,  636,  1111 

Memphis,  274,  307,  325,  351 

Menahem  (men' a  hem),  229,  1103 

Menelaus  (men  e  la'  tfs),  246 

Menes  (me'nez),  142,  150 

Mengo,  986 

VIercator's  projection,  474 

VIercenary  armies,  752 

Merchants,  206,  211 

Mercia,  605,  614,  618 

Mercury,  god,  391 

Mercury,  planet,  2 

Merodach  (mer'odak),  188 

Merovingians,  612,  783 

Vlerv,  525 

Merycodus  (mer  i  ko'  d#s),  41 

Mesopotamia,  75,  103,  131-32,  138,  142- 
44,  155,  177,  187,  196,  255,  331,  439, 
455,  491,  537-44,  567,  584,  586,  596, 
679,  688,  690,  704,  1044 

Wesozoic  (mes  d  zo'  ik)  period,  8,  11, 
25-43,  50,  51,  700 

Messiah,  231,  466,  493,  499,  504-9 

/lessina  (mese'nd),  Straits  of,  388, 
394,  401,  403 

Metallurgy,  927 
Metals,  78,  80,  152,  153,  165,  731 

letaurus,  409 


INDEX 


1155 


Methodist  revival,  8i3 

Methuselah,  99 

Metternich,  917,  937 

Metz,  863,  972 

Mexico   (and  the  Mexicans),    112,   148, 

153,  154,  742,  747,  748,  970,  972,  1115 
Mey,  Peter  van  der,  771 
Michael  VII,  emperor,  637 
Michael  VIII.  (See  Palaeologus, Michael) 
Michelangelo,  740 
Michelin  guides,  169  0 

Micklegarth,  668 
Microscope,  734 
Middelburg,  789 
Midianites,  222 
Midsummer  day,  181,  183 
Midwinter  day,  183 
Migrations,  78,  474-80,  483 
Mihiragula  (mi  her  d  goo'  la),  550,  1108 
Miklagard,  618 
Milan,  487,  488,  736,  740,  752,  753,  759, 

760,  904,  918 
Miletus  (mlle'tfls),  254,  262,  278,  288, 

321 
Military  organization,  136;  service,  261; 

tactics,  785 
Milk,  70,  84,  134,  473 
Millet,  486 
Milligan,  Joseph,  129 
Miltenburg,  737 

Miltiades  (mil  tl'  d  dez),  278,  294 
Milvian  Bridge,  519 
Minerals,  8 

Ming  dynasty,  171,  555,  557,  677,  688, 
.    724,  811,  1113 

Minos  (mi'nos),  142,  159,  161,  179,  266 
Minotaur  (min'otawr),  159,  161 
Minstrels,  244 

Miocene  (ml'  d  sen)  period,  38,  41-53,  70 
Mirabeau  (me  ra  bo),  859,  864-65 
Misraim  and  Misrim,  220 
Missionaries   (and  missions),   371,   613, 

614,  675,  677,  724,  985,  1115 
Mississippi,  833 
Mitanni,  138 
Mithraic  inscriptions,  423 
Mithraic  Sun-day,  499 
Mithraism,  466,  512,  513,  546,  654,  708, 

1108 

Mithras,  352,  465,  513,  546 
Mithridates   (mith  ri  da'  tez),  434,   435, 

1106 

Mo  Ti,  505 
Moa,  153 

Moab  (and  Moabites),  222,  232,  794 
Moawija.     (See  Muawija) 
Moesia,  491,  636,  1106 


Mogul,  Greatf,  997,  1116 

Mogul  dynasty,  693,  1116 

Mohammed.     (See  Muhammad) 

Mokanna,  596 

Moloch,  227 

Moltke,  Count,  1005 

Moluccas,  743 

Mommsen,  215,  311,  766,  768 

Monarchy,  769,  771,  786-93,  T99,  801, 
883,  915 

Monasteries  (and  monasticism) ,  530 
sqq.,  614,  667,  709 

Monastir  (monaster'),  1043 

Money,  164-65,  380,  391,  427,  551,  888. 
(See  also  Currency) 

Mongolia,  469,  472,  561,  672-80,  811 

Mongolian  languages,  126,  129;  races 
and  peoples,  111,  116,  126,  152,  239, 
266,  329,  330,  436,  437,  472-78,  527, 
682,  700,  703,  797,  809,  810,  990 

'Mongoloid  tribes,  153,  744 

Mongols,  469,  473,  479,  486,  647,  666 
sqq.,  675,  682,  687,  688,  689,  700,  703, 
726,  740,  749,  809,  817,  1112,  1113 

Monkeys,  43,  48 

Monks.     (See  Monasteries) 

Monmouth,  cruiser,  1042 

Monosyllabic  language,  123 

Monotheism,  581 

Monroe,  President,  916,  971 

Monroe  doctrine,  970,  984,  1029 

Mons,  1037 

Monte  Cassino,  531,  533 

Montesquieu,  854 

Montezuma  (mon  te  zoo'  md),  747 

Montfort,  Simon  de,  774 

Montreal,  804 

Montserrat,  723 

Moon,  2,  98 

Moorish  buffoon,  486 

Moorish  paper,  718 

Moors,  422,  749 

Moose,  52 

Moral  ideas,  233 

Moravia,  482 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  766,  931 

Moreau,  General,  890,  1118 

Morelly,  855 

Morning  Post,  941 

Mornington,  Lord,  979 

Morocco,  163,  702,  987,  996,  1000. 
1025 

Morris,  William,  856 

Mortar,  pebble,  69 

Morte  d'Arthur,  244 

Mosasaurs  (mo'  sd  sawrz),  28,  32 

Moscow,  689,  694,  792,  909,  1118 


1156 


INDEX 


Moscow,  Grand  Duke  of,  689,  1114 

Moscow,  Tsar  of,  809 

Moses,  142,  146,  155,  187,  220,  231,  547 

Moslem  schools,  697;  universities,  601 

Moslems,  the,  583-93,  597,  628,  635, 
639,645-46,657,  668,  674,  689,  696, 
700,  718,  981,  1109-11;  in  Europe, 
593-95,  606,  612,  616,  621,  632,  652, 
742,  793,  1111.  (See  also  Crusades  and 
Islam) 

Mosses,  20 

Mosso,  156 

Most,  711 

Mosul,  642,  691 

Motley,  771-72 

Mounds,  83,  95 

Mountains  (and  mountaineering),  3,  38 

Mousterian  Age  (and  implements),  46, 
58,  60,  66 

Muawija  (mooawe'ya),  589-94,  1110 

Mudfish,  21,  42 

Muehlon,  Heir,  1067 

Muhammad  (mu  ham'  dd),  prophet,  235, 
497,  £06,  545,  555,  561,  567,  685,  696, 
708;  life  of,  570  sqq.,  591,  592;  teach- 
ing of,  579-82,  594 

Muhammad  II,  sultan,  752,  1114 

Muhammad-Ibn-Musa,  602 

Muhammadan  communistic  movement, 
716 

Muhammadanism,  594,  606,  694.  (See 
also  Islam  and  Muhammad) 

Mulberry  tree,  458 

Mules,  110 

Miilhausen  (mul'  hou  zen),  891 

Muller,  Max,  180 

Mummies,  112 

Munich  (mu'nik),  731 

Minister  (mun'ster),  715,  1026,  1115 

Miinster,  Bishop  of,  715 

Munzuk,  486 

Murad  I,  683 

Murat  (mu  ra'),  910 

Murzuk,  88 

Muscovites,  793 

Muscovy,  empire  of,  792 

Musical  instruments,  86 

Musk  ox,  44,  48,  57,  75 

Muskets,  785 

Mycale  (mik'  a  le),  288,  290,  1104 

Mycenas  (ml  se'  ne),  80,  254,  265,  267 

Mycenean  (ml  se  ne'  dn)  architecture, 
383 

Mycerinus  (mis  8  rl' nws) ,  14  i 

Mylae,  402,  1105 

Myos-hormos,  462 

Myrina  (mirl'nd),  385 


Myron,  294 

Mysteries,  religious,  316 

Mythology,  100,  304 

N 

NABATEAN  KINGS,  542 

Nabonidus   (nab  6  ni' dus),  190-93,  197, 

217,  226,  231,  269,  274,  327,  355 
Nadir  Shah  (na' dgr  sha'),  806,  1117 
Nagasaki  (na  ga  sa'  ke),  992 
Nalanda,  564 
Nanking,  669,  1111 
Naples,  385,  440,  531-32,  653,  736,  766, 

891,  904,  917,  968,  1108 
Napoleon  I,  653,  765,  872,  876,  883,  892- 

915,  922,  924,  979,  1117-18;  III,  492, 

965-73,  975, 1119-20 
Narbonne,  736 
Naseby,  778 
Nasmyth,  926 
Natal,  987 
Nathan,  225 
"National  Schools,"  934 
Nationalism,  959-63,  975,  1023-24 
Nationalization,  947 
Natural  rights,  selection,  15 
Nautilus,  Pearly,  33 
Naval  tactics,  Roman,  403 
Navarino  (navare'no),  battle  of,  920, 

1119 

Navigation,  early,  155-64,  241 
Nazarenes,  510-13 
Neanderthal    (na  an'  der  tal)    man,    46, 

54,  66,  67,  71,  81,  93,  420,  427 
Nebuchadnezzar  (neb  u  kdd  nez'  dr)  (the 

Great)  II,  140,  146,  162,  217,  228,  230, 

269,  324,  327,  1104 
Nebulae,  1 
Necho  (ne'ko),  Pharaoh,  146,  163,  229, 

342,  439,  461,  741,  1103-4 
Necker,  863 
Needles,  bone,  69 
Negritos,  991 
Negroes,  47,  51,  110,  119,  14  i,  152,  462, 

749,  832,  851,  852 
Negroid  race,  67,  109,  112,  143 
Nehemiah,  232 
Nelson,  Horatio,  895-97,  905 
Neohipparion,  41 
Neolithic  Age,  55,  80,  83, 119-20,  125-27, 

142,  143,  241;  agriculture,  85-7,  100, 

135,  267;  civilization  and  culture,  77, 

98-104,  111-12,  119,  131-34,  140,  144, 

148,  155-59,  242-46;  man,  75-8,  97-8, 

102-4,  111,  125,  168,  215,  246,  249,  847 
Neo-pla.ton.ifim,  514,  726 


INDEX 


1157 


Nepal  (n<rpawl'),  355,  561,  562,  811 

Nephthys  (nef'this),  192 

Neptune,  planet,  2 

Nero,  454-55,  512,  531,  1106 

Nerva,  455,  1124 

Nestorian  Christians,  525,  538,  547,  554, 
600,  667,  677,  679 

Netherlands,  the,  755,  762,  769,  770-73, 
788,  803,  918-20.  (See  also  Dutch  Re- 
public and  Holland) 

Nets,  flax,  85 

Neustadt  (noi'  stat),  736 

Neustria,  612-13,  1110 

Neva,  river,  792 

New  Amsterdam,  803,  829-32 

New  England,  45,  741,  802,  828-32 

Newfoundland,  803,  997 

New  Guinea,  108,  111,  129 

New  Habsburg,  754,  1112 

New  Hampshire,  828,  831,  836 

New  Harmony  (U.S.A.),  942 

New  Jersey,  831,  836,  844,  1062 

New  Lanark,  941-42 

Newmarket,  781 

New  Mexico,  1028 

New  Orleans,  804 

New  Plymouth,  829 

Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  348,  462,  733,  1116 

Newts,  21 

New  Year,  festival  of,  183 

New  York,  426,  459,  736,  802,  831,  836, 
839,  846,  924,  1118 

New  Zealand,  153,  983,  998-99 

Niarchus,  318 

Nicsea  (ni  se'  d),  522-23,  636,  642,  1107 

Nice,  Province  of,  968 

Nicene  (ni'  sen)  Creed,  522,  624,  1107 

Nicephorus  (ni  sef  6  rws),  623,  1110 

Nicholas  1,  tsar,  920,  941,  966,  1119;  II, 
1001 

Nicholas  of  Myra,  522 

Nicholson,  Gen.  John,  981 

Nickel,  2,  927 

Nicomedes  (nik  o  me' dez),  King  of 
Bithynia,  430 

Nicomedia,  488,  518,  521 

Niemen  (ne'  men),  905 

Nietzsche  (ne' che),  1005 

Nieuw  Amsterdam.  (See  New  Amster- 
dam) 

Nile,  the,  89-90,  107,  125,  146,  152,  156- 
57,  215,  255,  462,  702,  985;  battle  of, 
896,  1118;  delta,  144,  164,  181;  valley, 
143,  214,  1102 

Nineveh  (nin'^v^),  138-40,  146,  190, 
231,  269,  326,  537,  539,  543,  545,  691, 
1103,  1109 


Nippur  (nip  poor'),  103,  131,  136,  142, 

215,  691 

Nirvana  (nir  va'  nd),  362,  364,  370 
Nish,  457,  481,  485,  520,  1107 
Nisibin,  543 
Nitrate  of  silver,  602 
Nitric  acid,  602 
Noah,  110 
Nobility,  200,  205 
Nogaret,  Guillaume  de,  663,  1113 
Nomadism  (and  Nomads),  84,  107,  133, 

135,  246,  329,  548,  567,  666,  670,  689, 

697-98,  703-4 
Nominalism,  728  sqq. 
Nonconformity,  721 
Nordic  race,  123,  152,  266,  312,  316,  329, 

475,  608,  630,  682,  703,  709,  726,  797, 

811,  1014 
Normandy    (and    the    Normans),    618, 

631-32,  637-42,  735,  865,  1111;  duke- 
dom of,  626,  630 
Norse  language,  238,  619 
Northmen,  468,  617,  618,  628-30,  635, 

709,  1014 

North  Sea,  the,  55,  468,  630,  739-40,  741 
Northumberland,  933 
Northumbria,  kingdom  of,  605,  615 
Norway,   75,   526,   616,   630,   661,   720, 

761,  803,  919,  1111 
Norwegian  language,  238 
Norwich,  713 
Nottingham,  777,  924 
Nova  Scotia,  741 
Novgorod  (no v  go  rod'),  631,  689,  736, 

739,  1110 
Nubia,  200 
Nubian  wild  ass,  163 
Numbers,  use  of,  97 
Numerals,  Arabic,  164,  602,  652 
Numidia    (and    Numidians),    407,    410, 

416,  432,  463 
Nuns,  709 

Nuremberg,  736;  Peace  of,  761 
Nurriberg  (nurn  berc/i),  cruiser,  1042 


OAK,  45 

Oars,  156 

Obedience  and  will,  702-7 

Obi  (6 'be),  river,  329,  816 

Occam,  729,  730,  Ilia 

Ocean,  3 

Oceania,  153 

Octavian.     (See  Augustus) 

Odenathus     (od  e  na'  thiis),     538,     568, 

1107 
Odin,  613 


1158 


INDEX 


Odoacer  (o  do  a'  ser),  623,  1108 

Odysseus,  437 

Odyssey.     (See  Homer) 

(Ecumenical  councils,  522 

Offerings,  178 

Ogdai  Khan,  672,  673,  1112 

Oglethorpe,  830,  1117 

Ohio  (o  hi '6),  45,  833 

"Old  Man"  in  religion,  95,  102-4,  885 

Oligarchies,  258,  260 

Oligocene  (ol'  i  gd  sen)  period,  38,  39,  50, 

51 

Olney,  Mr.,  1029,  1078 
Olympiad,  first,  264,  1103 
Olympian  games,  264 
Olympias,  316  sqq.,  329,  336,  343,  387 
Olympus,  mount,  283 
Omar  I,  caliph,  584-89,  647,  1109 
Omayyads    (omi'yadz),   591-601,    625, 

628,  1110 

O'Neil  of  Tyrone,  82 
Oppossum,  43 
Oracles,  194,  256,  270 
Orange,  house  of,  773 
Orange,  Duke  of,  772 
Orange  River,  986 
Orang-outang,  46 
Orbit  of  earth,  44 
Orient,  ship,  896 
Orientation  of  temples,  181,  183 
Origen  (or'  i  je'n),  514 
Orissa,  378 

Orlando,  Signer,  1068,  1071 
Orleans,  487,  736,  937 
Ormonde,  Duke  of,  819 
Ormuz,  679 

Ormuzd  (or'muzd),  545,  546 
Ornaments,  85 

•Ornithorhynchus  (or  nith  6  ring'  kus),  40 
Orpheus  (or'fus),  466 
Orphic  cult,  316 
Orsini  (or  se  ne) ,  family,  663 
Orthodox  Church.    (See  Greek  Church) 
Osborn,  Prof.  H.  F.,  65,  462 
Osiris  (3  sir' is),  192,  351,  352 
Osman,  House  of,  683 
Ostia,  428 
Ostracism,  263 

Ostrogoths,  476,  481,  527,  631,  1108 
Othman,  589,  591,  1109 
Otho,  Emperor,  456,  1109 
Otis,  James,  834 
Otranto,  685 
Otters,  26,  52 
Otto  I,  627,  635,  660,  1111 
Otto  II,  627,  1111 
Otto  III,  627,  1111 


Otto  of  Bavaria,  920 

Ottornan  Empire,  681-87,  691,  692,  696, 

697,  736,  1114.    (See  also  Turkey  and 

Turks) 

Oudh  (oud),  805,  808,  981 
Ovid,  10 

Owen,  Robert,  940-45,  1119 
Ownership,  885 
Ox,  great,  75 
Ox-carts,  221 
Oxen,  83,  162,  241,  247 
Oxford,   459,    601,    659,   712,    726,   728, 

729,  736,  777,  813,  819,  835,  862,  964, 

1011 

Oxide  of  iron,  7 
Oxus,  550 

Oxydactylus  (ok  si  dak'  ti  l#s),  41 
Oxygen  (ok'sijen),  19 


PACIFIC  OCEAN,  33,  62,   115,   152,  214, 

672,  702,  742,  747,  811,  1008,  1112 
Paddling  in  navigation,  157 
Padua,  487 
Paine,  Tom,  849 
Painted  pebbles,  73  sg.,  74 
Painting,  Palaeolithic,  71 
Paionia,  288 
Pabeoanthropus    Heidelbergensis     (pal- 

&  6  an  thro'  ptis       hi'  del  bSrg  en'  sis) , 

46,  52,  54 
Palaeolithic  age,  46,  55,  65,  68,  74,  80, 

143;   art,  71,  93,  99;   implements,  57, 

60,  77,  107;  man,  62,  65,  76,  80,  87,  98, 

104,  108,  112,  117,  118,  129,  152,  168, 

215,  347,  746,  759,  885 
Palseologus      (pal  e  ol'  6  gws),      Michael 

(Michael  VIII),  662;    Zoe,  689 
Palaeopithecus  (pal  £  6  pi  the'  k#s),  50 
Palaeozoic   (paleozo'ik)   period,  8,   16, 

19,  24,  25,  36,  38,  42 
Palais  Royal,  860 
Palermo  (prf  ler'  mo),  403 
Palestine,   202,   218-21,   227,   382,   493, 

568,  636-37,  644,  657,  667,  674,  679, 

691,  1007,  1113 
Pali  (pa'  li)  language,  355 
Palms,  Cainozoic,  37 
Palmyra  (pal  ml'  rd),  538,  542  sqq.,  568, 

1107 

Palos  (pa'  16s),  741 
Pamir  (pa  mer')  Plateau,  329 
Pamirs,  562,  589,  670,  688,  740 
Pampeluna  (pam  pe  loo'  na),  722,  1114 
Pamphylia  (pam  fil'  i  d),  643 
Panama  Canal,  1031 


INDEX 


1159 


Panama,  Isthmus  of,  743,  746 

Pan-American  Conferences,  1001,  1029 

Pan  Chau,  1106 

Pan-German  movement,  1008 

Panipat  (pa'neput),  693,  1114 

Pannonia  (pa  n5'  ni  d),  481,  527,  1106 

Panther  in  Europe,  268 

Papacy  (incl.  popes),  policy  of,  654; 
outline  of,  660;  and  the  Great  War, 
725;  and  world  dominion,  802;  mis- 
cellaneous, 526,  533,  607,  ,612,  621  sqq., 
632,  637,  644  sqq.,  659,  663,  677  sq., 
684  sgg.,708sg.,720,724,744,  758,  796, 
937,  1113.  (See  also  Rome,  Church  of) 

Papal  Schism,  663,  710,  1113 

Paper,  introduction  and  use  of,  144,  346, 
603,  681,  717  sq.,  758 

Papua  (pa'putf),  type  of  mankind  in, 
108 

Papuan  speech,  129 

Papyrus  (pa  pi'  rws),  144,  347,  603 

Parchment,  603 

Parchment  promissory  notes,  653 

Pariahs,  211 

Paris,  Peace  of,  830,  1117;  during  the 
Revolution,  858  sqq. ;  Napoleon  in, 
892,  904,  910,  914,  capitulation  of, 
911;  rising  against  Charles  X,  917; 
revolution  of  1848,  938;  siege  of,  972; 
Zeppelin  raids  on,  1041;  Peace  Con- 
ference at,  1061-72,  1076-81;  miscel- 
laneous, 736,  839,  901,  935,  1120 

Paris,  University  of,  724,  729,  820 

Parker,  E.  H.,  470 

Parliament,  government  by,  750;  Eng- 
lish, 773-83,  798,  808,  833  sq.,  1017  sq., 
1118;  Polish,  801 

Parliamentary  Monarchy  in  Europe,  793 

Parma,  652 

Parmenio  (par  me'  ni  5),  318,  333 

Parsees,  545,  696 

Parthenon  (par'  the  ntfn),  294 

Parthia  (and  Parthians),  330  sq.,  337, 
436  sqq.,  452,  455,  468,  472  sq.,  537, 
542  sq.,  1106 

Paschal  II,  1111 

Passau  (pas'  ou),  Treaty  of,  762,  1115 

Passover,  Feast  of  the,  507  sq. 

Passy  (pase'),  864 

Pasteur  (pas  tur'),  348 

Patricians,  Roman,  $89-96 

Patriotism,  260,  304,  797 

Pattison,  Prof.  Priugle,  729 

Patzinaks,  635 

Paul,  St.,  337,  423,  507,  510  sqq.,  952 

Paul,  Tsar  of  Russia,  1117 

Paulicians,  524 


Pauline  epistles,  510  sq. 

Pauline  mysteries,  513 

Pa  via  (pa  ve'd),  759    • 

Peace,  universal,  234,  653 

Peace  Conference.     (See  Paris) 

Peas,  as  food,  85 

Peasant  revolts,  714  sq.,  758,  821,  984, 
1113 

Peasants,  118,  198 

Pecunia,  164 

Pecus,  165 

Peers,  Council  of,  776 

Pegu  (pegoo'),  679 

Peisistratidae  (pi  sis  tra'  ti  de) ,  264 

Peisistratus  (pi  sis'  trd  tt/s),  258,  280-85, 
391,  1104 

Pekinese  language,  123 

Peking,  183,  561,  669,  674  sq.,  694,  792, 
811,  989,  1112,  1120 

Peloponnesian  War,  291,  1104 

Pelycosaurs  (pel'  i  kd  sawrz),  23 

Pendulum,  invention  of,  602 

Penelope,  248 

Penn,  William,  829 

Pennsylvania,  829,  831,  843  sq.,  850 

Pentateuch,  218  sqq.,  231 

Pepi,  145,  342,  765 

Pepin  (pep'  in)  I,  612,  616,  1110;  son  of 
Charlemagne,  621;  of  Heristhal,  612, 
1110 

Pepys,  Samuel,  781 

Pergamum  (pSr'gdmum),  337,  430  sq., 
436  , 

Pericles  (per'  i  klez),  259,  290  sqq.,  307, 
457,  712  sq.,  740,  1104;  Age  of,  300 
sq.,  308 

Perihelion,  44 

Peripatetic  school,  343 

Periplus,  of  Hanno,  163,  184 

Perkin,  1003 

Perry,  Commodore,  993,  1119 

Persepolis  (per  sep' <His),   307,  327,  584 

Persia  (and  the  Persians),  81,  109,  164, 
190,  229-30,  240,  257,  267,  315,  319, 
331,  336-37,  386,  436,  440,  462,  467, 
470,  472,  479,  543,  547-48,  554-57, 
568,  583-85,  631,  636,  666,  670,  675- 
79,  687,  699,  716,  735,  806,  817,  1107; 
history  (rise  of),  140,  144)  146,  152, 
190,  202,  259,  261-64,  267-71;  (Em- 
pire), 452,  1105-8;  (war  with  Greece), 
274  sqq.',  (war  with  Alexander),  321, 
324-30,  1123;  (Sassanid  Empire), 
~457,  537-39,  545,  596,  1109;  (Islam 
and  Persia),  585-96,  628;  (Mongol 
Empire),  673,  689,  694;  religion  of, 
350-52,  518,  524,  538,  545-46,  554,  696 


1160 


INDEX 


Persian  Gulf,  126,  132,  136,  156,  329,  679 
Persian  language,  118,  140,  240,  698 
Peru,  112,  115,  153-54,  746-49,  991,  1115 
Peshawar  (p^shawr'),  367,  562 
Pestilence,  74,  457,  470,  529,  552,  606, 

610,  621,  640,  712,  923,  1107  sqq. 
Peter,  St.,  85,  508,  622,  662;   the  Great, 

792  sq.,  809,  967,  1116;    the  Hermit, 

639  sq 

Peterhof,  792 
Petition  of  Right,  776 
Petra  (pe'trd),  568 
Petrie,  Flinders,  143 
Petrograd,  792,  1047 
Petronius  (p£  tro'  ni  Us),  458 
Petschenegs,  635  sq. 
Phalanx,  313  sq. 
Phanerogams,  22 
Pharaohs,   the,    145,    159,   191  sq.,   197 

sqq.,  220,  227,  342  sq.,  439,  461 
Pharisees,  496,  502 

Pharsalos  (far  sa'  l<Js),  battle  of,  441,  1106 
Pheidippides  (fl  dip'  i  dez),  281 
Phidias  (fid'  i  as),  294  sq. 
Philadelphia  (ancient),  542,  643;  U.  S.  A., 

829,  839  sg.,  846,  1117 
Philip,  of  Hesse,  761 
Philip  of  Macedon,  292,  302,  306  sqq., 

331  sqq.,  340,  343,  372,  489,  1104 
Philip,  King  of  France,  663 
Philip  II,  King  of  Spain,  762,  770  sq., 

783,  793,  839 

Philip,  Duke  of  Orleans,  860,  882,  917 
Philippine  Islands,  743,  979,  992,  1029 
Philistia  (and  Philistines),  142,  188,  221 

sqq.,  382 
Philonism,  514 
Philosophy,  primitive,  92;    Greek,  Mi, 

349;     medicinal,    727    sqq. ;      experi- 
mental, 734 

Philotas  (fi  16'  ids),  318,  333 
Phinehas,  223 
Phocians  (fo'  shi  anz),  313 
Phoenicia   (fenish'd),   and  Phoenicians, 

158  sqq.,  168,   177,  214,  218  sq.,  225, 

228  sqq.,  279-85,324-37,  342,  493,  560; 

language  and  script,  120, 173;  colonies, 

253,  383 

Phanix,  steamship,  924 
Phonetic  spelling,  559 
Phonograms,  170  sq. 
Phrygia  (frij'id),  and  Phrygians,  253, 

265,  330,  337,  382,  682 
Phrygius,  318 
Physics,  602 
Physiocrats,  855 
Piacenza  (pya  chen'  tsa),  639 


Pictographs,  169  sqq. 

Picts,  461 

Picture  writing,  144,  153,  173 

Piedmont,  876 

Pig,  48,  169;    unclean  to  Moslems,  981 

Pigtails,  Chinese,  688,  811,  990 

Pilate,  Pontius,  507 

Pile  dwellings,  80,  132.     (See  also  Lake 

dwellings) 

Pilgrim  Fathers,  851 
Pilgrims,  632,  639 
Pillnitz,  872 

Piltdown  skull,  46,  53  sqq. 
Pindar  (pin'ddr),  320 
Pins,  bone,  85 
Piracy,  739 
Pisa,  732,  736 
Pithecanthropus  (pith  e  kan  thro  p#s) 

erectus,  46,  49  sqq. 
Pitt,  William,  the  "Younger,"  903 
Pius,  VII,  903 

Pixodarus  (pik  sd  diir'  us),  318 
Pizarro  (pizar'6),  747,  1115 
Placentia  (pld  sen'  shi  d).    (See  Piacenza) 
Plague.     (See  Pestilence) 
Plaiting,  Neolithic,  78 
Planets,  2  sq. 
Plants,  8  sqq. 

Plassey,  battle  of,  808,  1117 
Plataja   (pldte'd),    battle   of,   284,    288 

sqq.,  296,  1104 
Plato,  292,  298,  299  sqq.,  340,  372,  491, 

539,  726,  766,  944,  1104 
Playfair,  954 

Plebeians,  Roman,  389  sqq.,  418,  419 
Pleistocene  (plls'  to  sen)  Age,  38,  44,  46, 

48  sq.,  75,  121,  197 
Plesiosaurs  (pie'  zi  6  sawrz),  28,  32,  36 
Pliny,  the  elder,  132;  the  younger,  463, 602 
Pliocene   (pi!'  6  sen)  Age,  38,  44,  46,  51 

sq.,  215 

Plotinus  (pl<5  tl'  nws),  348,  514 
Plunkett,  Sir  Horace,  1023 
Plutarch,  263,  293  sq.,  316,  320,  332,  336, 

406,  432,  435,  442  sqq.,  520,  894 
Pluvial  Age,  126  sq.,  246 
Plymouth,  915;   (New  England),  851 
Plymouth  Company   828 
Po,  valley  of  the,  330,  384,  395,  404 
Pocahontas  (p5  kd  hon'  ids),  828 
Pocock,  R.  I.,  72 
Pocock,  Roger,  239,  479 
Poitiers,  612,  735,  1110 
Poland,  635,  664,  673,  685,  690,  735,  787, 

795,  798-801,  809,  816,  823,  826,  865, 

872,  906-8,    915,  918-20,    937,    1080, 

1116,  1119 


INDEX 


1161 


Polish  language,  238 

Political  ideas,  common,  449 

Politics  (and  Politicians),  426,  700,  796 

Polo,  Maffeo,  678 

Polo,  Marco,  678,  681,  741,  751,  1113 

Polo,  Nicolo,  678 

Polyclitus  (pol  i  kll'  tils) ,  294 

Polynesia,  115,  128;  languages  of,  121, 
129;  peoples  of,  81,  116,  124 

Pompadour,  Madame  de,  791 

Pompeii  (pom  pa'  ye),  421 

Pompey,  436,  439-43,  467-70,  476,  496, 
546,  1106 

Pondicherrp ,  807 

Pontifex  maximus,  619 

Pontus,  481,  541 

Poor,  the,  818  sq. 

Poor  Laws,  766 

Pope,  Alex.,  1017 

Popes.     (See  Papacy) 

Poplicola  (pop  lik'  6  Id) ,  Valerius,  391 

PoppaBa  (p6  pe'  d),  454 

Popular  education,  Christianity  and,  700 
sqq. 

Port  Arthur,  989,  994 

Port  SunHght,  942 

Porto  Rico,  1029 

Portugal  (and  Portuguese),  163,  238,  482, 
491,  664,  907,  1014,  1108,  1112-14; 
overseas  trade  and  expansion  of,  740- 
44,  747-49,  801,  807,  852,  979,  984,  991 

Porus  (po'  rite),  king,  328  sq.,  368 

Posen,  910,  937,  972,  1012 

Post  horses  in  ancient  Persia,  275 

Potash,  602 

Potato,  154 

Potomac,  river,  847 

Potsdam,  792 

Pottery,  77,  82  sq.,  100  sq.,  383,  603 

Poultry.     (See  Fowl) 

Powers,  Great,  767  sqq.,  797,  802,  826, 
917,  966,  975,  1024 

Prague,  710,  732,  937  sq.,  1119;  Univer- 
sity of,  710 

Prayer-flags,  Buddhist,  378 

Prayer-wheels,  376 

Presbyterianism,  776 

Prescott,  762  sq. 

Press,  free,  843;  in  politics,  396 

Prester  John,  679 

Priam  (pri'dm),  283 

Pride,  Colonel,  779  sq. 

Priestcraft  (incl.  Priesthood  and  Priests), 
96,  100,  103,  150,  178-89,  193-95,  205, 
208,  225,  247,  251,  256,  369,  582,  649, 
709-10,  796 

Primal  law,  59 


1  Prince,  character  of  a,  751  sqq. 
Princes,  an  exclusive  class,  209 
i  Princeton,  Univ.  of,  1062 
Printing,  175,347,  396,  717  sq.,  724,  731, 

1114;    Chinese,  550 
Priscus  (pris'kws),  485  sq.,  607,  1108 
Prisoners  as  slaves,  851 
Prisons,  English,  882 
Private   enterprise,   822   sq.,    1056   sqq.; 

ownership,  822;   property,  782 
Probus  (pro' bite),  emperor,  481,  1107 
Production,  distribution  and  profits  of, 

823 ;   of  machinery,  824 
Profit,  878 

Prokop  the  Great,  711 
Proletariat,  210,  390,  935,  944  sqq. 
Promissory  notes,  early,  165 
Property,  201,  207,   705,   769,   855,   882 

sqq.,  923,  936  sq.,  946 
Prophets,  Jewish,  104  sq. 
Proterozoic    (prot  £r  6  zo'  ik)    period,    8, 

11,  14,  17  sq. 
Protestantism,  709,  725,  761-62,  769-81, 

770,  785,  789,  793,  802,  815,  819-20, 

828-32,  991,  1014-21 
Provence,  913 
Proverbs,  book  of,  232 
Providence,  Rhode  Island,  836 
j  Prussia,  786,  791,  795-800,  827,  858,  865, 

872,  904,  908,  914,  919,  968-72,  1004, 

1119-20 

Przemysl  (pshem'isl),  1041 
Psalms,  2c2 
Psammetichus  (sa  met' i  kus),  146,  229, 

266,  1103 
Pskof,  736 
Pteria  (te'rid),  272 
Ptolemies,  337,  342,  371,  494 
Ptolemy    (tol'  e  mi)    I,    318,    342,    344, 

348-55,  557,  1105;  Ptolemy  II,  344-45; 

Ptolemy  III,  345 
Public  opinion,  growth  of,  708 
Public  schools.     (See  Schools,  public) 
"Pul,"  Assyrian  monarch,  229 
Pultusk,  904 
Punch,  962,  1011 
Punic  (pu'  nik)  language,  457;  wars,  142, 

388  sq.,  394,  398  sqq.,  1105 
Punjab,  147,  330,  367  sq.,  674,  693  sq., 

806,  1105 
Puritans,  780,  830 
Pyramids,    103,  144  sq.,   181,   202,    215; 

battle  of  the,  894 
Pyrenees,    127,    482,    593,  606,  610  sq., 

616,  789,  910,  1110 

Pyrrhus  (pir'  us),  386  sqq.,  401,  632,  1105 
Pytho  (pi'tho),  271 


1162 


INDEX 


QUACO,  1117 
Quadrupedal  reptiles,  28 
Quartzite  implements,  107 
Quebec,  805,  1117 
Quipus,  154 
Quixada  (ke  ha'  da) ,  762 

R 

RA,  193 
Races    of    mankind,    66,    67,    74,     89, 

106-19 
Radiolaria,  8 
Ragusa  (ra  goo'  za),  736 
Rahab,  month  of,  574 
Rai,  Lajpat,  980 
Railways,  924,  1119 
Rajgir,  357 

Rajput  (raj  poof)  clans,  550 
Rajput  princes,  805 
Rajputana,  550,  735,  803 
Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  828 
Ramah,  224 

Rambouillet  (row  boo  ya'),  862 
Rameses  (ram'^sez)  II,  142,   146,  220, 

221,  228,  342,  1102 
Rameses  III,  191,  221 
Raphael,  740 

Rasputin  (ras  poof  in),  1047 
Ratisbon,  Diet  of,  761 
Ratzel,  154,  479 

Ravenna,  482,  484,  488,  527,  625,  1109 
Rebus,  172 

Reconstruction,  Ministry  of,  1055 
Red  Cross,  754 
Red  Indians,  473,  832 
Red  Sea,  121,   126,  132,   156,  157,  220, 

226,  228,  342,  457,  462 
"Red  Sea"  river,  89,  92 
Redmond,  John,  1021,  1022 
Reed  pipes,  86 
Reform  Bill,  937,  1119 
Reformation,   the,   518,    720,    724,   758, 

819,  820 
Regicide,  779 

Reindeer,  48,  57,  58,  70,  72,  76,  87 
Reindeer  Age,  60,  69,  73-4 
Reindeer  men,  76,  81,  87,  93,  103,  241 
Religion,   94-7,    101,    180,    348-52,   506 

sqq.,  723,  855,  957;   "Old   Man"  in, 

24,  100-4 

Religious  wars,  761 

Remus  (re'  mws)  and  Romulus  (rom'  fl- 
irts), 383 

Renaissance,  699,  740 
Renascence,  699 
Rent,  197,  206 


Reparation,  164 

Representation,  political,  425,  845,   949 

Reproduction,  13,  15;  of  amphibia,  22; 
of  mammals,  40 

Reptiles,  22,  23,  25  sqq. 

Republicanism,  798,  813,  891 

Republics,  258,  702,  703 

Retailers,  207 

Revere,  Paul,  837,  840 

"Revisionists,"  945 

Revolution,  939,  947 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  1017 

Rhine,  52,  436,  437,  452,  455,  468,  475, 
481,  484,  633,  758,  786,  788,  815,  875, 
911,  968 

Rhineland,  527,  611,  632,  642,  770 

Rhinoceros,  43,  44,  48,  52,  57 

Rhode  Island,  828,  831,  836,  842,  847 

Rhodes,  338,  643 

Rhodesia,  998 

Rhondda,  Lord,  1054 

Rhone  valley,  527 

Rice,  560 

Richard  I,  Coeur  de  Lion,  645,  774 

Richard  II,  715,  1112 

Richelieu,  Cardinal,  787,  796,  803 

Richmond,  970 

Ridge  way,  W.,  80 

Riga,  736,  739,  1047 

Righteousness,  341 

Rio  de  Oro  (re'  o  da  5'  r5),  163 

Ritual,  708.     (See  also  Christianity) 

Riviera  (re  ve ar'  a),  French,  381 ;  Italian, 
891 

Robert  of  Sicily.   (See  Guiscard,  Robert) 

Robertson,  763 

Robespierre  (ro  bes  pyiir'),  869,  876- 
81,  893,  1118 

Robinson,  J.  H.,  662,  803 

Rochefort,  914 

Rocks,  6,  9,  20 

Rocquain,  855 

Roger  I,  King  of  Sicily,  651 

Rolf  the  Ganger,  619,  630,  1126 

Roman  coins,  389 

Roman  Empire,  447  sqq.;  social  and  po- 
litical state  of,  457,  462-69,  472,  478, 
726;  fall  of,  478,  480,  482;  separation 
into  Eastern  and  Western  Empires, 
488,  491;  later  Roman  Empire  (West- 
ern), 519,  526,  535,  539,  553,  555,  600, 
619,  621,  623,  631,  717,  814,  816,  1107. 
(See  also  Eastern  (Greek)  Empire) 

Roman  law,  394,  537;  roads,  394,  468 

Roman  Republic  (19th  century),  891, 
1119 

Romuusch  language,  612,  754 


INDEX 


1163 


Rome,  435,  439,  449,  475,  492,  495,  512, 
527,  531,  537,  541,  554,  568,  614,  685, 
739,  750,  758,  824,  968,  971,  1007; 
early  history  of,  380-86,  392,  1103, 
1104;  war  with  Carthage,  388;  social 
and  political  state  of,  389-98,  405, 
412-31,  437,  445,  550,  705,  931,  1105; 
assemblies  of,  396,  398,  418,  419,  425, 
436;  patricians  and  plebeians,  389-96, 
418-19;  Senate,  389,  393,  396-400, 
413,  415-19,  425-35,  443-45,  454; 
Consuls  of,  389,  398;  colonies  of,  390, 
394,  454;  Punic  wars,  142,  388  sq., 
394,  398  sqq.,  1123;  military  system  of, 
417,  436,  450;  bequests  to,  430,  1105; 
Social  war,  433,  1106;  monarchy  in, 
and  the  fall  of  the  Republic,  442-50; 
Roman  Empire  (see  above) ;  plague  in, 
529,  606,  1109;  true  cross  at,  539, 
647;  "duke  of,"  607;  Pepin  crowned 
at,  623;  in  10th  century,  627;  sacked 
by  Guiscard,  632,  1126;  Germans  raid, 
759,  1114;  Charlemagne  crowned  at, 
767 

Rome,  Church  of  (inc.  general  Christian 
associations),  512-14,  525,  605-7,  614, 
619-23,  637,  639,  649,  653-64,  688, 
694,  753,  758,  767,  781,  900.  (See  also 
Catholicism  and  Papacy) 

Romulus  and  Remus,  383 

Roosevelt,  President,  1027,  1030,  1062, 
1066 

Rose,  Holland,  893,  896,  902 

Roses,  Wars  of  the,  735 

Ross,  470,  596 

Rostro-carinate  implements,  46,  60,  215 

Roth,  H.  L.,  78 

"Roum,"  Empire  of,  682 

Roumania  (and  the  Roumanians),  491, 
635,  674,  683,  918,  920,  1025,  1045 

Rousseau  (rooso'),  J-  J-,  855,  856,  869, 
877,  893,  1117 

Rowing,  157,  402 

Roxana,  332,  336 

Royal  Asiatic  Society,  564 

Royal  families,  marriage  of,  208 

Royal  Society  of  London,  557,  791,  929 

Rubicon  (roo'  bi  k<5n),  the,  441 

Rudolf  I,  German  Emperor,  754,  1113 

Rulers,  deification  of,  415 

Ruling  families,  258 

Rumansch  language.  (See  Romansch 
language) 

Rump  Parliament,  779 

Rurik,  631,  1110 

Russia,  75,  76,  118.  125,  142,  232,  267, 
275,  329,  436,  467,  470,  473,  476,  481, 


488,  494,  521,  582,  618,  628,  631,  635, 
674,  687,  689,  694,  699,  716,  735,  786, 
793-99,  809-10,  814,  816,  826,  865, 
905,  909,  920,  945,  966,  974,  991-96, 
1009,  1010,  1026,  1032,  1033,  1046, 
1047,  1111,  1121.  (See  also  Great  War) 

Russian  language,  118,  236,  558 

Rustam,  585 

Rusticiano,  678 

Ruth,  Book  of,  222 

Rutilius,  P.  Rufus,  433 


SAAR  (sar)  VALLEY,  1080 

Sabbath,  Jewish,  495,  499,  500,  514 

Sabellians,  593 

Sachsenhausen  (sach'  sen  hou  zen),  736 

Sacraments,  100,  102 

Sacrifice,  102,  150-53,  178,  247,  746,  953; 

human,  88,  100,  104,  420 
Sadducees,  496 
Sadowa  (sa'dova),  battle  of,  971,  973, 

1120 

Safiyya  (safye'ja),  578-79 
Sagas,  245,  618 
Saghalien  (sa  ga  len'),  994 
Sahara,  55,  126,  152,  162,  1025 
Sails,  use  of,  157 
St.  Andrew's,  869 

St.  Angelo,  castle  of,  606,  627,  649,  759 
St.  Gall,  monastery  of,  634 
Saint-Germain-en-Laye,  862 
St.  Gothard  Pass,  740 
St.  Helena,  915,  998 
St.  Just,  878 
St.  Lawrence  river,  803 
St.  Medard,  613 
St.  Peter's,  Rome,  513,  758 
St.  Petersburg.     (See  Petrograd) 
St.  Sophia,  Church  of,  536,  684 
Sainte  Menehould,  868 
Sakas  (sa'kas),  549 
Sakya  (sa'  kya)  clan,  355 
Saladin  (sal'  d  din),  645,  667,  1112 
Salanus  (sal 'd  mis),  285,  292,  296,  402, 

585,  1104 

Salisbury,  Lord,  1120 
Salmon  of  Reindeer  Age,  73 
Salonika,  1043 
Salt,  88 

Salvation,  Christian  theory  of,  952 
Salvation  Army,  352,  724 
Samaria,  139,  232 
Samarkand,  328-32,  474,  525,  562,  563, 

670,  691,  693 
Samnites,  386,  1105 


1164 


INDEX 


Samoan  Islands,  1028 

Samos,  254,  293 

Samoyed  (sam'  d  yed)  language,  123 

Samson,  222,  231 

Samuel,  Book  of,  222-25 

Samurai  (sam'  u  ri),  222-25,  992 

San  Casciano,  751 

Sanderson,  F.  W.,  820 

Sandracottus.     (See  Chandragupta) 

Sandstone,  5 

Sandwich  Islands,  1028 

Sanscrit,  239,  251,  559,  695 

Sans  Souci  (san  soo  se'),  park  of,  792 

San  Stefano,  treaty  of,  973,  1000,  1120 

Santa  Maria,  ship,  742 

Sapor  I,  538,  546,  1107 

Saracens,  626 

Sarajevo  (sarl'vo),  962,  1033 

Saratoga,  839 

Sardanapalus     (sar  dd  nd  pa'  Ms),     140, 

189,  228,  231,  266,  1103 
Sardes,  643 

Sardinia,  162,  404,  482,  755,  918,  968 
Sardis,  265,  272,  279,  288,  321 
Sargon  I,    103,    137-42,    190,  215,   520, 

765,  1122;  II,  139-42,  146,  189,  228, 

268,  1103 

Sarmatians,  239,  472,  635 
Sarum,  Old,  782 
Sassanids    (sas'dnidz),   452,   546,    596, 

1107.     (See  also  Persia) 
Saturn,  planet,  2 
Saturninus  (sat  tfr  nl'  nits),  433 
Saul,  king  of  Israel,  225,  1103 
Saul  of  Tarsus.     (See  Paul,  St.) 
Savannah,  804,  830 
Savannah,  steamship,  924 
Save,  river,  488 
Savoy,  780,  792,  876,  918,  968 
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha  family,  1007 
Saxony  (and  the  Saxons),  482,  527,  589, 

613,  616-21,  626,  630,  787,  792,  911, 

1111 

Saxony,  Duke  of,  711;  Elector  of,  758 
Sayce,  Prof.,  156,  199,  207 
Scandinavia,  75,  238,  462,  468,  476 
Schamhorst,  cruiser,  1042 
Scheldt,  the,  640,  876 
Schism,  the  Great,  663,  687,  710,  1113 
Schleswig-Holstein,  968 
Schmalkalden,  760 
Schmalkaldic  league,  760 
Schmidt,  Dr.,  696 
Schmit,  E.,  695 
Scholars,  348 

Schools,  monastic,  624;  public,  820  sq. 
Schurtz,  Dr.,  484,  584,  588 


Schwill,  602 

Schwyz  (shvits),  753,  754,  1112 

Science,  341  sqq.,  601,  730  sqq. ;  exploita- 
tion of,  927-29,  945;  and  religion,  507, 
732,  733,  957 

Science  and  Art  Department,  964 

Scientific  research,  729 

Scilly  Isles,  162 

Scind  (sind),  674 

Scipio,  Lucius,  413 

Scipio,  P.  Cornelius,  408 

Scipio  (sip'io),  Africanus,  the  Elder, 
409-13,  415,  417,  429,  468 

Scipio  Africanus  Minor,  409,  415,  431 

Scipio  Nasica  (nd.  si'  kd),  415,  431 

Scorpion,  21,  24 

Scorpion,  sea.     (See  Sea-scorpion) 

Scotch  colonists,  82 

Scotland,  45,  82,  83,  461,  605,  630,  664, 
720-22,  734,  735,  777-78,  795,  809, 
960,  997 

Scott,  Michael,  653 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  1011 

Scriptures,  Arabic,  588;  Christian,  547, 
554 

Scythia  (sith'  i  d)  and  the  Scythians,  190, 
202,  240,  268-69,  275-78,  320,  330, 
332,  422,  436-40,  462,  472-77,  486, 
630,635,  672,  688,  910,  1104 

Sea,  depth  of,  3 

Sea  fights,  ancient,  285 

Sea  power,  ancient,  321-23,  592 

Sea  trade,  740 

Seamanship,  early,  155-59,  162,  164, 
208,  214,  741  sqq. 

Seas,  primordial,  6,  7,  18,  19 

Sea-scorpion,  8,  20 

Seasons,  the,  97,  99 

Seaweed,  19 

Secunderabad  (se  kun  d<?r  a  bad'),  331 

Sedan,  972,  1050 

Seeley,  Sir  J.  R.,  700-1 

Seine,  the,  107 

Seleucia,  542 

Seleucid  (s£  hV  sid)  dynasty,  337-38, 
367,  371,  413,  452,  494,  537,  1105 

Seleucus  (s£  lu'  kiis)  I,  337,  369 

Selfishness,  365 

Selim  (salem'),  sultan,  685 

Seljuks  (seljooks'),  599,  636-40,  667, 
674,  1111.  (See  also  Turks) 

Semites  (and  Semitic  peoples),  115, 
120-26,  157,  164,  172,  180,  185,  206, 
240,  567,  586,  666,  707,  726,  797 

Semitic  languages,  120,  121,  129 

Seneca  (sen'  e  kd),  422 

Senegal  river,  164 


INDEX 


1165 


Sennacherib  (se  nak'  er  ib),  139-40,  146, 

189,  229,  1103 

Sepulchre,  Holy,  624,  630,  639,  642 
Sequoias  (se  kwoi'  dz),  37 
Serapeum  (ser  &  pe'  thn),  351-52,  708 
Serapis    (sera' pis),    351-52,    367,   466, 

511-13,  523,  1108 
Serbia  (and  the  Serbs),  457,  481,  527, 

537,    589,    682,    920,    1025,    1033-34, 

1043-45 

Serbian  language,  238 
Serfdom,  521 
Sergius  III,  Pope,  626 
Serpent  in  religion,  100,  113,  953 
Servants,  domestic,  207 
Set,  Egyptian  god,  180 
Seton-Karr,  Sir  H.  W.,  107 
Seven  Years'  War,  833,  1117 
Severus  (sever 'MS),  Septimus,  456 
Seville,  744 
Sex,  102 
Shale,  5 

Shalmaneser  (shal  md  ne'  zer),  139,  229 
Shamanism,  675,  689,  705 
Shamash,  188 
Shang  dynasty,  142,  150 
Shanghai  (shang  hi'),  996 
Shang-tung,  994 
Shaving  the  face,  333 
Sheep  in  lake  dwellings,  83 
Shekel,  165 

Sheldonian  Theatre,  819 
Shell  Age,  supposed,  51 
Shellfish,  8 

Shells,  as  ornaments,  67 
Shem,  110 
Shen-si,  553 
Sherbro  Island,  163 
Sherman,  General,  970 
Shi   Hwang-ti,  emperor,   142,   151,   195, 

470,  473-74,  765,  1105 
Shiites  (she' Its),   592-94,    628,    635-36, 

645,  694,  805 
Shiloh,  223 
Shimei,  225 
Shimonoseki  (she'  md  no  sek'  e),    Straits 

of,  993 

Shipbuilding,  631,  926 
Ships,  earliest,  155-59 
Shishak  (shl'shak),  146,  227 
Shrines,  177,  263 
Siam  (and  Siamese),  148,  561 
Siamese  language,  123 
Siberia,  76,  123,  125,  462,  474,  552,  674, 

691,  809 

Siberian  railway,  994,  1026 
Sicilies,  Two,  755,  907 


Sicily,  158,  162,  253,  324,  381,  386-87, 
401-3,  412,  417,  428,  435,  482,  630, 
632,  642,  651-54,  662,  739,  896,  918, 
967,  1103 

Sickles,  earthenware,  135 

Siddhattha  Gautama  (sid  hat'  t'ha  gou'- 
tama).  (-See  Buddha) 

Sidon,  158, 162,208,  218,  228,  279,  322-25 

Sieyes  (syayes'),  898 

Sign-language,  117 

Sikhs  (seks),  806,  981 

Silbury,  83,  105 

Silesia,  673,  801 

Silk,  214,  459,  789 

Silver  as  standard  of  value,  165 

Sin,  idea  of,  746 

Sind,  981 

Singan,  561-65,  1109 

Singing,  86 

Sinope  (si  no' pe) ,  542 

Siris,  288 

Sirius  (sir'i  t/s),  a  star,  181 

Sirmium,  488 

Sistrum,  352 

Siva,  374 

Sivapithecus  (si  vd  pi  the'  k#s),  50 

Siwalik  Hills,  50 

Skins,  use  of,  as  clothing,  64,  85;  in- 
flated, as  boats,  155 

Slate,  5 

Slavery  (and  slaves),   197-202,  256-61, 

307,  389,  422-23,  459,  512,  552,  598, 
691,  705,  748,  824,  832, 850  sqq. ;  Ameri- 
can, 886,  1119 

Slavic  tribes,  456 

Slavonian  dialect,  238 

Slavonic  languages,  635 

Slavs,  537,  589,  613,  621,  626,  635,  689 

Sloth,  153 

Smelting,  78,  80 

Smerdis,  274 

Smilodon  (sml'  lo  don),  43 

Smith,  Elliot,  112,  113 

Smith,  Rt.  Hon.  F.  E.,  958,  1021 

Smith,  John,  828 

Smith,  Worthington,  59 

Smithsonian  Institution,  930 

Smyrna,  643 

Sobiesky  (so  byes' ki),  John  (John  III), 

799,  1116 

Social  Contract,  843,  853 
Social  Democrats,  1010 
Social  War,  the,  433,  1106 
Socialism,  855,  885-91,  940  sqq.,  1119 
Society,  beginning  of  human,  248 
Socrates    (sok'rdtez),   85,   298,  300-2, 

308,  358,  375 


1166 


INDEX 


Boderini,  750-52,  1114 

Boissons,  612 

Solar  year,  99 

Bolent,  the,  107 

Solferino  (sol  fere' no),  battle  of,  968, 
1119 

Solis,  ensign,  772 

Solomon,  King,  146,  224-32,  493,  1003 

Solon,  166,  273 

Solutre,  70,  94 

Solutrian  Age,  267,  746 

Somaliland,  107,  126,  163 

Somalis,  language  of,  121 

Somersett,  J.,  852 

Somme,  the,  107:  battle  of,  882,  1050 

Sonnino,  Baron,  1068 

Sonoy,  Governor,  772 

Soothsayers,  256 

Sophists,  Greek,  298 

Sophocles  (sof  6  klez),  298 

Soudan,  tribes  of,  88 

Soul,  the,  102 

South  Africa,  417,  986,  997,  999,  1013, 
1019,  1120 

South  Sea  Islanders,  51 

Southampton,  736 

Soviets  (sov'yets),  946,  1048,  1060 

Sowing,  and  burial,  100;  and  human 
sacrifice,  104 

Space,  1,  12 

Spain,  71,  81,  111,  127,  142,  158,  162, 
381-83,  512,  536,  606,  664,  700,  718, 
735,  796;  history  (Carthaginians  in), 
404-10;  (Romans  in),  412,  416, 
429-32,  439,  452,  468,  494;  (Vandals 
in),  481,  484,  1108;  (under  the  Goths), 
527,  621,  1108;  (Moors  in),  492,  589, 
624,  628,  750,  794,  1110:  (15th-lGth 
cent.),  742-43,  749-58,  762-63,  (17th- 
18th  cent.),  767-73,  780,  783,  789.  794, 
801,  826,  1029;  (19th  cent.),  839,  916, 
972,  1029;  overseas  dominions,  154, 
744,  747;  colonial  expansion,  802-3, 
830,  833,  839,  853,  916,  977,  996 

Spanish  language,  118,  491,  718,  747 

Sparta,  254-58,  281-84,  291,  297-99, 
312,  320 

Spartacus  (spar'  td  kits),  435,  1106 

Species,  13,  17,  21,  107,  109 

Speech,  development  of,  54,  59,  93,  99, 
118,  129,  168-70 

Sphinx,  the,  181 

Spices,  Oriental,  806 

Spiders,  early,  24 

Spinnerets  of  spiders,  24 

Spoleto  (spola'td),  531 

Spores,  20 


Spy,  54 

Stag,  73,  75 

Stagira  (sta  jlr'd),  301 

Stalky  and  Co.,  957 

Stambul  (stam  bool'),  685 

Stamp  Acts,  835 

Stamps  used  for  signatures,  347 

Stars,  1,  2;  and  early  man,  97 

State,  the,  420  sqq.,  450,  752,  795,  950 

States-General,  the,  785,  856-57,  1118 

Steam,  use  of,  924,  929 

Steamboat,  introduction  of  the,  924 

Steam-engine,    invention   of,    825,    923, 

924 

Steam-hammer,  926 
Steam-power,  825 
Steel,  214,  326 

Stegosaurus  (steg  6  saw'  r#s),  27 
Stein,  Freiherr  von,  907 
Steno,  953 
Stettin,  736 

Stilicho  (stil'  i  ko),  482,  488,  1108 
Stockholm,  1048 
Stockmar,  Baron,  965 
Stoicism,  304,  307,  510 
Stone,  early  use  of,  242 
Stone,  Major-Gen.,  1084 
Stone  Age,  50,  52,  55,  60,  77,  83,  144, 

159,  215 
Stonehenge,  82,  83,  113,  142,   183,  242, 

1103 

Stopes,  Dr.  Marie,  25 
Story-telling,  primitive,  99 
Strabo  (stra'bo),  10 
Straff ord,  Earl  of,  777-78,  1015 
Strata,  geological,  6 
Strikes  in  ancient  Rome,  391 
Stuart  dynasty,  781 
Sturdee,  Admiral,  1042 
Styria,  755 

Subiaco  (soo  be  a'  ko),  531 
Submarine  warfare,  1042,  1049 
Sudan,  the,  997 
Sudras,  211,  564 

Suetonius  (su  <T  to'  ni  us),  454,  520 
Suevi  (swe'  vl),  482,  527,  1108 
Suez,  121,  143,  163 
Suffering,  cause  of,  361 
Suffrage,  manhood,  843 
Sugar,  602 
Suleiman  (soo  la  man'),  the  Magnificent, 

589,  594,  843,  845,  1110,  1114 
Sulla,  434-35,  441,  1106 
Sulphuric  acid,  602 
Sulpioius  (siil  pish'  i  us),  434 
Sultan,  Turkish,  492 
Sumatra,  680 


INDEX 


1167 


Sumer  (incl.  Sumeria  and  Sumerians), 
108,  135,  142,  148,  153-57,  172,  177, 
185-91,  196,  201,  215,  235,  257,  268, 
313 

Sumerian  language  and  writing,  103, 
129,  135,  136,  144,  558 

Sun,  the,  1,  2;  worship,  100,  180,  352 

Sunday,  511,  708;   schools,  933 

Sung  dynasty,  555-57, 561,  668,  675,  1111 

Sunnites,  636,  645,  696 

"Sunstone,"  112 

Superior  Lake,  171 

Surrey,  864 

Susa,  135,  202,  274-78,  285-86,  307,  327- 
28,  332 

Sussex,  53,  605,  824 

Suy  dynasty,  553 

Swabians,  611 

Swastika  (swas'  ti  ka),  113,  246 

Sweden  (and  the  Swedes),  75,  480,  526, 
616,  720,  761,  780,  785,  793-94,  799, 
802,  806,  816,  829,  911,  919 

Swedish  language,  238 

Swift,  Dean,  1017 

Swimming-bladder,  21 

Swine,  keeping  of,  736 

Switzerland  (including  the  Swiss),  80,  82, 
87,  132,  152,  241,  491,  634,  759,  786, 
827,  864,  873,  883,  891,  903,  917,  1114, 
1118 

Swords,  bronze,  101 

Sykes,  Ella  and  Percy,  475 

Sykes,  Sir  Mark,  540,  572,  595,  682,  685 

Syndicalism,  945 

Syracuse,  299 

Syria  (and  Syrians),  75,  126,  139,  140, 
146,  193,  207,  218,  229-30,  274,  289, 
322,  537,  540-44,  567,  570-73,  585, 
636,  643,  661,  667,  674,  690,  691,  708, 
967,  1025 

Syrian  language,  548,  600 


TABRIZ,  680 

Tabu,  95 

Tachov  (tak'hov),  711 

Tadpoles,  22,  39 

Taft,  President,  1062,  1066 

Tagus  valley,  762 

Tain,  an  Irish  epic,  251 

Tai-tsung,  554,  561,  566-67,  667,  1109 

Talleyrand,  913 

Tallien,  880 

Tammany,  426 

Tancred,  644 

Tang  dynasty,  550-57,  561,  667,  1109 

Tangier,  1009 


Tanks,  1038,  1044,  1084-so 

Tannenberg,  1038 

Taoism  (ta'  6  izm),  372,  376 

Tapir,  43 

Tarentum,  386,  408 

Tarim  (tarem),  valley,  147,  1106 

Tarpeian  Rock,  393 

Tarquins,  the,  384,  390 

Tartar  language,  123,  679 

Tartars  (and  Tartary),    330,    548,    669, 

673,  679,  689,  690,  795,  809,  816 
Tashkend,  562 
Tasmania   (and   Tasmanians),   62,    108, 

746,  979;   language,  129 
Taurus    mountains,    337-38,    589,    593, 

599,  607,  683,  769 
Taxation,  206,  260 
Taxilla,  564 
Tayf  (tl'if),573 
Taylor,  H.  O.,  729 
Tea,  551,  838 
Teeth,  32,  52,  54,  65 
Telamon.  (tel'  d  m<5n),  battle  of,  404-7, 

1105 

Telegraph,  electric,  925 
Tel-el-Amarrja     (tel  el  a  mar' na),     146, 

165,  188,  227 

Telescope,  invention  of  the,  732 
Tell,  William,  754" 
Tempe  (tern'  pe),  vale  of,  283 
Temples,  137,  177-85,  192,  255 
Ten  Thousand,  Retreat  of  the,  1104 
Ten  Tribes,  ,139 
Teneriffe,  780 
Tennyson,  Lord,  246,  964 
Testament,  Old,  85,  217,  230,  233;  New, 

85 

Tetrabelodon  (tet  rd  bel'  6  don),  41 
Teutonic  Knights,  816 
Teutonic  tribes,  231,  439,  456,  491,  1108 
Texel,  876 

Textile  fabrics,  Arab,  602 
Thames,  the,  107,  739,  786,  1036 
Thatcher,  602 
Thebes  (thebz)  and  Thebans,  215,  254, 

284,  313-14,  1103 

Themistocles  (the  mis' to  klez),  263,  285 
Theocrasia,  351,  352,  466,  512,  708 
Theodora,  Empress,  536 
Theodora,  sister  of  Marozia,  626 
Theodore  of  Tarsus,  614,  1110 
Theodoric  (the  od'  6  rik)  the  Goth,  487, 

527,  602,  1108 
Theodosius  (the  6  do'  shi  #s),  the  Great, 

482,  524,  1108 

Theriodont  (the'  ri  o  dont)  reptiles,  40 
Theriomorpha,  28 


1108 


INDEX 


Thermopylae  (th£r  mop'  i  le),  283,  1104 

Theseus  (thS'sus),  161 

Thespians,  284 

Thessalus  (thes'  d  life),  388 

Thessaly  (and  Thessalians) ,  326, 387,441 

Thibet,  371,  549 

Thien  Shan,  474,  562 

Thiers  (tyar),  801 

Thirty  Tyrants,  299 

Thirty  Years'  War,  786,  812,  839,  1034 

Thomas,  Albert,  965 

Thompson,  R.  Campbell,  135 

Thor,  613 

Thoth-lunus   (thoth' lu' mts),    Egyptian 

god,  182 
Thothmes  (thoth'mgz),   145,  228,  267, 

342,  1102 

Thought  and  research,  304,  949 
Thrace  (thras)  and  Thraciuns,  253,  277- 

78,  288,  314,  320,  337,  585,  638 
Three  Teachings,  the,  375 
Throwing  sticks,  69 
Thucydides  (thQ  aid'  i  dez),  292 
Thuringians,  616 
Tian  Shan,  474 
Tiber,  river,  382,  391,  606 
Tiberius  Caesar,  452,  496,  507,  1106 
Tibet,  152,  376,  473,  513.  561,  674,  688, 

811,  990,  1120 
Tibetan  language,  123 
Tides,  5 

Tiger,  sabre-toothed,  43,  48,  52,  57 
Tiglath  Pileser  (tig'  lath  pi  le'zgr)  I,  138, 

142;  III,  229,  268,  1103 
Tigris,  132,  138,  156,  181,  202,  537,  568, 

667 

Tii,  Queen,  192 
Tille,  Dr.,  741 
Tilly,  746 

Tilsit,  Treaty  of,  907,  1118 
Time,  12,  98,  99,  1 102 
Times,  the,  941 
Timon  (ti'mtfn),  444 
Timurlane,  692,  697,  809,  1113 
Tin,  2,  79,  80,  163,  214,  927 
Tinstone,  79 
Tiryns  (ti'rinz),  254 
Titanothere  («'  tdn  6  ther),  39,  43 
Titus,  255,  495,  1106 
Tobacco,  240,  828,  831 
Toe,  great,  48 
Tonkin,  994,  996 
Torr,  Cecil,  157,  200 
Tortoises,  28,  32 
Torture,  use  of,  882 
Tory  Party,  1013 
Toulon,  K78,  893-94 


Toura,  736 

Towers  of  Silence,  546 

Town  life,  European,  735  sqq. 

Townshend,  General,  1044 

Township,  primitive,  197 

Tracheal  tubes,  21 

Trachodon  (trak'  o  don) ,  30 

Trade,    early,    88,     154-67,     199,    205 

routes,  737;  sea,  739 
Trade  Unions,  419,  463,  943 
Tradition,  42,  94-99,  174 
Trafalgar,  battle  of,  905,  1118 
Trajan  (tra'  jdn),  454-59,  538,  568,  1106 
Transmigration  of  souls,  363-65 
Transport,  924,  1083 
Transubstantiation,  709 
Transvaal,    958,    986,    1120.      (See  also 

South  Africa) 
Transylvania,  455,  673 
Trasimere,  Lake,  408 
Travels,  early,  166,  924 
Trees,  22 

Trench  warfare,  1037 
Trent,  Council  of,  724,  1115 
Tresas,  284 
Trevithick,  924 
Trianon,  the,  863 
Tribal  system,  24,  688 
TrilolMtes,  8,  18 
Triceratops  (trl  ser'  d  tops),  30 
Trieste,  971 
Trigonometry,  602 
Trinidad,  998 
Trinil,  51,  52 
Trinitarians,  515,  523 
Trinity,  doctrine  of  the,  499,  516,  593 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  1016 
Tripoli,  840,  997,  1025,  1121 
Trojans,  161,  382 
Troltsch,  525 
Trotsky,  947 

Troy,  161,  254,  268,  283,  381 
Troyes  (trwa),  battle  of,  486,  1108 
Trumpet,  bronze,  101 
Tsar,  title  of,  492 

Tshushima  (tsoo  she'  ma),  Straits  of,  99-' 
Ts'i  (dynasty  and  state),  151,  439 
Ts'in  (dynasty  and  state),  1   1,  195 
Tuaregs,  121,  152 
Tuileries,  865-66,  872-73 
Tulip  tree,  37 
Tunis,  403,  648,  996 
Turanian   language.       (See   Ural-Altaic 

languages) 

Turanians,  125,  548,  594,  632,  682 
Turkestan,    120,    126,     152,    214,    267, 

328,  330,  366,  371,  474,  479,  525,  539, 


INDEX 


1  1  (51) 


547,  548,  563,  583,  589,  598,  636,  670, 
674,  681,  687,  691,  811,  1105,  1109 

Turkey,  762,  909,  920,  967,  974,  1007, 
1024,  1025,  1043-44,  1045,  1077,  1120. 
(See  also  Turks) 

Turkey,  Great,  674 

Turkhan  Pasha,  1070 

Turkish  fleet,  700;  language  and  litera- 
ture, 123,  548,  682;  peoples,  470,  494, 

548,  636,  699,   811   (see  also  Turks); 
princes,  684 

Turko-Finnic  language,  635 

Turko-Finnish  peoples,  486,  527 

Turkomans,  479,  691,  811,  997 

Turks,  330,  478,  539,  547-48,  563,  589, 
599,  667,  681,  1109;  and  the  Crusades, 
642  sqq.;  Ottoman,  536,  681  sqq.,  697, 
699,  740-41,  749,  752,  755,  759-63, 
783,  792,  799,  896,  1114-16;  Seljuk, 
636-39,  674,  682,  1111 

Turtles,  28,  32 

Tuscany,  779,  787,  792 

Tusculum,  405 

Tushratta,  King,  138,  146,  188 

Twelve  Tables,  the,  392,  419 

Tyler,  Watt,  715,  1113 

Tylor,  E.  B.,  102 

Tyndale,  Bible  of,  221 

Tyrannosaurus  (tl  ran  6  saw'  rws) ,  29 

Tyrants,  258 

Tyre,  142,  157,  162,  202,  206,  208,  218, 
232,  279,  321-26,  331,  401,  495-96, 
704,  795 

Tyrol,  832,  1080 


U 


UGANDA,  152,  616,  985 

Uhud,  battle  of,  514 

Uigurs  (we'goorz),  670 

Uintathere  (u  in'  id  ther),  39,  43 

Ukraine  Cossacks,  809 

Ukrainia  (and  Ukrainians),  689.  795 

Ulm, 1118 

Ulster,  32,  960,  1014-23 

Uncleanness,  96,  101 

"Unionist"  party,  1019 

United  Provinces.     (See  Holland) 

United  Service  Institution,  1081,  1084 

United  States,  473,  840,  844;  constitu- 
tion, 840  sg.,  859,  916,  1117;  political 
and  social  conditions,  209,  258,  424, 
839,  842,  883,  886,  924,  933,  1065; 
slavery  in,  749,  839;  Declaration  of 
Independence,  839,  1117;  treaty  with 
Britain,  840-41,  1117;  Civil  War,  965, 
1119;  modern  foreign  policy  of,  1027- 


31;  in  Great  War,  1049,   1062,   1076. 

(See  also  America) 
Universal  History,  the,  953 
Universal  law,  768 
Universals,  731 
Universe,  952 

Universities,  601,  653,  726,  819,  927 
University  Commission,  964 
Unterwalden  (oon'  ter  vat  den),  754 
Ur,  141 

Ural  mountains,  119 
Ural-Altaic  languages,  123,  150,  239,  243; 

people,  487 
Uranus  (ur'  d  n#s),  2 
Urban  II,  Pope,  637,  638,  648,  662,  724, 

1111 

Urban  VI  (pope),  663,  1113 
Uri,  754 
Urns,  86 
Uruk,  141 

Urumiya  (fl  ru  me"  ya),  lake,  268 
Ussher,  Bishop,  953 
Usury,  207 
Utica  (u'tikd),  158 
Utopias,  300,  302,  766 
Utrecht,  770 


VAISYAS  (vls'yaz),  211 

Valais,  491 

Valenciennes,  1050 

Valens,  Emperor,  481 

Valerian,  Emperor,  458,  538,  1107 

Valladolid,  762,  764 

Valmy,  battle  of,  875,  1118 

Valona,  1045 

Value,  164,  165 

Van,  268 

Vandals,  467,  481,  484,  492,  527,  589, 
1107 

Varangians  (vd  ran'  ji  dnz),  631 

Varennes  (varen'),  868-71,  1118 

Varro,  408 

Vasa  (va'sd),  Gustava,  784 

Vatican,  622,  649,  663 

Vedas  (va/  d<fa),  243,  251,  806 

Vegetarians,  251,  356 

Vegetation,  26 

Veii  (ve"  yi),  384,  393,  417 

Vendee,  879,  894 

Venetia,  968,  971,  1049 

Venezuela,  1029 

Venice  (and  the  Venetians),  641,  645, 
660,  678,  680,  685,  700,  736,  739,  741, 
895,  918,  1049,  1112,  1113,  1118 


1170 


INDEX 


Venus,  goddess,  613 

Venus,  planet,  2,  3 

Vera  Cruz,  970 

Verbal  tradition,  175 

Verde,  Cape,  1114 

Verde,  Cape,  Islands,  744 

Verdun,  873,  875,  1032 

Verona,  736,  876 

Versailles,  788,  792,  798,  858-68,  972, 

1002,  1071;  Peace  of,  1076  sqq.,  1121 
Verulam,  Lord.  (See  Bacon,  Sir  Francis) 
Vespasian  (ves  pa'  zhi  do.),  456,  463,  496, 

1106 

Vessels  of  stone,  159 
Vesuvius,  435 
Via  Flaminia,  404 
Victims,  human,  512 
Victor  Emmanuel,  968,  1119 
Victoria,  Queen  of  Great  Britain,  783, 

963,  965,  981,  1007,  1011,  1119,  1120 
Victory,  flagship,  905 
Vienna,  760,  799,  914,  1009,  1114,  1116; 

Congress  of,  913,  916,  918,  963,  1118 
Vigilius,  486 

Vikings  (vik'ings),  617,  631 
Village,  the,  82,  198 
Vilna,  924,  1041 
Vimeiro  (ve  ma'  e  r5),  907 
Vinci  (vin'che),  Leonardo  da,  461,  953, 

1044,  1114 

Vindhya  (vind'  ya)  mountains,  357 
Vinland,  741 
Virgil,  382,  460 
Virginia,  829,  831,  835,  839,  843,  847, 

851,  852,  970 
Virtue,  298 
Vise,  1035 
Vishnu,  249,  374 

Visigoths,  476,  481,  486,  527,  1108 
Vistula,  673 
Vitellus,  456,  1106 
Vittoria,  ship,  744 
Viviparous  animals,  40 
Vivisection,  343,  422 
Vocabulary  of  man,  118 
Volga,  120,  126,  371,  487,  527,  816 
Volscians,  392 
Volta,  925 
Voltaire,  F.  M.  A.  de,  791,  792,  813,  815, 

956,  1116 
Votes,  707 
Vowels,  254 
Voyages,  162-63 
Vulgate,  the,  527 


W 


WAGES,  199,  714 


Wagons,  243 

Waldenses,  656,  657 

Waldo,  656,  657 

Wales,  155,  527,  605,  735 

Walid  (wa  led' )  I,  593,  1110 

Walid  II,  595,  1110 

Wallace,  William,  735 

Wallenstein,  786 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  781 

War,  Great.     (See  Great  War) 

War  and  warfare,  198,  242,  312,  314,  785, 

959,  1000,  1005,  1036 
War  of  American  Independence,  839  sqq. 
Warsaw,  920 
Warwick,  Lord,  777 

Washington,  450,  827,  847,  900,  930,  970 
Washington,  George,  839,  847,  849,  853, 

897 

Water,  19,  824 
Waterloo,  914,  1118 
Watt,  James,  824,  923,  929 
Weale,  Putnam,  990 
Weapons,  58,  80,  85,  151,  1103 
Weaving,  78 

Wedmore,  Treaty  of,  619 
Wei  dynasty,  later,  554 
Wei-hai-wei  (wa  hi  wa'),  989,  994 
Wellesley,  Marquis.     (See  Mornington, 

Lord) 
Wellesley,  Sir  Arthur.    (See  Wellington, 

Duke  of) 

Wellington,  Duke  of,  907,  914 
Wells,  J.,  392,  403 
Welsh,  the,  795 
Welsh  language,  238 
Were-wolf,  93 
Wessex,  605,  616,  1110 
Western  civilization,  557 
Westminster,  397,  420,  737,  776,  780,  782 
Westphalia,  Peace  of,  773,  786,  827 
Whales,  28 
Wheat,  84,  131 
Whigs,  835 

White  Man's  Burthen,  988 
Whitehall,  777,  779,  1081 
Wilberforce,  Bishop,  955 
Wilhelm  I,  German  Emperor,  1007 
Wilhelm    II,    German    Emperor,    624, 

1006-11,  1120 
Wilhelm,    Crown    Prince    of    Germany, 

1010 

Will  and  obedience,  707 
William  I,  etc.,  Emperors  of  Germany. 

(See  Wilhelm) 

William  the  Conqueror,  347,  631,  1111 
William  III,  Prince  of  Orange,  781, 1015, 

1116 


INDEX 


1171 


William  IV,  King  of  England,  783 

William  the  Silent,  770 

Williams,  Harold,  635 

Williams,  S.  Wells,  470 

Wilson,   W.,  President  of  U.S.A.,  776, 

1062,  1064,  1065-72,  1076,  1080 
Wiltshire,  83 

Winckler,  H.,  141,  290-94 
Windsor,  777 
Wine,  829 
Wiriath,  857 
Wisby,  736 
Witchcraft,  96,  316 
Wittenberg,  758,  1114 
Wolfe,  General,  805,  1117 
Wolsey,  Cardinal,  757 
Wolves,  52,  383 

Women,  193,  260,  579,  721,  847 
Wood,  57 

Wood  blocks,  for  printing,  718 
Woollen  industry,  824     . 
Workmen,  943 
World    (geographical),    287,    344,    744, 

747;    (political),   340,   827,   919,   922, 

976 

World,  Old,  nursery  of  mankind,  76 
World  dominion  (and  unity),  340,  341, 

637,  654,  796,  797,  802,  811 
Worms,  Diet  of,  758,  1114 
Worship,  100 
Worth  (vert),  972 
Wright,  W.  B.,  74,  90 
Writing,    137,    144,    154,    160,    168-80, 

244,  245,  359,  558,  624 
Written  word,  232 
Wu  Ti,  475,  1106 
Wu  Wang,  150 
Wurtemberg,  75,  971 
Wycliffe,  John,  and  his  followers,  659, 

664,  709,  715,  758,  819,  821,  1113 


XAVIEK  (za'  vi  er),  Francis,  991 
Xenophon,  290,  299,  301,  306 
Xerxes  (zerk'  sez),  282-89,  306,  327,  470, 
682,  1104 

Y 

YANBU,  554 
Yang-chow,  679 


Yang-tse  valley,  151,  470 

Yang-tse-kiang  (yang  tsa  ke  angO ,  147 

Yarkand,  549,  1107 

Yarmuk,  584,  1109 

Year,  Moslem,  574;  solar,  99 

Yeast,  242 

Yedo  bay,  992 

Yeliu  Chutsai,  672 

Yemen,  539,  568,  570 

York,  458,  776 

Yorkshire,  713 

Yorktown,  839 

Ypres  (§'  pr),  770,  1037,  1039 

Yuan  Chwang,  470,  561  sqq.,  588,  59S, 

666,  680,  1109 

Yuan  dynasty,  675,  677,  688,  1118 
Yucatan,  154,  747 
Yueh-Chi,  474,  548,  561,  1105 
Yugo-Slavia  (and  Yugo-Slavs),  537.  681, 

918  sq.,  1009,  1079 
Yuste  (yoos'  ta),  762,  764 


ZADOK,  225 

Zaid  (za'id),577 

Zainib,  577 

Zama  (za'md),  409-12,  415,  1105 

Zanzibar,  743 

Zara,  645 

Zarathustra  (za  rd  thoos'  trd).  (See  Zo- 
roaster) 

Zebedee,  503 

Zeid  (zid),  a  slave,  572 

Zend  Avesta,  545 

Zenobia,  464,  538,  1107 

Zeppelin  raids,  1041 

Zeus  (zus),  338,  351 

Zeuxis  (zuk'sis),  312 

Zimbabwe  (zem  bab'  wa),  984 

Zinc,  80 

Ziska,  710 

Zodiac,  183 

Zollverein  (tsol' fer  In),  1012 

Zoroaster  (zo  ro  as'  t£r)  and  Zoroastri- 
anism,  462,  465,  538,  545,  547,  570, 
581,  594 

Zoroastrian  language,  547 

Zosimus  (zos'  i  mws),  521 

Zulus,  164,  313 

Zyp,  the,  771 


If  Mr.    WELLS    has   also   written    the 
following  novels: 

LOVE  AND  MR.  LEW1SHAM 

KIPPS 

MR.   POLLY 

THE  WHEELS  OF  CHANCE 

THE  NEW   MACHIAVELLI 

ANN  VERONICA 

TONO  BUNGAY 

MARRIAGE 

BEALBY 

THE  PASSIONATE  FRIENDS 

THE  WIFE   OF   SIR   ISAAC  HARMAN 

THE  RESEARCH  MAGNIFICENT 

MR.   BRITLING  SEES  IT  THROUGH 

THE  SOUL  OF  A  BISHOP 

JOAN  AND  PETER 

THE  UNDYING  FIRE 

U  The  following  fantastic  and  imagina- 
tive romances: 

THE  WAR  OF  THE  WORLDS 

THE  TIME  MACHINE 

THE  WONDERFUL  VISIT 

THE  ISLAND  OF  DR.  MOREAU 

THE  SEA  LADY 

THE  SLEEPER  AWAKES 

THE  FOOD  OF  THE  GODS 

THE  WAR  IN  THE  AIR 

THE  FIRST  MEN  IN  THE  MOON 

IN  THE  DAYS  OF  THE  COMET 

THE  WORLD  SET  FREE 

And  numerous  Short  Stories  now  collected  in 

One  Volume  under  the  title  of 
THE   COUNTRY   OF  THE  BLIND 

If  A  Series  of  books  upon  Social,  Reli- 
gious and  Political  questions: 

ANTICIPATIONS    (1900) 

MANKIND  IN  THE  MAKING 

FIRST  AND  LAST  THINGS 

NEW  WORLDS  FOR  OLD 

A  MODERN   UTOPIA 

THE  FUTURE  IN  AMERICA 

AN  ENGLISHMAN  LOOKS  AT  THE 
WORLD 

WHAT  IS  COMING? 

WAR  AND  THE  FUTURE 

IN  THE  FOURTH  YEAR 

GOD  THE  INVISIBLE  KING 

RUSSIA  IN  THE  SHADOWS 

THE    SALVAGING   OF  CIVILIZATION 

If  And  two  little  books  about  children's 
play,  called: 

FLOOR  GAMES  and  LITTLE  WARS 


961669 


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